Letter to Editor (2)

Dear Editor:

Would you please forward this message to Bill and Virginia Lee to let them know how much my wife and I enjoyed the write up and excellent pictures of their Yangtze River trip.  We are going to do the same trip in May, but only from Wuhan west.

I had a particular interest in the description of the side trip to Lushan.  My mother and her twin sister were born there in 1917.  Her family lived in Changsha and spent summers there until the gathering upheavals forced them to leave China in 1926.  She always called it "Kuling," had charming stories about being carried up the mountain in a sedan chair, but was clueless (as you might expect a 9 year old to be) about exactly where is was. "Kuling" never appears on maps and the family institutional memory of its location had died with my grandparents in the 60's. My parents took a trip to China in the early 80's and were told Kuling didn't exist!   I thought that was a pretty ridiculous state of affairs with our trip to China coming up and I remedied it last week with some determined research at the Cleveland Public Library.  The problem was that "Kuling" is now written "Guling" and Lushan is the usual place name. Unfortunately, our cruise is on the wrong part of the river and it will be difficult or impossible to visit Lushan on this trip.  Do the Lees remember seeing any evidence of the American missionary community there?

I hope you can forward this to the Lees.  Thank you.

Andy Fabens
Cleveland, Ohio