Milton Gardner cherished his childhood on Kuliang for the rest of his life.
Milton Gardner, like so many children who summered on Kuliang with their families, loved his time on the mountain so much so that he remembered and talked about his summers there for the rest of his life. Ask any person who summered there as a child, Kuliang was a magic place.
During the school year the younger children would study together in Fuzhou. This is a picture of the class of 1909. Phoebe Beard, daughter of Willard and Ellen Beard, was the teacher, and one of her students was Milton Gardner. You can see him here sitting in the front on the right. But when summer came, the children could hardly wait to return to Kuliang. (Thank you to the Beard family for this photo.) Milton Gardner remembered climbing the big King Tree in the center of town and finding baby birds with his Chinese playmates.
Memories of the Billing Family
Dean Billing shared a video of his father, Bernard Billing, son of Arthur and Mabel Billing, who worked and taught at Union High School (a vocational school). The first question that Dean asked his father was what he remembered from his life in China. His father took a while to answer, and then said very reflectively, “Kuliang mostly.”
He continued, “We went to Kuliang in the summertime, and we had a swing on the porch that I used to like. And the porch was quite a big veranda and it had a stone railing around it. When we would come up from the plain in the spring, in June. You would come out of that intense heat of the plain, and it would be so cool and fresh on Kuliang. You could hear the waterfalls from the paddy fields, and it was such a nice feeling to get to Kuliang – I love Kuliang.”
In the spring of 2018, I interviewed Bernard’s little brother Len, who at age 98, excitedly talked about his activities when he was small. He said the best part was “Swimming in the morning and Tennis in the afternoon!” The following video is Len describing the old swimming pool (not the Century Pool near the Diamondream Bookstore, but the earlier one that was at the top of the mountain, now in ruins).
The oldest swimming pool on the mountain. Please note the stone building where people changed their clothes on the right of the photo.
Picnics at Sunset Rocks – Gail Harris Remembers Kuliang
Another friend who lived on Kuliang, Gail Harris, remembered a place they called “Sunset Rocks” which was near the current main parking lot. It was called “Sunset Rocks” because families would gather for picnics by some large rocks there looking out over the valley to Fuzhou as the sun set. When they had finished eating they would sing hymns together. After their picnic and singing hymns, Gail remembers walking home afterwards with a lantern, watching all the other families with their lanterns bobbing as they walked back to their homes in the descending darkness.
If you would like to hear the music for the hymn they always sang before they walked home, please visit this link:
Hymn: Day is Dying in the West
As they went home, they would wish each other the Chinese phrase 平安 平安！ Peace Peace! which is what we still wish for today.