In the field of geography in the Republic of China, there are only a few female scholars. As far as is known, the first female master of geography in China was Huang Yurong, and the first female doctor of geography was Liu Enlan. Both women who pioneered the practice were from church universities. In terms of family background, the former comes from the house of the eunuchs, and the latter is the house of Christ, which is also in line with the student source model of the church university.
Huang Yurong was born and died in an unknown year, her ancestral home is Jiaoling, Guangdong, and she is the daughter of Huang Kaiwen, the grand official of the Beiyang Presidential Office. Huang Yurong graduated from the Department of Geosciences of Yenching University in 1926, and entered the Geography Department of Clark University under the recommendation of her teacher Balbo, and received a master's degree in 1928. This was The first female master's degree in geography in China, and Huang Yurong was then invited to the Department of Geography and Geology of Yenching University as a teaching assistant, and later moved to the Department of Geography of Tsinghua University and the Department of Geography of Peking Normal University.
In 1928, when Huang Yurong graduated with a master's degree and left Clark, another student from Jinling Women's University planned to enter the Geography Department of Clark University, and she was Liu Enlan. Liu Enlan's current public information, tasted like eight shares, covered up her "abundant life" like the motto of Jinling Girls' University.
Liu Enlan's ancestral home is Shishanzi Village, Anqiu County, Shandong, born in 1905 in Weixian County, Shandong, eight brothers and sisters, Liu Enlan was born to be discriminated against by the old grandfather, he did not let the girl on the kang, put her on the hay. When he was eight years old, the family ate watermelon, and my grandfather gave his grandson melon and only gave his granddaughter a melon tail. Liu Enlan, who already has gender awareness, is young and vigorous, breaking the tail of the melon to the ground and vowing not to eat watermelon again. As a protest against female discrimination, Liu Enlan did not eat watermelon for decades until 1943, when he was inspecting Chuanxi, because of several days of cooking in the wild, he ate the first piece of watermelon since he was eight years old.
The stubborn Liu Enlan was fortunate to have a pair of enlightened Christian parents. Weixian County, where Liu Enlan was born, has been a missionary town for the Christian Presbyterian Church in North America since the end of the Qing Dynasty. Liu Enlan's father, Liu Guangzhao, was a devout Christian, born into poverty, taken in by missionaries, and after graduating from Guangwen University, he served as the director of the Weixian Observatory. Liu Enlan was born in the season of orchid blooms, and his father thanked God for giving him thousands of gold, so he named it Enlan. Under the education of his parents, Liu Enlan got rid of the traditional private school system, learned mathematics, astronomy And English from an early age, and was sent to the church middle school in Nanjing at the age of fourteen, and graduated from Jinling Women's University in 1925. Jinling Women's University was founded in 1915 by the American Church in Nanjing, and was the first women's university in China. Liu Enlan went from a village girl in the hinterland of Shandong to an elite of the China Women's University, and returned to the same destination as Huang Yurong, who was born as an official eunuch, and it has to be said that he was blessed by the church. If there was no Christian church, under the patriarchal leadership of his grandfather, Liu Enlan was destined to be buried in the luzhong countryside.
After graduating, Liu Enlan served as the director of the Affiliated High School of Jinling Women's University, and in 1929, with the financial support of Jinling Women's University, he went to the United States to study for a master's degree in the Geography Department of Clark University in the United States, where he studied under the famous American climatologist Charles F. Brooks. At this time, the American geographer Gudsch was also studying for a doctorate in the Geography Department of Clark University, and the two were veritable peers. Liu Enlan's master's thesis was Climate: A Dictator of China. In her 183-page paper, she discusses the influence of climate in Chinese history, its manifestations in Chinese culture, the partitioning of China's climate, and its impact on agriculture and human life, opening her path of agrometeorological research.
Liu Enlan's curriculum vitae (Columbia University Archives Collection)
In 1931, Liu Enlan returned to China after graduation, in order to broaden her horizons, she set off from Boston, usa, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, traveled around Europe, crossed the Soviet Union, returned to China through Manchuria, and visited thirteen continents and twelve countries before and after. After returning to Nanjing, Liu Enlan became a professor of geography at Jinling Women's University, teaching geography, geology and meteorology courses, and founded the Department of Geography in 1933, becoming one of the sixteen departments of Jinling Women's University and the only geography department in the Church University of China at that time. In 1934, Liu Enlan and Zhu Kezhen founded the Chinese Geographical Society and the Chinese Meteorological Society, becoming important figures in the southern school of geography of the Republic of China. Liu Enlan's research is mainly based on physical geography, taking into account the humanities, and he has published articles on Putuo Island in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, in the Economic Geography (Economic Geography) sponsored by Clark University.
The calm academic environment was soon shattered by the War of Resistance, and Jiangnan could no longer accommodate a desk. Liu Enlan and Jinling Women's University persisted until the last moment in Nanjing, sorting out the books and instruments of the relocation geography department, and organizing a field ambulance team in Wuhan, until the school was evacuated to Chengdu with the school in early 1938. After settling down in the Department of Geography, Liu Enlan, at the suggestion of President Wu Yifang, once again planned to study abroad, and for this purpose, he participated in the 1938 Sino-British Gengjian Study Abroad Examination, which was the same as Xu Jinzhi, but Liu did not pass the examination, fortunately, he was sponsored by Oxford University to study in the United Kingdom.
In 1938, Liu Enlan went to St Hilda's College, Oxford University, England to study physical geography, and received his ph.D. in 1940, thesis was "Rainfall variations in China: Their Nature, Causes and Effects", becoming The first female doctor of geography in China. During this time, Liu Enlan's mentor at Oxford University, L. Berkston H. D. Buxton (1889-1939) died of untimely illness and was replaced by Rospar of the University of Liverpool. Liu Enlan is one of the very few scholars in the geography of the Republic of China who has received professional training in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and combines the geographical traditions of the United Kingdom and the United States. At the same time, Liu Enlan has contacts with two major Chinese geographers in the world, she has a teacher-student relationship with Luo Shipei and a relationship with Ge Deshi.
While studying in Oxford, England, during World War II, Liu enlan was commissioned to help the Allies survey the English Channel. With the support of the British military, Liu Enlan took a small submarine to survey the English Channel with turbulent currents and extremely complex underwater terrain, and obtained a large amount of scientific data to help the Allied landings. This was the beginning of Liu Enlan's connection with the sea, but it became the basis for her future survival under the CCP regime.
Liu Enlan, Oxford University, 1940 (Yale University Archives Collection, USA)
In 1941, Liu Enlan returned to his homeland full of smoke and smoke, served as a professor of the Geography Department of Jinling Women's University, and concurrently served as the head of the department, single-handedly supporting the Geography Department, writing lecture notes, and cultivating female geographers represented by the cartography historian Cao Wanru. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Jinling Women's University, West China University, Qilu University, Jinling University, Yenching University and other five Christian universities established the Frontier Service Department in Huaxiba, Chengdu, to study frontier society and serve the people in the border areas. Every summer, Liu Enlan organizes a delegation from western Sichuan to conduct field investigations and research. In the summer of 1942, Liu Enlan led a group of five people to go through hardships and dangers, inspecting the Qiang-Tibet settlement area in the upper reaches of the MinJiang River in western Sichuan, gaining an in-depth understanding of the relationship between the Jiarong and Qiang people such as the Dadu River and the MinJiang River, and publishing papers and travelogues such as "Water and Soil Conservation in Lifan County", "The Formation and History of the Sichuan Basin" and "The Alpine Settlement in Western Sichuan". Liu Enlan's research on ethnic minority areas in western Sichuan continued until 1950.
In the summer of 1946, Liu Enlan was invited by the U.S. State Department to lecture in the United States and visited Indians in New Mexico and Arizona to do comparative research with the ethnic minorities in western Sichuan and China. However, in October, she was unfortunately in a car accident on her way back to New York, injuring her hands, legs and eyes, and was admitted to the hospital for a week without any personnel, and was hospitalized for a total of four months, leaving serious sequelae. In March 1947, Zhu Kezhen, who was visiting the United States, met Liu Enlan at Clark University, and she could not read a book until she recovered in the spring of 1947.
In 1946, Liu Enlan was interviewed by the New York Post.
At the end of 1948 in Nanjing, the great war was imminent, refugees flocked, and for Liu Enlan, it seemed that it was the fall of 1937. She corresponded with Gudeshi several times about the current situation and U.S. policy toward China. Whether Jinling Women's University will move or stay has not yet been determined, and one-third of the students have left. The economy is even more bleak, with inflation, hoarding, soaring prices, and social chaos. But Liu Enlan said that no matter what happens, she will stick to Nanjing, because she believes that do what one can and leave the rest to God. It can be seen that the influence of Christianity on Liu Enlan. Just when Liu Enlan was confused, her teaching assistant was firmly going down another path. One of Liu's assistant professors, surnamed Bai, joined the ccp's underground party and took advantage of the teaching assistant to clearly register the materials in the office and laboratory of the geography department of Jinling Women's University and handed them over to the CCP on time.
In the summer of 1950, Liu Enlan was seconded by the Ministry of Water Resources to survey the upper reaches of the Yongding River, participating in the design of water and soil conservation in the Yongding River, and the geological study of the dam bottom and spillway of the Huai River Dam. The ensuing "War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea" pushed the academic criticism of American geography to a climax. In January 1951, under the presidency of Ren Meiyi of the Nanjing Branch of the Geographical Society of China, Li Xudan, director of the Geography Department of Nanjing University, made a report entitled "The Geographical Thoughts of US Imperialist Aggression" to liquidate the geographical ideas of US imperialist aggression. Among the deputies, Liu Enlan was the only one who had stayed in the United States, but her speech was the shortest, pointing out that in order to thoroughly liquidate the aggressive ideology of US imperialism, we should strengthen our study, engage in more self-examination, and eradicate the influence in our own ideology.
In September 1951, Liu Enlan bid farewell to Jinling Women's University, transferred to Northeast Normal University, and established the Department of Geography, opening meteorological and economic geography from the gentle Jiangnan to the bitter cold Guanwai. At this time, Jinling Women's University, where Liu Enlan was in charge of half of his life, had only 200 students and 50 teachers, all relying on donations from Smith College and the church in the United States, and had a bleak future, and then was merged with Jinling University, and then abolished a year later. Liu Enlan and the geography department he founded began to retire in the field of geography.
In the 1952 ideological reform movement, the red geographer intended to reorganize geography, and Liu Enlan was revived by the People's Daily two years ago for publishing an article in the Journal of Geography entitled "The Social Economy of the Four Soils of the Lifan Highlands of Sichuan Province", pointing out that this article was not only full of Han chauvinism and determinism of the geographical environment, but also described the situation in the era of the Kuomintang's reactionary rule. Liu Enlan was forced to make a self-examination, cutting off from the past, but the review was considered preliminary and not profound, and adopted a perfunctory attitude of coping.
In September 1954, Liu Enlan was transferred to the Naval Engineering Department of the Harbin Military Engineering College to teach, completely leaving his familiar agricultural meteorology and engaging in oceanography research in the year of knowing his destiny. However, Liu Enlan's entry into the defense system at least proved to be politically trustworthy, so during the purge campaign in 1955, some people suspected that she was a Western spy studying in Britain and the United States; during the 1957 Mingfang, she criticized the sectarianism of the academy, and she was able to retreat completely and was not classified as a rightist. In 1960, he joined the Communist Party of China and was re-elected as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference for several consecutive terms.
In 1961, Liu Enlan was transferred to the Naval Oceanographic Research Institute. During the Cultural Revolution, she bore the brunt of it. In 1969, an investigation team went to Gu Jiegang to learn about Liu Enlan's Frontier Society in china during the Republic of China period. Born from a church university and studying in Europe and the United States, Liu Enlan was beaten into a reactionary academic authority and convicted of ten major crimes, but she never confessed her guilt throughout her life, and she never bowed her head at the criticism meeting. As punishment, the rebels let her pull grass in the hot sun, and it is said that in order to torture her, they did not let her eat her favorite tofu milk.
Born in christ's house, Liu Enlan graduated from Christian School and taught at Christ University. After 1949, religion was not tolerant of politics, so Liu Enlan deliberately downplayed his religious beliefs. In 1975, Liu was having dinner in Nanjing with an old friend she hadn't seen in thirty years, and before dinner, a religious friend asked her to pray to Jesus, but she refused and said, "I'm not afraid of going to hell, and I don't want to go to heaven." If Liu Enlan's research and beliefs have changed because of politics, her pursuit of women's independence has not changed through revolutionary movements.
Liu Enlan was unmarried all his life, and according to a 1947 survey, 48.4% of the graduates of Jinling Women's University were unmarried. Idol principal Wu Yifang is also unmarried for life, and Liu Enlan adheres to celibacy for personal freedom and geography scholarship, replacing life with geography. Liu Enlan downplays feminine color, she does not love red makeup, can not cook, at the same time, with a profession instead of the family, work like a man, never show weakness, maintain women's independence. The transformation of elite women into revolutionary "iron ladies" in the Republic of China alludes to the internal logic of the CCP's portrayal of women as half of the sky, and plays a certain political protection role for Liu Enlan.
If Liu Enlan still retains a little feminine color in her life, it is that she likes to collect handkerchiefs, which is one of her few hobbies. When he returned from studying in the United States, Liu Enlan once brought back four large handkerchiefs that were two feet square, because they were printed with maps of China's provinces. After that, everywhere she went, she bought a handkerchief as a souvenir, gathered her armpits into a coat, and even collected a whole suitcase. During the "Cultural Revolution", the rebels searched all the handkerchiefs in her collection as evidence for exhibition, and in the auditorium of Shandong Ocean College, two wires were pulled diagonally, but they were not all hung.
Liu Enlan's later years
In 1978, Liu Enlan was transferred to the State Oceanic Administration. Shortly after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, she resumed her ties with the United States, but only to retrieve the honorarium she received from her 1946 lecture in the United States as a scientific fund for Chinese oceanography. Liu once said in his later years: "My hometown is on the shores of Qilu, I like the sea since I was a child, and in the second half of my life, I have formed an indissoluble relationship with the sea, please scatter my ashes in the sea after death, I will always be the daughter of the sea." In fact, Liu's hometown is still a certain distance from the sea, and the training she has received for half of her life has nothing to do with the sea. If nothing else, she is a geographer, not a halfwayaway "daughter of the sea", and I wonder if Liu Enlan, who has pursued female independence all her life, accepts this inference.
Resources:
Matilda Calder Thurston Paper, the Burke Library, Columbia University.
Dr. Wallance W. Atwood Papers, Clark University Archives and Special Collection.
Liu En-lan, Climate: A Dictator of China, Thesis (M.A)-Clark University, 1931.
Liu En-lan, Rainfall variations in China: Their nature, causes and effect, Thesis (Ph.D.)-St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University, 1940.
George B. Cressey Papers, Special Collection, Syracuse University Archive.
The Complete Works of Zhu Kezhen, Shanghai: Shanghai Science and Technology Press, 2005-2007.
Gu Jiegang: The Diary of Gu Jiegang, Taipei: Lianjing Publishing Company, 2007.
Geographical Knowledge, 1950.