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Published: February 2nd 2010
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Former McTyere School
May in front of the gate of the former McTyere School, where her grandmother taught when her mother was born. Shanghai, China
By May My mother was born in Shanghai, China. Her parents, my grandparents, met and married in China. My grandfather, Ed Rice, was a surgeon in Suzhou, a Methodist missionary surgeon. My grandmother, MaryO Holler, came over from South Carolina to teach school at McTyere School in Shanghai. Suzhou and Shanghai are close to each other, and there weren’t many white people in China at that time, and they were both Methodists - so it’s unsurprising that they met.
McTyere School was named after a Tennessee Methodist who helped fund Vanderbilt University. Mr. McTyere made friends with some Chinese students who were studying divinity at Vanderbilt and decided to build this Methodist school to educate Chinese girls in Shanghai. Many wealthy Chinese families sent their girls to the school from 1890-1949. The most famous young women who went to this school were the Soong Sisters. They were three sisters, two of whom married famous Chinese revolutionaries, Dr. Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek (that was in the 20s, before my grandmother’s time).
So, MaryO taught English at McTyere in the mid 1930s. She moved to Suzhou when she married Ed and taught at a smaller
school there. The Japanese invaded China also in the 1930s. They came through Korea and Mongolia down into China. The Japanese occupied Mongolia for a while and even took in the last Chinese emperor there to set up a puppet government, when he was kicked out of China by communists and nationalists who wanted a different an end to the imperial government.
When the Japanese started coming down into China, MaryO was pregnant with my mother. Due to bombings by the Japanese and other scary things, she had to deliver her darling daughter in Shanghai. Soon after the birth, all non Chinese western women and children were evacuated from China and MaryO and the baby had to leave Ed and return to the US. Ed was evacuated a bit later.
It’s a good thing they did leave, because the Japanese were not very nice to the foreigners who stayed (they were even less nice to the Chinese, it sounds like). The teachers at McTyere School were put into prison camps until the Chinese Nationalists and Communists joined together and ousted the Japanese from China. If the teachers were still alive, I’m sure they were kicked out then.
In 1949, the Communists officially took over China. Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalist party fled to Taiwan at this point. Western things were frowned upon so McTyere School in Shanghai became Public School #3. It is still there. The road name has changed names from Edinburgh Road to Jiangsu Rd. Ella, Paul and I took a subway to the Jiangsu stop and walked just a bit and found it.
It is now an elite all girls’ public middle school. The girls have to test well to get into it. It resembles a small scale college campus almost like Vanderbilt (not surprisingly) or Duke. There are several grassy fields and nice 3-4 story buildings with entrance halls and big glass windows. Everything looks very well tended and recently painted.
Public School #3 shares an entrance gate with an international school, it turns out, so when we showed up at the gate, the guards waved us in. When we steered ourselves towards the Public School instead of the private school, we were quickly found by another guard, escorted to an English speaking person, who found a guard to escort us quickly around then out. They were all very friendly, but just
Shanghai Park
Parks in China are generally really nice and really fun. There is so much going on - dancing, tai chi, karaoke, Chinese opera, Chinese chess, and so much more. like in the states, it’s not OK for strangers to wander around a school and snap pictures. They understood why we were there and we also understood why we couldn’t really linger.
It was all fine, though. I was glad to see the school and even though Shanghai was not a great tourist destination, I enjoyed seeing the city, visiting the school and imagining my grandparents there.
A few more thoughts on Shanghai, by Paul Shanghai wasn’t the greatest. May laid out one of the highlights of Shanghai, her family connections there. Other than the family connections, it wasn’t that great.
Shanghai was the first place we have gone that was a bit boring.
It was by far the least interesting big city we’ve visited, and my least favorite place that we’ve been.
Compared to Beijing and Hangzhou, Shanghai had very few historical sights, and what was there was uninteresting.
Compared to Singapore and Hong Kong, Shanghai seemed provincial, a bit cheesy, fairly clueless about the world beyond China. Shanghai bills itself as a world city, but it’s nothing like Singapore or Hong Kong.
Even compared to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai
pales. Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are much more chaotic and hard-to-navigate, but both also have much more interesting street life and local culture.
Shanghai was drab, plain, gray, and dull. There was construction everywhere, literally everywhere. It made the city loud, hard-to-get-around, and ugly.
Wherever Western tourists go in Shanghai, every 10 steps there are way-too-persistent touts trying to sell us fake handbags and fake watches and fake iPhones and fake iPods. These touts are everywhere in Asia, but in other places we’ve been they are relaxed and casual. In Shanghai they were irritatingly and painfully persistent. When they were around, they made an less-than-pleasant place downright unpleasant.
Both Hangzhou and Beijing had sort of a holiday feel too - Chinese people walking around taking it easy, laughing, smiling, doing silly things with each other. The people in Shanghai seemed to be working very hard and making lots of money, but they didn’t seem very happy. It seemed sort of grim, gray, lifeless.
Also, the food wasn’t very good. We found delicious food in Beijing and Hangzhou. We didn’t try very hard, but we didn’t find great food in Shanghai. I’m sure there is delicious food
Souvenirs
We passed an "antiques" market with lots of new-old antiques, including Mao-era figurines. there, but we missed it.
Finally, from a tourist’s perspective, there just wasn’t much to do in Shanghai. The “tourist sights” were few, weak, and plagued by pushy, leech-like, too-persistent touts. The non-touristy parts of the city were just sort of plain and uninteresting.
Yet Shanghai wasn’t terrible. For May, Ella, and me, Shanghai is our least favorite place we’ve been. Yet it was actually OK. There was nothing aversive about it; it was just sort of gray, drab, and boring. Sort of forgettable, really.
But it was clean, and it was clearly modern and wealthy. Public transportation was excellent. All of the city’s infrastructure seemed first-rate and functional. It seems to be working well as the financial hub of the world’s fastest-growing economy, and I appreciate that.
Also, we had some fun in Shanghai.
We spent May’s birthday there. We had a good day walking around some reconstructed parts of Shanghai, going to a decent museum, and eating at a good restaurant.
We went to see some Chinese acrobats. The show was a combination of traditional Chinese acrobats and Cirque du Soleil sorts of spectacle. It was great.
We went to the
zoo, which was extremely old-school (small concrete cages with thick iron bars). But they had built a new panda exhibit, and they had 10 adolescent pandas in an nice, new, modern, first-rate enclosure. The pandas were outrageously cute. They played together like puppies, but they looked like big teddy bears. Watching them play may have been the cutest thing I have ever seen.
And generally, walking around was mildly enjoyable. It was boring compared to the other places we’ve been, but it was easy and pleasant, and it was mildly interesting outside of the tourist areas.
All in all, though, Shanghai is the first place we’ve been that I would not be excited to go back to.
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A Chinese
non-member comment
Because of Civil wars(between KMT and CCP, or between different warlords), Japanese invasion, 1930s was troublous times for China. Your family really has some tie with China.