The Centennial Love of “Hometown on the Cloud”

Kuliang, the “hometown on the cloud”, has become a homesickness that is hard to give up after a hundred years. More than 100 years ago, a large number of foreigners and their descendants lived here, which led to a series of love relationships across time and space and built a bridge of friendship from generation to generation.

Chinese and American youths exchanged and studied China’s calligraphy in Fuzhou No.1 Middle School.

Photographed by reporter Chi Yuan

On December 20, the 2024 Kuliang Forum with the theme of “Passing on Friendship across Cultural Differences” was held in Beijing. More than 150 Chinese and American guests, including the members of “Friends of Kuliang”, attended the forum and had in-depth exchanges and discussions on such important topics as “striving to promote Sino-US friendly exchanges, being stable and far-reaching” and “jointly exploring ways for China and the United States to get along correctly”. Beijing and Fujian relay inheritance, new friends and old friends are getting closer. The “dream homeland” full of love, peace and friendship is becoming the spiritual hometown of more people.

Kuliang, the beginning of friendship

Summer has passed, and the friendship forest planted by Chinese and American youths is gloomy and beautiful in the cold winter, hiding a beautiful memory of summer. Together with the tall and handsome Cryptomeria fortunei, they blend into the lush and vigorous green of Kuliang.

Since Fuzhou was turned into a five-port trading port, a large number of western missionaries, consuls and businessmen came to Fuzhou. They rented land to build houses in Yantai Mountain, practiced medicine, run schools and set up foreign firms along the Minjiang River basin. In order to avoid the unbearable heat, Kuliang became their back garden for summer. They rented land from the local villagers and made a Covenant to build a house. Soon, among the continuous wooden houses, western-style villas with different styles sprang up. At the peak, there are more than 300 western-style villas dotted with mountains.

In this naturally formed international summer resort community, Chinese and foreign residents gradually become familiar with and close to each other, and explore a friendly and mutual community life: local people share their living space, precious water and building materials with them to help look after villas, while foreigners hire them to build houses, take care of children, cook and wash clothes...

There are different opinions about the first foreigner who built a villa in Kuliang, but these swarms of foreigners have really made Kuliang lively: community infrastructure such as post offices, shops and Kuliang sanatorium for foreigners have been built, public management institutions represented by foreign public welfare organizations have been established, and swimming pools and tennis courts have been built in the rolling mountains. Foreigners, like migratory birds, shuttle between mountains and mountains with the change of seasons. Many of them don’t live in Fuzhou. Garrett, the grandfather of Cheng Gaodeng, a friend of Kuliang, is a doctor in Nanping. Every summer, the whole family goes down the Minjiang River and meets with Cheng Lydia, the great aunt and founder of South China Women’s Hospital, in Kuliang.

“They go to Kuliang for summer vacation and talk about learning. My grandfather brought X-ray machines and case reports to communicate with local doctors, and my great aunt and teachers discussed the development of education and schools together...” Cheng Gaodeng’s father told his children many times about his happy time in Kuliang.

Echo on both sides of the ocean

In 2012, when Vice President Xi Jinping visited the United States, he told the story of Kuliang, an American old man named Gardner, which touched the people of China and the United States and brought Kuliang into the international field of vision. After more than 20 years, Kuliang received many foreign families who came to seek their roots.

More than 20 descendants of many families from the United States, New Zealand and other countries have returned to Kuliang one after another, and their ancestors have a common good memory in Kuliang.

What is the magical power of this land that make people never forget?

In 2015, the daughter-in-law Mu Yanling scattered the ashes of the Flying Tigers Lieutenant Mu Yiren into the Minjiang River and boarded Kuliang with an old map with only the house number. During his summer vacation in Kuliang, Mu Airen bought a house (No.184) that was blown down by a typhoon from the local people, and planned to build a “Skell” (the ancestral home of Mu family) here.

Every serial number is a family. In order to find out the family represented by each serial number, Chinese and American folk researchers came together and jointly excavated many unknown stories, and the dream homeland was unveiled to them. In the ninth year, Mu Yanling found the Skell hut, and in fine weather, he could see the Minjiang River where Mu Airen’s ashes were scattered from the old site. Lin Yinan, a folk researcher in China, built the first alien root-seeking image database in Fujian-"Kuliang genealogy by technical means, and used the power of images to find countless connections and promote more connections.

“You will find that this is a big network, and Kuliang is located in the center of this network. Even I found the shadow of my family in it.” Lin Yinan said.

Nowadays, people walk into the “Kuliang Families Story Museum” and can understand this deep love from their stories. Like Gardner, Kuliang is their common homesickness.

Strolling through the museum, you can see many pictures-women of different nationalities and ages stand side by side and devote their lives to women’s right to education; Kuliang mountain people carried the foreign woman sitting in the sliding chair up the mountain, and Mu Peter, who was newly born, was lying in the basket of the female porter. At the banquet held in the courtyard of Kuliang Villa, the long skirt and gown crossed each other, so harmonious ...

“Every story tells us that people from different countries, different nationalities and different cultures can build friendships and pass them on from generation to generation despite their differences.” said by Mu Yanling to the Chinese and American youths who visited Kuliang in the second “Bond with Kuliang” activity in 2024,

The surging Minjiang River finally merged into the Pacific Ocean, and the affectionate call of "KULIANG" aroused more and more echoes across the ocean.

Continue to write a story about Kuliang

Mindu Town Mountain is a fresh and blessed land. Since 2012, the Fuzhou Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government have attached great importance to the construction and development of the resort. After 2017, five rounds of overall upgrading work have been implemented, and cultural experts such as Mu Yanling have been invited to dig the Kuliang story. The overall appearance and tourism quality of the resort have undergone qualitative changes.

Ancient buildings bear the “root and soul” of Kuliang story. The Management Committee of Kuliang Resort has carried out a lot of excavation and textual research work, and successively completed the restoration and upgrading of nearly 20 historical buildings, such as Li Shijia Villa, Yixia Villa, International Public Welfare Society, Kuliang Post Office, Centennial Swimming Pool, Gardner Exhibition Hall, Fujia Villa, Old Tennis Court Ruins, and Mr. Mai’s Building. Wipe away the dust of the years, and all the ancient buildings are transformed into cafes, homestays, bookstores, exhibition halls, and intangible experience halls, which not only retain the taste of history, but also inject fashion and vitality.

At the first “Bond with Kuliang” event in 2023, the 82-year-old “Ying” (Li Yiying) and “Hua” (Bi Lehua) reunited after more than half a century. The first sentence of the meeting between Chinese and American “sisters” is still Fuzhou dialect, whose local accent is hard to change. When they were 3 years old, two little girlfriends were held in their parents’ arms and left a group photo. After decades, they left a precious group photo.

In June this year, five special family banquets were held in Yixian Village of Kuliang, and local residents invited “Friends of Kuliang” to return to their hometown for family banquets. In the moonlight, they raised a glass and clinked it, as if they had returned to the time when Chinese and foreign residents lived in harmony a hundred years ago.

With the “Bond with Kuliang” as the link, the love between China and the United States is endless. In June this year, witnessed by the Millennium Cryptomeria fortunei, more than 200 young people from the United States and more than 300 young people from China jointly searched for the past in Kuliang. They put a postmark on the post office in Kuliang, searched for the past in ancient buildings, planted a friendship tree in Yixia Village, and experienced harmony but differences in more than 50 exchange activities, feeling the beauty and beauty together and starting heart-to-heart communication.

“I have traveled to many places, but there is no place as full of exchanges between two cultures as Kuliang.” American youth Chris Onia said emotionally.

Civilization is colorful because of communication, and civilization is enriched because of mutual learning. I believe that the story of friendly exchanges between the two countries will last forever in the long river of years. (Reporter Zhu Rong)