Friday, May 29, 2015

The Three Trees: a poem from South Fukien: Missionary Poems: 1925-1951, William Angus

Mr. David Andrews, author of "South Fukien: Missionary Poems: 1925-1951, William Angus".  I , has shared "The Three Trees," William Angus' favorite poem. I've lived in Xiamen (former Amoy), of Fujian Province, since 1988, and his poems bring to life both the place and the people. Amoy has a rugged beauty that a 150 years ago many compared to Scotland (and a Scotsman said the same to me 3 weeks ago). But it's the people one falls in love with--the people whose dogged perseverance and good humor has gotten them through so many centuries of trials and tribulations. Enjoy!
    Dr. Bill, Xiamen Univ. MBA Center; author of Discover Xiamen & Fujian Adventure.  

                                           The Three Trees
Whenever I visit Law-khe in Ping-ho County

And walk along the road between Tham-phoe
And Hong-thau-poan, I like to watch the river
Play at acrobatics in the gorge below.
Especially at a place where three pine trees
Mark a path to a small ravine to the right.  I often
Pause a minute or two to see the water
First somersault in white foam over rocks
Then slip demurely deep green into pools.
It has a cooling, restful effect on me.

The path to the right leads up past a few farmhouses
To a big, square house with a courtyard in the middle,
The house of the Gaw family, one of the first
Two families in the area to become Christian.
Before the father died, I often went there
And spent the night, and sometime the next morning
They would call everyone in, and I would hold
A communion service.  I would stay for lunch
And after lunch would walk to Hong-thau-poan.

After the father died, I went there more seldom
For the younger folk were able to walk to church.
The eldest son served as deacon for several years
And then was elected elder, a taciturn fellow,
Forty-five years old.

                                            About six months
After the election, I came again to the church
To install the new officers.  I asked for Gaw.
The men looked at each other.  “Gaw’s not home.”

“Then we’ll have to postpone his installation
Until I come again,” I said.

                                             They answered,
“We don’t think we ought to install him.  He’s in jail.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

                                           “He sold stolen goods.”
“What did he have to sell stolen goods for?” I asked.
“He has plenty of money.”

                                          “Not anymore,”
They answered.  “He speculated and went broke.
Paper money was depreciating fast,
And he borrowed a hundred thousand at ten percent.
Ten percent a month, and bought water buffaloes.
He held the buffaloes, but then sold at a loss
Because his creditors came after him.
He was supposed to pay interest every month,
And he had to sell his own buffaloes besides
In order to pay the interest.

                                          “At that time,
There was a rascal in the farmhouse below Gaw
Who was head of a gang that was stealing buffaloes.
Because Gaw’s house had an inside court, this fellow
Asked Gaw to let him sleep in one of the rooms
And keep the stolen cattle in the courtyard.
Gaw knew the cattle were stolen; his brothers didn’t.
They thought he was buying them.  Gaw was persuaded
To sell the stolen cattle for a commission.
People became suspicious.  Soldiers came
And there was a battle at the farmhouse below,
But the thieves stood the soldiers off.  Then we had rain,
A flood.  The thieves escaped.  Gaw’s relatives,
His uncle, his brothers, his cousins, and their families,
All moved out.  Then the soldiers came back and burned
The farmhouse below and half of Gaw’s house, and Gaw
Was caught and put in jail.”

                                               “I’m sorry to hear
All this about Gaw,” I said.

                                               “There’s other news,”
They said.  “Gaw’s sister-in-law was drowned in the flood.
A good woman, she was the daughter of Lim, the deacon.
When she heard the shooting and learned what was going on
And that Gaw was implicated, she wouldn’t wait
For her husband to come home, but started right in
To move their stuff out.  She shouldered the burdens herself,
And carried the things to some friends half a mile away.
Then it began to rain hard and they tried to get her
To stop, but she wouldn’t stop.  She was weeping and angry
And said she wouldn’t live one day more in a house
With thieves and bandits.  When the floods began.
She had to cross that little brook up there,
But by the time she got to it with her load
It was raging among the boulders.  A couple of men
Were standing there, afraid to go through the water;
Though it was only six feet from side to side,
The gully was three feet deep.  They tried to stop her,
But she was obsessed and walked into the torrent.  In one spit,
She was swept off down the ravine and battered naked
On the great boulders standing there.  They found her body
Floating at the bend in the river just below town,
With trees and lumber from bridges and wrecked houses.”

I murmured sympathy.  One of the men said then,
“It was sad, pastor.  But, you know, right after that
Something funny happened that made the whole village laugh.
It was market day.  Someone went to a young man
Who lived up the river and said, ‘They’ve found the body
Of a young woman.  It looks like your wife.’
He ran down to the river bank, took one glance,
And cried out, ‘It is!  It is!’  He sat down on the sand,
Took up the body, embraced it, and wept aloud.
After a while he went back to the market
To arrange for the body’s removal.  But Lim, the deacon,
Had also been told.  He recognized his daughter
And had the body taken to his home.

“When the young man came back, the body was gone.  He was frantic.
He asked people where it had gone to.  Then a friend asked,
‘Are you sure that was your wife’s body you saw?
I’ve just come from the village.  Your wife was there
Safe and sound when I left.’  Bewildered, he went home.
It was true.  His wife was sitting outside the front door,
Suckling the baby.  She’d already heard the news
And scolded him for making a fool of himself.
And everybody teased him about it.”

                                                Some months later
When I came again, I asked what had happened to Gaw.
“His brothers,” they said, “were able to raise enough money
To get him out of jail.  The other man,
The leader of the thieves, had killed a man.
His case was harder to settle.  But he had money,
Silver dollars hidden away, and he was able
To buy his way back here again, even though
The relatives of the man he had killed had been trying
For months to get the government to take action.
But they were poor villagers.  They had no influence.

“So he came back, went to market bold as you please,
Stood around, talked to people to show he wasn’t afraid;
He could buy the officials off.  But he might have known
The murdered man’s relatives would be unsatisfied
To see him get off scot-free.  Along toward dusk
He started home.  You remember the three pine trees?
He took the path there and he was ambushed and killed.”


About William Angus

William R. Angus, Jr. was a Reformed Church missionary in Amoy and on the Fukien mainland in the years named, and after expulsion worked in the Philippines.  He wrote over 600 poems on the Fukienese people of his time, 60 of which are collected in a 2015 edition co-published by MerwinAsia Publishing and University of Hawaii Press.

I edited the collection and provided a historical Introduction and Glossary.  David R. Angus of Lansing, MI, the poet's son, wrote the Preface.

I am enclosing a press release for the collection and two files of excerpts.  I hope you will find them interesting and lend us some aid in raising the book's profile among readers, students, and perhaps missionaries.  Some links to web pages about the book are at the bottom of this message.

Best regards,
David Andrews      
                                                                                                                         

                 PRESS  RELEASE
Edited with an Introduction by David Andrews 
Preface by David Angus
Portland, ME: MerwinAsia Publishers, 2015 
China Missionary Poet Published 64 Years after Expulsion
Lansing, MI, April 1, 2015
Through four decades as a Reformed Church missionary in China’s Fukien (today, Fujian) Province, William Angus produced more than 600 narrative poems.  What emerged is pointedly not A Nice Missionary’s Poetry.

In spring of 2015 MerwinAsia Publishers, in association with the University of Hawaii Press, releases 60 of William Angus’s verses under the title South Fukien: Missionary Poems, 1925-1951

Humane but hard-edged, Angus’s verse depicts the Fukienese through successive eras of trial: in China’s struggle toward modern government; through civil wars between Nationalist and Communist forces; under Japanese occupation in World War II; and during the Communist takeover at the end of the 1940s.

Written from actual incidents, in the voices of the storytellers, the poems are as vital as the Chinese people. Angus’s work combines historical reporting with folktale, and a sharp edge of moral ambiguity.  

David Angus, a retired educator in Lansing, MI, has waited decades to see his father’s poetry in print.

“My father traveled long distances in Fukien’s countryside—on foot, by boat, and by ancient, rickety bus.  He knew peasants and merchants, bandits and soldiers.  He heard their stories and he valued their experiences,” David reflects.  “He knew they were together in some of the world’s most troubled times.”

During World War II, Angus’s wife, Joyce and their three children—David Angus among them—were interned by the Japanese before repatriation to America.  In 1951 William and Joyce were forced, like all missionaries, to leave China by the new Peoples’ Republic.
“When my father died in 1984, he left behind a body of remarkable work which he edited and revised several times,” says David.  “These poems represent his personal response to the Chinese he lived and worked among.  The South Fukiencollection’s subtitle, Missionary Poems, offers a hope that his verse will still bear witness to the effect of Western evangelism on the daily lives and values of the Chinese people.”    

South Fukien is edited by independent scholar David Andrews, who provides a historical Introduction and Glossary.  David Angus supplies a Foreword recalling missionary life in China. 

The collection was assembled and annotated from papers in the collections of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, NJ, and the Joint Archives of Hope College and Holland, MI.  “The poems were an exciting and historically important discovery, too compelling to remain unpublished,” says David Andrews. 

William Angus’s poems are dispatches from his time to ours, showing the Chinese as a people much like us—hoping to adjust to a world of rapid change, seeking comfort in a Western religion that offers faith, justice, and love. His accounts of spiritual strength and moral failings present unique perspectives into a people’s behavior and mores under crisis, temptation and change.

“Writing with objectivity, sensitivity, compassion, and uncompromising directness, Angus does not pretend,” notes Dr. Paul Vender Meer, Professor Emeritus at California State University-Fresno.  Dr. Ann Kuzdale, Associate Professor of History at Chicago State University, says, “Angus is a keen witness to events that most readers know superficially.  South Fukien is a valuable addition to world history and religious studies courses, and to transnational and Pacific Rim history.

The Amoy Mission Pages

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

South Fukien: Missionary Poems: 1925-1951, William Angus

An interesting note today from the Author of "South Fukien: Missionary Poems: 1925-1951, William Angus".  I read some of the poems and they really brought to life the place and the people of Amoy (now Xiamen), of Fujian Province. I even recognized some of the notorious characters--a bandit chief--in one poem, though the name was changed. Insightful, and fun. Below are the author's note and Press Release.
Click Here for "The Three Trees", William Angus' favorite poem. 
Dr. Bill, Xiamen University MBA Center (since 1988); Author of Discover Xiamen &Fujian Adventure.

Note from David Andrews, May 27, 2015
I have enjoyed reading your site while doing research for my book project, South Fukien:Missionary Poems 1925-1951,  by William Angus.


William R. Angus, Jr. was a Reformed Church missionary in Amoy and on the Fukien mainland in the years named, and after expulsion worked in the Philippines.  He wrote over 600 poems on the Fukienese people of his time, 60 of which are collected in a 2015 edition co-published by MerwinAsia Publishing and University of Hawaii Press.

I edited the collection and provided a historical Introduction and Glossary.  David R. Angus of Lansing, MI, the poet's son, wrote the Preface.

I am enclosing a press release for the collection and two files of excerpts.  I hope you will find them interesting and lend us some aid in raising the book's profile among readers, students, and perhaps missionaries.  Some links to web pages about the book are at the bottom of this message.

Best regards,
David Andrews 
                                                                                                                              

                 PRESS  RELEASE

Edited with an Introduction by David Andrews 
Preface by David Angus
Portland, ME: MerwinAsia Publishers, 2015 
China Missionary Poet Published 64 Years after Expulsion
Lansing, MI, April 1, 2015
Through four decades as a Reformed Church missionary in China’s Fukien (today, Fujian) Province, William Angus produced more than 600 narrative poems.  What emerged is pointedly not A Nice Missionary’s Poetry.

In spring of 2015 MerwinAsia Publishers, in association with the University of Hawaii Press, releases 60 of William Angus’s verses under the title South Fukien: Missionary Poems, 1925-1951

Humane but hard-edged, Angus’s verse depicts the Fukienese through successive eras of trial: in China’s struggle toward modern government; through civil wars between Nationalist and Communist forces; under Japanese occupation in World War II; and during the Communist takeover at the end of the 1940s.

Written from actual incidents, in the voices of the storytellers, the poems are as vital as the Chinese people. Angus’s work combines historical reporting with folktale, and a sharp edge of moral ambiguity.  

David Angus, a retired educator in Lansing, MI, has waited decades to see his father’s poetry in print.

“My father traveled long distances in Fukien’s countryside—on foot, by boat, and by ancient, rickety bus.  He knew peasants and merchants, bandits and soldiers.  He heard their stories and he valued their experiences,” David reflects.  “He knew they were together in some of the world’s most troubled times.”

During World War II, Angus’s wife, Joyce and their three children—David Angus among them—were interned by the Japanese before repatriation to America.  In 1951 William and Joyce were forced, like all missionaries, to leave China by the new Peoples’ Republic.
“When my father died in 1984, he left behind a body of remarkable work which he edited and revised several times,” says David.  “These poems represent his personal response to the Chinese he lived and worked among.  The South Fukiencollection’s subtitle, Missionary Poems, offers a hope that his verse will still bear witness to the effect of Western evangelism on the daily lives and values of the Chinese people.”    

South Fukien is edited by independent scholar David Andrews, who provides a historical Introduction and Glossary.  David Angus supplies a Foreword recalling missionary life in China. 

The collection was assembled and annotated from papers in the collections of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, NJ, and the Joint Archives of Hope College and Holland, MI.  “The poems were an exciting and historically important discovery, too compelling to remain unpublished,” says David Andrews. 

William Angus’s poems are dispatches from his time to ours, showing the Chinese as a people much like us—hoping to adjust to a world of rapid change, seeking comfort in a Western religion that offers faith, justice, and love. His accounts of spiritual strength and moral failings present unique perspectives into a people’s behavior and mores under crisis, temptation and change.

“Writing with objectivity, sensitivity, compassion, and uncompromising directness, Angus does not pretend,” notes Dr. Paul Vender Meer, Professor Emeritus at California State University-Fresno.  Dr. Ann Kuzdale, Associate Professor of History at Chicago State University, says, “Angus is a keen witness to events that most readers know superficially.  South Fukien is a valuable addition to world history and religious studies courses, and to transnational and Pacific Rim history.

The Amoy Mission Pages