Ruth

Ruth Gorham Shu-wen Huie Chou (also known as 許淑文, Xu Shuwen, February 27, 1901-July 6, 1990) was the seventh child of the Reverend Huie Kin and Louise Van Arnam. Ruth was baptized at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, New York, by Dr. George Alexander. Like her five sisters and three brothers, she grew up in New York City in the bustling household of two prominent community leaders. The house was filled with visitors, boarders, a German maid called Bertha, and an ever-increasing number of Huie children.

The family would spend their summer holidays in the Atlantic Highlands (a small Victorian borough on the New Jersey shore overlooking the lower New York Bay), picking blueberries and swimming in the ocean. All of the Huie girls were very athletic and were taught to swim by their oldest sister Louise.

Huie Kin always felt a deep allegiance to China, however, and would board Chinese immigrants in his home and offer them help as they pursued opportunities in America. His home became a hub for young Chinese intellectuals in New York City on Boxer Indemnity Fund scholarships (three of whom would become his son-in-laws; Fu-Liang Chang, Henry Chou, and Paul Gui). All six of Huie Kin’s daughters would eventually immigrate to China after graduating from college.

Soon after Ruth graduated from Wooster College in Wooster, Ohio with a B.S. degree, she married Henry Hsieh-chang Chou on November 21, 1923 at the First Presbyterian Church in New York, New York. They were married by both Dr. George Alexander (who also baptized Ruth) and Ruth’s father. Mrs. Cheting Gray was the Matron of Honor and her sisters Caroline and Dorothy Huie were bridesmaids. The reception was held in the parlors of the Chinese Church at 225 East Thirty-first Street.

In 1923 Ruth and Henry traveled from New York, New York to China, just two days after their marriage. After harrowing adventures on the high seas (family legend has it that their ship was attacked by pirates several times), they landed in Amoy Harbor, Xiamen, where Henry had secured a job at the nearby university. Ruth was actually Henry’s second wife; like many young Chinese men of that era who journeyed to America to study, Henry had married an arranged wife that he barely knew in order to tie him back to his very traditional family. However, she died of cholera while he was in the United States, which, though quite sad for the young woman and her family, ultimately left Henry free to marry for love.

Henry and Ruth visited his family’s village soon after they arrived in China for the first time, and Ruth experienced deep prejudice from his conservative, traditional family. They disapproved of her big, unbound feet and free-spirited independence, and made her feel crude, ugly, and unwanted. However, Henry’s older sister Gu, was secretly fond of Ruth. Her warmth and kindness were a great comfort to Ruth, and she was the only member of the family that gave Ruth a wedding gift, some fine fabric to make a dress (though she did warn her not to tell where it came from). Later, as the family grew older, Ruth would take care of Gu and help her when she needed it, using her connections at Peking Union Medical College, up until Gu’s death.

Henry yearned to teach in Beijing, and would journey there from the family’s home near Hebei University in Dingxian, also known as Tingxian (which is where his brother-in-law, James Yen, who married Ruth’s sister Alice, would implement aspects of his Rural Reconstruction Mass Education Movement reforms called the Ding Xian Experiment). As a result, Ruth was often left alone with baby Carl, her first child, after a miserable pregnancy. She would soon find “paradise” (as her oldest daughter Margot put it) within the walls of Yenching University as the growing family finally found its home in Beijing.

The family in 1939.

While Henry was Dean of Arts and Letters of Yenching University, Ruth held jobs as a teacher at Peking Union Medical College, Professor of Physical Education at Peking University, and Official Hostess at Yenching University. In the 1930s, she became a teacher of Physical Education in the Women’s Sports Department at Yenching University. She focused on basketball, tennis, badminton and folk dance, and formed the first female badminton team at Yenching in 1939. She was also a coach of the women’s basketball school team. She had five children, three daughters and two sons, and the family also included a beloved nanny, Zhao NaiNai.

This was a tumultuous time socio-politically, following the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. In 1941, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and because of its affiliation with the United Board of Christian Colleges of America, Yenching University was forced to close. Twenty of the high-level faculty and students, including Henry, were imprisoned by the occupying Japanese Army. Margot, Ruth’s oldest daughter, was a teenager at the time, and was responsible for bringing her father a change of clothes once a week. She would bring home his dirty clothes, which would need to be boiled to rid them of bed bugs and ticks, and the whole family feared for the conditions he was living in. Margot also recalls a kind Japanese military police officer, who took pity on her. He would never make her wait very long, and would allow her to bring soap, thick socks, and pictures of the children to Henry. She delivered items every week for six months to Henry, but was never once allowed to see him. He was finally released, but had lost 50 pounds and suffered from high blood pressure.

This was an incredibly difficult time for the family, and they experienced conditions of poverty and hunger for the first time. They had to move off of the safe Yenching campus, but their network of friends helped them find a place and gave them a safety net during the belt-tightening war years. Even so, food was hard to come by. They would mostly eat “wa-wa-tou,” a dry bean and corn bread, salty turnips, and cabbage soup. Margot would go to the market and vividly remembers her mother asking whether two or four ounces of meat should be purchased for their family with five children.

Henry only lived a few more years, and would pass away from a stroke at age 52, a few months before the end of World War II. In the summer of 1945, the University was able to resume classes, and Ruth started teaching again as the director of the Women’s Sports Department. She actively organized folk dance activities, recruiting male students to participate every Friday afternoon, greatly enriching the school’s cultural life.

In 1952, after the restructuring and re-education process of the University, she continued as the Director of the Peking University Sports Department. She also served as a national referee for swimming. She instilled a love of sports in her children. Her daughter, Yihsien, became a member of the Chinese National Women’s Basketball Team and later was the coach of the team, while her son, Naiyan, was an avid hockey player and the first national referee for ice hockey. Her other children shared a love of tennis, ice hockey, swimming, and folk dancing.

In 1979, Ruth traveled from Beijing, P.R. China to Silver Spring, Maryland. It was her first trip to America since 1923. She visited her children, brothers, and sisters, and met her grandchildren. She also attended the 1979 Huie Kin Family Reunion at Silver Bay, New York.

She immigrated in 1985 to the United States, and stayed with her daughter Margot Wei in Silver Spring, Maryland. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage on July 6, 1990 at the age of 89 in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was buried with her mother in the Huie family plot in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. Her epitaph reads: “Ruth Huie Chou, Beloved wife of, Dr. Henry H.C. Chou, of Peking China, Feb 27 1901 – July 6, 1990”.

Henry Chou was buried alongside her father, Huie Kin, in the Episcopal Cemetery in Peking (Beijing), China.