Descendants of US missionaries move to Shanghai to 'close circle of life'
On July 14, 1919, two US missionaries - Cary Touchstone and Mabel Ellen Thomas - tied the knot at the United States Consulate in Shanghai after they met in the neighboring city of Suzhou, Jiangsu province.
Touchstone was the bursar at Soochow University, while Thomas worked as the head nurse at the first affiliated hospital of the university.
A century after that joyous event, the couple's contributions to society through education and healthcare have been resumed by their granddaughter Ellen Touchstone and her cousin Jazmine Crever.
"When I decided to move to China seven years ago, I received job offers from various universities," Ellen Touchstone said. "But when a position became available in the same city where my grandparents had met, I thought this was just meant to be. I felt that I needed to close the circle of life and come back to China to discover the city where they met."
Touchstone said many Chinese people had expressed gratitude for her family's contributions to the development of higher education and medical services in China.
"Jazmine and I are continuing this tradition of community service. Jazmine will be starting nursing school in the fall and I'm currently working as the director of internationalization at the International Business School Suzhou at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University."
Touchstone was speaking on Sunday at the residence of Sean Stein, the US consul general in Shanghai. The event was attended by her friends, members of the media and colleagues from the International Business School Suzhou. Several family photos, mementos and curios were also displayed during the event.
Although Touchstone never met her grandparents - they both died before she was born - she was clearly filled with a reverence for them, fighting back tears as she gave her speech. She spoke about how she has been on a quest to connect the dots about her family history since arriving in China. She said most, if not all, of the stories and information she has gathered about her grandparents were moving and inspirational.
"The people here have been so moved by it. I think my grandparents were really there during the modernization of China," she said.
In researching the family's history, Touchstone learned that her grandmother had been "a bit of a rebel" at nursing school, and had been suspended for two weeks.
"I think her independent streak gave her the confidence to come to China. Very few people in the US back then would even consider spending an entire month traveling on the seas to get to China."
Touchstone also learned from other sources in China that her grandmother spent her first year in the country learning the Suzhou dialect so she could better connect with locals, and that she was a valued member of the healthcare community as evidenced by a pendant she received that has the Chinese characters for "saver of lives".
The final part of Touchstone's speech about her grandparents was especially poignant given the current tensions between China and the US over trade, and the fact that this year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of China-US diplomatic relations.
"At a time of international tensions during World War I, they understood that they needed to break the divisions between 'us' and 'them'," she said.
"One hundred years ago, Cary and Mabel Ellen realized that the complex problems in the world required more international cooperation, not less."
After her speech, Touchstone said that she is confident that relations between the two countries would "definitely get back there".
US Consul General Stein shared the same sentiment.
"This story is an important symbol of how a love that developed 100 years ago can continue through generations till this day ... this is important because irrespective of what may happen between Beijing and Washington, the friendship and ties between the two groups of people will endure across decades and tensions," Stein said.
"People-to-people ties that have been built up over years - this is really what binds two nations together. Things like this make me very optimistic about bilateral relations."
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