There are many inns in China, but there is only one associated with the Americas and Europe, that is, the Luk Fook Inn in Yangcheng County, Shanxi Province. It should be the most famous inn in the world, but the people of Yangcheng do not know, the people of Shanxi do not know, and the Chinese do not know.
On a winter morning in the 1930s, on the busy platform of the London railway station in England, a girl in a gray coat was carrying a suitcase and preparing to take a long journey. The occasional jingling of boiling utensils hanging outside the box indicated that she was not a rich person and was about to go out. She was going to go to distant China alone, and China was for her only distances on maps, symbols, and empty descriptions in books. She seemed like a brave adventurer. It was a time of war, with heavily armed soldiers on trains and poor people fleeing, and northeast China had fallen into the hands of the Japanese. The train passed through Moscow, through cold Siberia, and to Harbin in Heilongjiang, China. Then she took a boat to Tianjin, then changed trains to Beijing, and then took a car to Shanxi. With the help of church personnel, she rode a mule to Changzhi in the southeast of Shanxi, and then she was carried by a donkey to Yangcheng County, southwest of Changzhi.
The girl was in her early twenties, and her name was Gratis O'Ould. She was a devout believer who aspired to travel to distant China, but the London missionary headquarters at the time refused her membership on the grounds that she had no formal training. The stubborn Gladys did not give up. She had no money, so she first worked as a maid for a professor in London, saving money. The professor's books gave her a little hazy idea of China. When the professor learned of her ambitions, he wrote a letter of recommendation for her and asked her to go to Yangcheng, China, to find the missionary Lady Rosen. So she boarded the train, and this stubborn and brave beginning may herald her future world-famous legend.
One weekend in 2004, Larry, an American teacher at Sias International College, excitedly invited me to the screening hall of the foreign teacher's apartment to see a movie he brought from the United States, called "Leofoo Inn", whose English name was The Inn of the SIXTH Happiness. The film is based on Gladys O'Ould's personal experience in China, set in China's anti-Japanese period, in Yangcheng, Shanxi Province, China.
Gladys is played by world-famous film star Ingrid Bergman, filmed in 1958 in London. Known as the "first lady of Hollywood," who shines even without wearing luxurious clothing, she has won the Academy Award three times. The film, released in the United States and Europe from 1958 to 1960, was Bergman's post-production and won the 16th Golden Globe Awards for "The Film That Best Promotes International Understanding". The film's director, Mark Robson, was nominated for the Film Academy Award for Best Director.
Yangcheng is a small mountainous county, close to the Yellow River in the south, and its poverty level at that time can be imagined. Gladys assisted Mrs. Rosen in beginning the hard work here. They renovated an inn and hung a big sign called "Leofoo Inn". This small inn is dedicated to hosting poor people in the past and doing charity. The intelligent and kind Gladys soon won the love of the people of Yangcheng. Soon after, Mrs. Rosen died. As a Chinese citizen, Gladys began to organize local women to let go of their little feet and adopt orphans. When the Japanese army descended along the railway and the situation was critical, her beloved captain, Virin, persuaded her to return to England, while she insisted on staying on the grounds that she was a Chinese citizen.
If Gladys had done just that, she would have been like a foreigner in the churches all over China at the time, but only had such a history in her own experience. But just after the Japanese invaded Yangcheng, this girl, who was once considered unqualified to come to China, did a feat that shook the church and the world. This feat brought her to the attention of the whole world. The Japanese killed people and set fires, planes bombed, and Yangcheng seemed to be fried. In order to protect more than a hundred orphans, Gladys resolutely led them out of the county. They walked into the mountains to the southwest and prepared to cross the Yellow River to Xi'an, which was stable at that time. The distance is more than a thousand miles, and most of them are uninhabited mountainous areas. What a team, there is no sufficient dry food, the oldest child is a teenager, and the youngest has to be held in his arms or on his back. She was the commander-in-chief of the team, climbing mountains and wading through dense forests, and there was heavy snow at the top of the mountains. The children's clothes were worn into the shape of strands by stones and the wind on the way, and they walked on this extremely difficult road for more than a month. When they arrived in Xi'an, many children's feet were no longer shoes, but rags wrapped around them. In the crowd of anxiously waiting and welcoming them, the frail Gladys fainted.
Her true love for China and Chinese children shook the world. After the war, many journalists and writers interviewed her and wrote many of her legendary stories in China.
After watching this movie, those foreign teachers from the United States learned that Yangcheng is not far from Zhengzhou, that is, more than two hundred kilometers, and I am from Shanxi, so they unanimously proposed to go to Yangcheng. Naturally, I became a guide.
On the morning of another weekend, we began to set off, accompanied by Dr. Charles from Shandong Jiaotong University, and more than a dozen American teachers. Mr. Larry was brought by Alan. The English version of The Little Woman, the English version of Bertice's biographical novel For Gladys, also made a special copy of gladys's route map from London to Yangcheng on the title page of the book and distributed it to everyone in the car. In the car I asked him: Is this movie famous in the United States? He replied that the film was well known not only in the United States, but also in Europe, and that people of their age knew it. Speaking of famous, he used two very adjectives in a row and slowed down his speech.
Probably thinking of going to a holy place famous in the Americas and Europe, Yangcheng in China, and going to see the Leofoo Inn in Yangcheng, they were more excited. They looked at the map of Gladys's route from London to Yangcheng in China, and kept saying the name Yangcheng in their mouths. This reminds me again of the tone of Yangcheng that in the movie "Liu Fu Inn", those foreigners often hang on their mouths, but they all pronounce the Chinese character of the city nearly four times.
Yangcheng is now under the jurisdiction of Jincheng City in Shanxi Province. Knowing that so many foreigners were going to Yangcheng to find an old site for foreigners during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China, the Jincheng city government attached great importance to it, and they informed Yangcheng to prepare for reception. That morning, our car had just entered Jincheng in Shanxi from Jiaozuo in Henan, and the leader of the Foreign Affairs Office was already waiting by the bridge. When we arrived in Yangcheng, we were arranged in the best hotel in the municipal government.
In the afternoon of the same day, in a rather high-end conference room, the Yangcheng City Government and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held a welcome meeting for our party. Although the place is small and there are not many people, the ceremony is very solemn. These admiring friends greeted the hospitable hosts, took a group photo, and presented the local government with a set of "Luk Fook Inn" movie CDs brought from the United States. The leaders of the government and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference were warm, generous, and friendly, and the welcome speech was also very decent, but when the American friends explained their intentions and proposed the places they wanted to visit and the people they wanted to meet, the venue immediately became quiet.
People from the CPPCC Municipal Committee said: This is the first time we have seen so many foreign friends come to Yangcheng. It was also the first time we heard about this story and the movie "Leofoo Inn". Knowing that you were coming, we checked from the county records of the past, and also sent people to inquire about some people, but more than sixty years have passed, and people at that time could not find them, and the county records also wrote a sentence, and there was no more content. Some people say that the original site of the Leofoo Inn was in the city and may have been destroyed.
The expressions of the foreign guests suddenly froze, and they all looked disappointed.
Dr. Charles said: In order to come to Yangcheng, I have been preparing for several months. Now the wish is gone. This movie, "Leofoo Inn", has influenced generations of people, and still influences modern people in the United States. My son is now working as an international travel agency in the United States and he was very happy to hear that I was coming here. It can be said that the whole world knows about Yangcheng in China. Unfortunately, many people in China don't know this place.
However, some key figures were still found at the meeting, one was Mr. Bai of the local church, one was the current landlord wei dajie of the courtyard where Gladys lived; and there were two descendants of orphans who had walked with Gladys to Xi'an, one was called Cheng Baisuo, the son of Cheng Zhang Hu; one was called Gao Anhu, the son of Gao Xiaochuan. The descendants of the two orphans looked like they were in their fifties, a peasant. When these special characters were introduced, the eyes of all foreigners were immediately brightened.
Mr. White of the church, without waiting for the presiding officer of the meeting to invite him to speak, took the initiative to speak, and he spoke endlessly: the small courtyard and house where Gladis and Mrs. Rosen lived at that time were still intact, just inside the city, not far from the place where we were meeting, ten minutes' walk away. The owner of that courtyard now resided was this Wei Hualin sister-in-law. The place of the Luk Fook Inn was still empty, but it was abandoned, right next to the courtyard where Gladys had lived. The orphans who followed Gladys over the mountains are not in Yangcheng now, but these two are the descendants of orphans.
The Americans were excited, and they could not wait to announce the end of the meeting, so they could not wait to take a photo with The Sister-in-law Wei and the peasant-like Cheng Baisuo and Gao Anhu.
An American woman asked Cheng Baisuo: When did your father come back? Where is he now?
Cheng said: He is dead. Five years back, when farming.
Another American gentleman interjected: Did your father talk about his trip over the mountain to Xi'an?
Cheng said: Listening to my family, he was eight or nine years old at the time, and I remember things very clearly. Later, he became a soldier of the Communist Party and returned after twenty years.
Subsequently, under the leadership of Mr. Bai and Sister-in-law Wei, all the Americans who were fully armed with video and photographic equipment walked together to find the Luk Fook Inn. The small county town has really retained a lot of the old appearance of the past, the ancient city wall sections that have been surrounded by new buildings, the narrow alleys, the quaint bridges, the courtyards of 50 years ago, the curious and hospitable residents who stand on the streets, and even the eighty-year-old little footed old woman standing on the side street basking in the sun. I also saw this movie a week ago, and these landscapes are really a bit of a shadow of Yangcheng's past. They smiled and greeted the people on the street and walked through the lively alleys.
On the edge of a clearing surrounded by low remnant earthen walls and crop poles, Mr. Bai pointed inside and said, This is the Luk Fook Inn. There were no more houses in the clearing, a rudder on a dry well was still there, and the empty yard of less than half an acre was covered with waist-high artemisia grass. Like snapping up some rare commodity, in a rattling sound, the ruins of the Leofoo Inn were greedily taken away by all the cameras and camera lenses.
Bypassing this inn and further inside, there is an alley less than two meters wide. At a door with five or six steps, Mr. Bai pointed to an old wooden sign on the wall next to the door and said, This is the small courtyard where Gladys lived. The small wooden plaque had the words "Blessed Land" written on it. Entering the courtyard, a small courtyard in northern China that is still basically intact is presented. The house is a small two-storey building with wooden stairs and railings upstairs. When these tall Americans walked upstairs on the creaky wooden ladder, they felt that the house on the upper floor was very low. The small courtyard was lively because there were more than a dozen guests at once, and Sister-in-law Wei shouted out her family to greet these rare guests. These Americans got busy, taking pictures upstairs and downstairs, taking photos with the homeowner's family, and asking many questions from time to time. Unfortunately, the oldest in this courtyard was only sixty years old, and they knew nothing about the Leofoo Inn. And it is the small courtyard where they live today, when the Americans filmed "The Lucky Inn" in 1958, they spent a lot of money in London to build according to the descriptions and photographs in Gladys's autobiography. When the crappy "copy" of the Yangcheng Leofoo Inn was watched by countless pairs of eyes in the Americas and Europe, the people in this small courtyard close to the real Leofoo Inn did not know it, and the people of Yangcheng did not know it, and it was fifty years in a flash.
It can be seen that these Americans are very excited and excited to see some of the sites related to Gladys, because fraternity is a faith that penetrates deep into their marrow. On the way to see the Leofoo Inn, Mr. Bai intermittently introduced me to some stories about Gladys. He said gladtiss wrote an autobiography after returning to her home country called "My Heart is in China." She speaks about China all over the world. She wanted to be buried in China when she died, but she could not come to China at that time, so she chose to be buried in Taiwan, but according to her will, her head was in the direction of Chinese mainland, to show that she would always miss China.
We stayed in Yangcheng for one night, and the next morning, the Yangcheng government invited these foreign friends who had come from afar to visit the Imperial City Xiangfu, which was not far from the county seat. It is a castle-like village called Imperial City Village. In the 260 years from Emperor Xiaozong of Ming to Qianlong (1501-1760 AD), there were 41 gongsheng and 19 juminants in this village. Chen Tingjing, a famous politician, writer, theorist and poet of the early Qing Dynasty, was also from here, he was the teacher of the Kangxi Emperor, the chief reader of the Kangxi Dictionary, and the famous minister of the Kangxi Emperor's half-century-old generation. In Chen's former residence, more than 90,000 square meters of ancient buildings were left behind, which the locals called the Imperial City Xiangfu. Because the village has coal resources, the village cadres and those who have made a fortune invested heavily in 1998 to protect the entire Imperial City Village and restore the Imperial City Village into an ancient architectural museum. Here has successively held the "Famous Minister Chen Tingjing and Imperial City Ancient Construction Academic Seminar" and "Imperial City Culture and Art Tourism Festival". The two-hundred-year-old village soon gained fame.
At 9:30 that day, the dozen foreign guests were arranged in the first row of VIP seats outside the walls of the Imperial City. When the music sounded and the salutes sounded in unison, villagers dressed in ancient costumes of the emperor and Chen Tingjing and a huge retinue slowly walked out of the city gate of the former residence of the prime minister. After watching the ancient ceremonies in full costume, the foreign guests were invited to watch the architecture and folk culture of the Xiang mansion for free, which was rich in content and let us watch for a morning. At noon, we also tasted royal-style dishes in the luxurious wine spots of Xiangfu.
I really can't believe that this Imperial City Xiangfu, which already has considerable tourism income, was started by people in a village. Although it has a strong economic foundation, their boldness and cultural vision are extraordinary, and they not only know the glorious history of the village, but also can see its historical and cultural value in a dilapidated village. This is not enough, what is even more surprising is that they can move out of this village that has lived for hundreds of years without exception, and move to a very strange new village. They also dared to devote their vast sums of money to the renovation of this seemingly dilapidated village. But they succeeded. This is the perspective of the peasants, that is, the cultural scholars have such insights, and they may not have the courage to invest.
And in the county seat, which is less than half an hour's drive from Yangcheng Xiangfu, there is a Luk Fook Inn. There are many inns in China, but there is only one associated with Gladys O'Ould, with Ingrid Bon, with the Americas and Europe, and that is the Leofoo Inn in Yangcheng, Shanxi Province. It may be the most famous inn in the world, but the people of Yangcheng do not know, the people of Shanxi do not know, and the Chinese do not know. The precious Leofoo Inn was destroyed at some point. If it still exists, or is publicized by us, foreigners may ignore Zhengzhou and Taiyuan like pilgrimages and go straight to Yangcheng. What will be the color of the little Yang City?! It would never be the first time that a dozen foreigners came, and at that time, I was afraid that I would not be able to politely ask them to see the Imperial City Xiangfu for free.
In the second week after leaving Yangcheng, whenever they met the foreign teachers who went to Yangcheng in the academy, they would immediately tell me excitedly and enthusiastically, and when they called to tell their friends and relatives in the United States about the trip to Yangcheng, their friends were very surprised and envious of them. The expressions on their faces also attest to this.
About a month later, on a Saturday morning, I suddenly received a call from Dr. Charles of Shandong Jiaotong University, who said that he was on the train from Jinan to Zhengzhou, and that he had made an appointment with the chairman of the CppcC Committee in Yangcheng to meet in Zhengzhou and asked me to sit with them and negotiate the development of tourism in Yangcheng by americans. He was in his seventies and accompanied by his students. The next day, Chairman Fan of the Yangcheng CPPCC also arrived. At the dinner table, Charles talked about his idea of investing in a tourist reception center in Yangcheng, which is dedicated to receiving tourists from the United States to visit the Leofoo Inn. The international travel agency on the Us side has contacted him and can come to a group every month, no less than 70 people. The Chairman, of course, was pleased, full of promises, and hurried back home that evening, to report this important information to the leadership of Yangcheng, and to find a suitable rental room for Dr. Charles that could accommodate nearly a hundred people.
When I was writing this article, I actually received a newly published book sent by Dr. Charles from the United States, and I did not expect that he only lived in Yangcheng for one day, but combined with relevant information, he wrote a book about Yangcheng and Luk Fook Inn, and most of the photos in the book were taken by him in Yangcheng.
Gladys' story takes place in Yangcheng, in China, so it shouldn't be buried in China either. I believe that the new story of The Leofoo Inn has quietly begun in Yangcheng.
Source Weibo: Writer Wang Zhan