By FAO

Representatives of Fuqing No. 2 High School and Pingtan Primary School, Party Secretary Chen Zunzhi and Chair of Faculty Union Lin Lanqiong, started by Lydia Trimble met at Hwa Nan to deepen their understanding of what Lydia Trimble was like as a person, what motivated her and amazingly enough what prompted her to remain in China after her retirement from the College of South China in 1925 almost one hundred years ago.  Professor Gordon Trimble recalled that during the 1930s Hwa Nan Women’s College created a community school on the hillside outside the Hwa Nan campus for the education of girls, women, and young mothers that had not yet received the benefit of an education.  What she later did at Hwa Nan, she had done two decades earlier at The Club which was designed and build by her nephew Fredrick H. Trimble.

Professor Trimble gave digital copies of his father’s book The Trimble Boys as well as his Great Aunt Ethel Wallace’s book Woman’s College of South China:  Hwa Nan.  Then the group attempted to travel back in time by going up the mountain to visit the historic Museum, the Club, and where she actually lived next to the Post Office to reflect and try to feel the Spirit of Kuliang as the residents of Guling felt three generations earlier.   Over a simple mountain meal of noodles the group decided that this was an experience that they should try to have their students in Pingtan and Fuqing experience to have a fuller sense of what their school founder was really like.

 The group also gained a deeper understanding of why Lydia Trimble’s relatives keep returning to China to share the dream that prompted her to come to China 135 years ago.