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.
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
Publication of South Fukien: Missionary
Poems 1925-1951, By WilliamAngus
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.
The Amoy Mission Pages
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