In a minor skirmish in the history wars, or what might be called “ashes diplomacy,” Chinese authorities finally allowed the ashes of America’s last ambassador to China before 1949, John Leighton Stuart (1876-1964), to be interred next to the graves of his parents in Hangzhou, the southern Chinese city where he was born.

Earlier this fall, local authorities in Zhenjiang, a city on the Yangzi known for its vinegar, opened a Pearl Buck Museum in the house where Buck (1892-1973) spent most of her first eighteen years. The ashes of another historic figure, Edgar Snow (1905-1971), are divided between the Hudson River and a spot by the Nameless Lake on the campus of Beijing University, which had been the campus of Yenching University. Leighton Stuart was president when Snow taught there in the 1930s.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Edgar Snow, foreigners in China, John Leighton Stuart, Pearl Buck
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Mr. Stuart died in Washington in 1962. He had written in his will that he hoped his remains would some day be buried in China, where he had been born the son of Christian missionaries in 1876 and had helped found a prominent university, but where he was no longer welcome.

For decades, the answer from Beijing seemed to be no.

But on Monday, 46 years after his death and after years of sensitive negotiations about the political implications of such a burial, Mr. Stuart’s ashes were laid to rest at a cemetery near the eastern city of Hangzhou, about two hours south of Shanghai.

A small ceremony honoring Mr. Stuart on Monday was attended by Chinese and American officials, including the mayor of Hangzhou and the United States ambassador, Clark Randt Jr., as well as several alumni of Yenching University in Beijing, the institution Mr. Stuart helped found.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foreigners in China, Hangzhou, John Leighton Stuart, missionaries, PRC history
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