Alice

Alice Ordania Ya-li Huie Yen was born in 1895 and died in 1980, the fourth child and second daughter of Louise Van Arnam and the Reverend Huie Kin. She grew up in Manhattan, where she and her sisters had many responsibilities in the home. Alice had charge of her younger brother Albert, and her sister Louise or sometimes Carrie had charge of Arthur. Alice claimed that Albert was the better behaved of the twins!

The family enjoyed their outings, including summer holiday visits to the Atlantic Highlands. The four older girls would pick delicious blueberries, filling their pails, though Helen, being younger, couldn’t pick the fruit without squashing it. Alice would pick a layer of big juicy berries to place on top of Helen’s so that her pail looked like all the others’. The girls would take their haul home to their mother, who made fresh blueberry jams and pies.

Alice was a skilled athlete. She attended Barnard College and earned a degree in physical education. Her father instilled in her and her sisters the desire to go to China to help build a modern, democratic society. Before she left, she met Yang-chu James Yen, the man she would eventually marry. James was one of a group of young Chinese men studying in the U.S. who visited the Huie home on Sundays. James had a beautiful voice and was asked to sing. He tried to clear his voice, and Alice brought him a glass of water. He noticed her and remembered her kindness.

Alice went to Shanghai and taught physical education at the YWCA. This was ground-breaking at the time. Women in China were given few opportunities to learn and participate. Alice introduced a whole new world to her women students, teaching them about their health and the pleasures and benefits of physical education. She spoke very little Chinese and took private lessons to improve her language skills.

Alice Huie and James Yen, 1974.

Eventually, she met James again in Shanghai, and their courtship began. They married in 1919 and had five children: Zhen-dung William, Grace Chuin-ying, James Xin-min, Fu-min Frederick, and Alice Hua-yin. James became an important figure in the Rural Reconstruction movement. Alice’s support was crucial to his work. During the war years, they had to move many times to escape Japanese forces. They lived in Hangzhou, Hunan Province and Chongqing, Sichuan Province. Life was precarious, and Alice’s strength and independence helped the family survive. She faced much prejudice as a biracial woman who spoke Chinese with a foreign accent. Despite living in China, raising a family there, and devoting herself to others through her teaching and her unfailing support of James’s work, she was often called “foreign devil.”

After World War II, Alice and James realized they would have to leave China for their own safety. Their sons stayed and suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution. One son died under unknown circumstances.

Alice and James left China and visited developing countries around the world, observing many of the same circumstances they had worked to improve in China. They focused their efforts in the Philippines promoting literacy and rural development. They founded the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, which coordinated programs to promote self-help for the poor in a number of countries.

In 1980, James fell ill, and they returned to New York. Alice died suddenly in New York. She is buried in the Philippines at the International Institute that she and James founded. Upon his death in 1990, James was buried beside her.

Alice is fondly remembered by her family as devoted, energetic, capable and brave. From her earliest days of caring for her brother Albert to her final years, Alice gave compassionate care to family, friends, colleagues and many others whom she encountered during her long and singular life.

Alice, center, with James Yen, left, and daughter, Grace Chun-ying, and family.