On Dec. 15, the winter sun in Beijing was warm and balmy.
The 90-square-meter apartment in the more than 60-year-old south building in the family area of Beijing Foreign Studies University was bustling with activity. Wearing a big red sweater, Isabelle welcomes one guest after another to visit her on her 102nd birthday.
Isabelle, one of China's most famous international friends, has bright angelic blue eyes and smiles at everyone. She had a slice of her 102nd birthday cake and ate her favorite Chengdu Palace Peach Crisp. The centenarian, who can still walk up and down the stairs and put on her own shoes, might have gone out and danced the eight-duan brocade if it weren't for her birthday. ......
The Canadian who witnessed a century of China's history has become a legend in her own right - a legend of that long history.
Canadian Isabelle, a famous international friend of China, was born in 1915 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, into a Canadian missionary family. Her mother was Rao Hemei, former dean of the education department at West China Union College.
She was a Canadian ****producer, an anthropologist, an educator, and a pioneer in the garden of English teaching in new China.
She was involved in experiments in rural construction in Xinglongchang, Sichuan, and interviewed and investigated land reform in the liberated areas of North China with her husband, David Kerouac.
Starting in 1948, Isabelle and her husband worked together on the creation of the Foreign Affairs School, and for nearly 70 years since then, she has remained on this campus now known as the Beijing Foreign Studies University ......
Chinese memories
Canadian international friend, 102
JiuLiu China, love to eat huijiang meat and dance Baduanjin
The south building of Beijing Foreign Studies University's family compound is a small, gray, nondescript, four-story building. Isabelle's home, where she has lived for more than 60 years, is in an old apartment on the third floor.
The house is as simple and slightly crowded as the homes of ordinary Chinese elderly people, with period tape recorders and DVD players that seem to indicate how old the house is. Only the old photographs and English books on the bookshelves reveal the identity of the owner. And Isabelle, a Canadian ****producer who believes strongly in ****productivism, has a portrait of Mao Zedong hanging in her living room.
Isabelle, who is celebrating her 102nd birthday, was in a good mood on this day, wearing a big red sweater and greeting a steady stream of people who came to celebrate her birthday with a smile. She cut the birthday cake with her own hands and ate a small piece. Despite her wrinkled face, her eyes were as bright and innocent as a young girl's. Her 12-year-old dog, "Ice Porridge," circled around Isabelle, who stroked it affectionately and joked, "It's not even a puppy, it's an old dog."
Isabelle's three sons also gathered in Beijing to celebrate her mother's birthday. Her oldest son, Keru, came from the United States, her second son, Ke Makai, has been in Beijing with her mother, and her youngest son, Ke Hong, has just returned from the United Kingdom. Together with Makai's daughter, who brought along her two twin children, it was probably the liveliest time of the year in the apartment.
Isabelle, who was in a good mood, also ate two pieces of palace peach cake brought by a friend from Chengdu, her favorite flavor of pretzel. Usually, even ordinary fried green vegetables, aunt will put a little more pepper specifically. This is a taste Isabelle has developed from living in Sichuan, and she will even chew the peppercorns one by one. In addition, she loves to eat huijian pork, which is her favorite, "Sichuan dishes are all my favorites." Isabelle speaks, slowly but with clear words.
Isabelle also has two sisters who have the same longevity as her, living in Canada and Britain. One sister just celebrated her 100th birthday and the other is 95. All three sisters were also born in Chengdu.
Isabelle's longevity is probably due to the fact that she has insisted on living in the family compound of Beijing Foreign Studies University. She has old friends and sisters whom she has known for more than 60 years, and "I live in a flat, so I can often meet with my colleagues," is the secret of her longevity. Even at 102, she makes sure to get up before 8 a.m. every morning, and what she eats for lunch every day is inevitably Chinese food. She dresses herself and puts on her shoes, and walks up and down the stairs every day holding onto the banisters, unwilling to pretend to be someone else.
Every day, Isabelle goes out for a walk at a regular time. She and her older sisters, together, do a little eight-duanjin, or they put on some music and do an upbeat square dance. Despite her blue eyes and high nose, Isabelle doesn't look out of place in a crowd of dancers.
Isabeth's husband, David, died at the age of 90. When David was alive, Isabelle would play music and dance a romantic waltz duet with David at home. And after his departure, Isabelle never danced a duet again. Instead, the tape recorder and DVD player that once played the music are still sitting in the living room under David's picture, as if still waiting for the waltz to be played again.
Perhaps because the old house has left so many memories and feelings, Beijing Foreign Studies University had wanted to replace Isabelle with a new building or let her participate in the "housing reform" to move to a newer commercial house, but Isabelle said she would not do anything, and must live in the old building.
Chinese village complex
Documenting the process of land reform with her husband
Eating and living with the villagers, "Sichuan food is the most delicious"
Every year on Isabelle's birthday, in addition to the leaders of Beijing Foreign Studies University and the State Administration of Foreign Experts Bureau will pay a visit to the house, and the family will always receive a letter from the Hebei Province, which will be sent to her by the Chinese government. Wuan City, Shidong Township Shilidian greeting phone. On her 102nd birthday, it was no exception.
In December 1947, David and Isabelle came to Shilidian as international observers, observing and interviewing the whole process of land reform review under the leadership of the Chinese ****anization party. They stayed in Shili Dian for six months, truly recording an important stage of China's new democratic revolution. Since then, they have written a number of books, including "Shilidian: The Revolution of a Chinese Village," in which Westerners were able to gain a true understanding of China's land reform movement.
The 102-year-old Isabelle's eyesight has deteriorated, and now she is asked by her sons not to read the newspaper as much as possible, and there is even a big "warning" written on the bookshelf that reads, "AVOID EYE STRAIN. DO? LITTLE OR? "
When she hears news from the Chinese countryside, which is on her mind, her eyes naturally light up.
Isabelle, once familiar with the languages of Hebei and Sichuan, now speaks little Chinese and more English. She recalls that when she was doing countryside research in the countryside decades ago, she ate and lived with local villagers in Xinglongchang, Lixian in Sichuan province and Shilidian. "Eating Chinese food, we followed suit, and the cakes they made were especially good, not that foreign food is better than Chinese food." Isabelle eyes, Sichuan cuisine is the most delicious in mind.
Born in Chengdu, Isabelle was asked by her mother to learn Chinese when she was a child in a Canadian school. It was the 1920s, and Isabelle's foreign friends said it was no good to learn Chinese because she might leave China someday. But after learning Chinese, Isabelle returned to China to do fieldwork, even though she had a master's degree in child psychology from the University of Toronto.
In 2013, a book titled Xinglongchang: A Survey of Peasant Life in Sichuan During the War was published by the China Bookstore. The book, co-authored by Isabelle and the Chinese scholar Yu Xigui, is based on information she gathered during her year-long fieldwork in Xinglongchang. Wearing straw sandals, they traveled the countryside, eventually becoming old acquaintances in every house, full of goodwill and unaffiliated with the government of the day.
This was probably the first door-to-door community survey in modern China done by Western women and Chinese collaborators.
After decades of preserving this material, Isabelle retired from Beijing Foreign Studies University, where she had returned from being a foreign language teacher to being an anthropologist. She returned to Xinglongchang to continue her research, and eventually turned her findings into a thick book. By the time the book was published, Isabelle was 98 years old.
Chinese destiny
Roots in China continue for six generations
Just remembering Huaxi's former residence in Chengdu and the town of White Deer
Ke Makai, 66, was born and raised in Beijing, as were his two brothers. The three brothers have deep, typically Western faces, but their mouths are full of standard Beijing dialect, exactly the way old Beijing speaks.
"We are Beijingers." Born in Beijing, school, even the name with Chinese characteristics. Ke Makai told Red Star News that his name means Marxist Triumph, his brother Ke Lu because his mother likes Lu Xun, and his younger brother Ke Honggang because he was influenced by How Iron and Steel are Made. If the Chinese expatriates are yellow "banana people", Ke Makai belongs to the long foreign face but has a completely Chinese thinking of another "banana people".
Isabelle and his children have been rooted in China since Isabelle's parents and grandmother. By his own count, including his own daughter and two twin granddaughters, the family has been in China for six generations.
Ke Lu works in the United States, doing China-U.S. trade. Ke Honggang worked for the BBC in the UK for three decades before retiring, doing programs on China-related topics. Ke Makai, himself, has taught English in China and Chinese in foreign countries, and founded one of Beijing's first international schools. Whether or not all three brothers live in China, their work is China-related.
Ko's youngest son, Ko Shuangchen, graduated from Peking University Medical School and went to West China Medical University in Chengdu for several years, where his great-grandmother worked and where she was born, to study burns and plastic surgery. Ke Makai's daughter, Wen Yanglan, stayed in Beijing to work as a foreign language teacher at a kindergarten.
Why he stayed in China is probably the question he is often asked. He feels it's a choice, just like the one his parents made. A dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Canada, Mackay often travels to London, which in his eyes hasn't changed much in recent decades, while China's has changed dramatically in recent decades. When he was a child, he attended classes in a house made of matting, which was later turned into a brick house, then a building, and then a high-rise building.
Ke Makai also often encountered another intriguing question - where exactly is the family from? Komackay clearly remembers what his British Jewish father, David, said when asked this question in an interview on Israeli television, and what his father said at the time was: In China, you are Chinese, and in the UK, you are British, and different cultures don't need to be excluded, but rather, they blend together well. So in this family, it's Chinese New Year, but also Christmas and Valentine's Day. Breakfast is Western food and lunch is Chinese food.
Self-identified as a native Beijinger, Kermakai has traveled to Sichuan every year for the past two years. His mother Isabelle's former home in Chengdu was listed last year as a historic building under the Chengdu Historical Building Protection Program, in Building 14, No. 16, Section 3, Renmin South Road, Huaxi, Chengdu. Whenever he goes to Chengdu, he stays in Huaxi Dam, where he can see her home. He plans to take his twin granddaughters to Chengdu to visit their former home when they get a little older.
This may be a form of nostalgia buried in his bones. Ke Makai remembers the place called Bai Lu Town in Pengzhou, Chengdu, where Isabelle used to go with her parents every summer when she was a young girl.
Next time, the two lovely great-granddaughters of Isabelle, who are about the same age as she was, will continue the foreign family's magical relationship with China.