We Meet Up at Overseas Campus

-Your teacher is embracing you right here

By Ling Li-li

I am a retired professor of pathology in Shanghai's Second Medical School. I am eighty years old. I have immigrated to Canada and been settled there for over seven years. I knew I had a lot of alumni in North America, but I had never dreamed that I would be able to meet up with two of my very close students at Overseas Campus. Overseas Campus is not really a physical place; it is a magazine. I was so deeply moved that I would like to write this article to embrace these dear students of mine.

Recently I received Overseas Campus Issues 38 and 39 and opened them as usual with great anticipation. I was excited to read Playing the Holy Music in my Spirit by Miao Jin-min in Issue 38. Shortly after that I received the 39^th Issue and once again I was excited reading Tang Li-ming's Logical Decree. Jin-min is at Helsinki University in Finland and Li-ming is at the Zion Hospital of University of California in San Francisco, the United States. And I am here spending my closing years in Canada. However were we to meet up again? And we met at Overseas Campus! I wanted to write to them right away, but I didn't have their address. So perhaps the best way to chat with them is to write to the place where we met.

Jin-min as a little girl

Miao Jin-min was in my extended class in pathological anatomy in Shanghai Second Medical School, and she was also my student in small lab classes. She graduated in 1968, but I had known Jin-min much earlier than that. Before 1949, I was a gynaecologist in a Christian hospital in Wuxi and Jin-min's father was an ophthalmologist in the same hospital. He went on to become the principal of the hospital. Jin-min's mother was a nurse. They moved to the hospital later than I did and they quickly became my good neighbors. I remember the day they moved in, bringing with them a little girl not quite ten years of age and a little boy who was just learning to walk. They were of course Jin-min and her little brother Jin-wei.

We both lived on the second floor of an old western style building. We met each other every day just as if we were part of the same family. Jin-min's mother was energetic and humorous. Whenever she appeared, nobody could feel miserable. At that time my husband was a foreign student in the United States and I was raising our two-year-old son all by myself. As I went through the terrible days of incredible inflation, my only company was Jin-min's family. Jin-min's mother could not work any more. She had to go to the finance department of the hospital early each morning to wait for the wages to be handed out; even a few hours delay could make a big difference because of the inflation.

They moved to Shanghai after 1949, but we still kept in touch. Jin-min's father had always been physically weak and he soon passed away. Jin-min's mother suffered from cancer and I visited her when her condition was critical. She had loved life and she loved her children. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. I could tell that she was worried about her little grandson, Jin-min's son, whom she had raised since he was very little. Soon after that, Jin-min lost both of her parents. She had a younger brother and they grew up supporting each other. Jin-min was a capable big sister and knew how to take good care of her little brother. Then she went on to study medicine. In those years, all medical school graduates were sent to the remote western areas of China. So I lost contact with her until a few years ago when I unexpectedly read an article at Overseas Campus authored by the name of Miao Jin-min. The article was about the story of a foreign student fellowship, and her address was in Copenhagen, Denmark. I was so glad to hear that she had believed in the Lord. During those years, students in China were exposed to atheism and very few of them had believed in the Lord. There might have been a few believers among the older generation, but atheism was perhaps more dominant. I had believed in the Lord at eleven and I had worked at the Second Medical School for forty years. I stayed firm in my beliefs and I publicly declared myself as a Christian. I was also persecuted during the Cultural Revolution because of my belief. Despite all this, however, I was ashamed of myself that I had never preached the Gospel to my students. I had always believed that college campus was too sensitive an area when it came to ideology. And as a teacher, I did not have the courage to spread the Gospel of Jesus. I felt I owed my students a big debt because I fell short of the gracious salvation of the Lord.

But I thank the Lord for Jin-min because she accepted the Lord in Denmark, that country in the far north. This time around, we were able to meet again at Overseas Campus. I learned from her latest article her first experience of playing sacred music in the Spirit and how she would do it again because it was the Lord's call to her. I have not read her testimony on how she became a Christian (The Ten Springs and Autumns), but I firmly believe she has taken deep root in Christ and she has produced many testimonies in her life.

The leader Tang Li-ming

Tang Li-ming was a graduate of Shanghai Second Medical School. At the end of his article, he introduced himself graduating in February 1956, but I recall that this should really be 1955. He certainly would not make a mistake like this, but I feel quite sure about it too. Weird! But anyhow, he was one of my most favorite students in the pathology class. I still remember his name even though more than forty years have gone by. Shanghai Second Medical School was formerly three different medical schools which were combined in 1952 as part of the reorganization of university system. These three schools were St. Johns Medical School of the United States, Zhen-dan Medical School of France and the private Tong-de Medical School. Tang was originally with St. Johns Medical School, which was where I was from. I remember he was the head of his class and he made a very good impression on me. Unlike Miao who was at the other side of the world, Tang is right here. The term "here", of course, is relative because he is in California, the United States and I am in Toronto, Canada. But I actually ran into him about six months ago.

St. Johns University celebrated its 120^th birthday in 1999. The school was dismantled as part of the reorganization of university system and many departments did not survive, while some were combined with other schools. The school was dismantled and its name was erased because this was an American school and it bore a foreign name with a strong religious flavor. Nevertheless, its alumni were all over the world. Last July in Vancouver, Canada, there was the world's 4^th students reunion for St. Johns University. I was an elderly cancer patient, but I went to the reunion anyway. Before I went, I wondered whether maybe I might see Tang there. Indeed, there he was. He even had a picture taken with me. I still recognized him, tall and handsome with a lot of gray hair and a stooped back. Well, he was around seventy after all. Unfortunately I didn't get to chat with him because there were too many friends around, and my responses were slow.

On the last day of the reunion, I was standing there waiting for the shuttle bus. Tang and other alumni were also there. When we said goodbye to each other, Tang said to me unexpectedly, "May God bless you!" I was slow to respond, but I thought about it a lot afterwards. I was so happy because I believed he must have accepted the Lord. I was a little confused too because he used to be the leader of his class, a Party member too. Actually I should not have felt confused. Aren't there a lot of Christians at Overseas Campus who used to be Party members? I guess my faith was weak. I had forgotten that Almighty God has been doing wonderful things among atheist students and visiting scholars, who have gone on to accept the true and living God and the salvation of the Cross.

All my life on campus

I like to read Overseas Campus because I have spent my whole life on campus in China. I have also been to foreign campuses and fellowships as a visiting scholar or simply a visitor. But until now I never thought about writing to Overseas Campus because I felt I was a retired eighty-year-old and this magazine belonged to the younger generations. To my great amazement, God enabled me to meet my students Miao and Tang at Overseas Campus and what a great blessing they were! No matter where you are, my dear students and brothers and sisters in the Lord, let me embrace you all! I am looking forward to meeting more of my students at Overseas Campus.

The author came from Shanghai. She was a visiting scholar in New York, the United States. She now lives in Toronto, Canada.