It has been fourteen years since I last came to visit this city. I had been on a trip to vist the PSBI offices in the philippines and then to Thailand for their 20 year anniversary celebrations of their PSBI programs. Since I was so close to China it was decided that the time had come for me to return to this country where I had spent the first nine years of my life. Those years were a very important part of my life, and although there were many unsettling times during this period from 1925—1934, I have many good memories to recall. I believe that my early life in this country has helped to shape my own beliefs that there is much good in all peoples and we need to work together to share our individual beliefs and to support a mutual understanding among our different cultures.

In 1934 my mother decided to return to America as she was becoming recognized as a new and important writer. She felt she needed a change and she was concerned about her daughter Carol living in an institution in this country.

My mother did not like ocean travel as it made her rather ill and the Pacific Ocean was more treacherous, so we embarked on an alternate route which covered several countries she had not visited. She was not certain that she would return to China and so she went west—eventually crossing the Atlantic. She took me with her but I only have vague memories of that trip.

We settled in New York City and the house we rented belonged to Malvina Hoffman, a well known sculptor at that time. My mother who had a quiet life in China was suddenly thrust into a completely different life. She was no longer a missionary wife from an unknown country but a celebrity, and from then on her life changed completely, but she never let go of the life lessons she had learned from her years in this country.

There has been a lot written about her life in both countries, her philosophies and beliefs, her writings concerning issues of equality between men and women, the lack of women’s rights and children’s rights, and lastly the rights of Amerasians—a melding of East and West. But little is known of her private life at home as she kept that life quite separated from the other.

Some of you have visited her home in Pennsylvania and know of its character. An old stone house sitting on a slight slope with many hills in the distance. It had been abandoned and needed considerable repairs to make it livable. She added rooms to the house here and there as her adopted children needed their own space in the house and she had also purchased a small farmhouse across the stream for use as a guest house for her many visitors.

Lin Yutang, the famous Chinese writer,and his family were frequent visitors and I always enjoyed their visits. He taught me how to dam up the stream to catch a trout which we transferred to a small pond near the house. Another time I found some baby rabbits that the dogs dug up and we had nine of them in the living room. His children wanted to take one home to a New York apartment which they did,and it lived for a long time. They would take it on a leash to Central Park to play on the grass.

I also remember a Chinese actress who my mother befriended and visited quite often. Another visitor to the house was Madam Pandit, Nehru’s sister who was the Indian Ambassador to the United Nations, and at times her three daughters who were attending college in this country. My mother was their guardian. The two younger were more my age and we went on several trips together.

My mother had many visitors from Asian countries. They were always very interesting and the children benefited by becoming multicultural. It is always good to learn about people of other cultures and to understand them. Chen Chi, the artist was also a good friend of the family and came down many times to paint scenes of the country there.

Once in a while we would have unexpected visitors. One day my mother was cooking Sunday dinner, Chinese style, and a lady came to the door asking for her. My mother in her flour covered apron said she was not there and so the woman left. A few months later my mother met this same woman at some special event and naturally the secret was out.

My mother was not the typical housewife or mother that most children grow up with and we may have missed the type of life that many families have, but we did learn to open our minds and our hearts to the existence of other cultures in this world, and to shy away from the bigotry and that exists in other parts of the world.

I value the opportunities she gave me to learn first hand about other people, their lives and beliefs and their cultures. It is important that we get to know each other, understand each other,and work together to help bring our varied cultures together. I want to thank you for having this symposium, not just to honor my mother but to bring East and West together to share our common beliefs that ALL UNDER HEAVEN ARE ONE.

Writer       ：Janice Walsh
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