The Street of Precious Pearls

by Nora Waln

But the fall of the Manchus and the coming of a Republic so cut down her means that the little school had to be pushed back again into the realm of dreams after it had grown to a reality with twenty day students. One entire side of the home had been used for the plan. Now only a few rooms of the compound were Kuei Ping’s even for dwelling quarters, for other Chia relatives came seeking shelter. Their official incomes shaved to a mere pittance, the fatty places in which they had squeezed more than twice their earnings taken away, the piteous flock did not know what else to do.

It was then that Kuei Ping faced the problem not of dividing what she had with others but of earning for her own children their livelihood and of preparing them to fill the place in life which she had so blithely planned for them. Again her thoughts turned to the West where women knew how to do things with which to earn money. Bo Te, now called by his school name Kwan Wa, begged to give up his education and to seek for work. He had only two more years of study before the completion of his chosen course, and as he had been offered the opportunity of a scholarship she refused to consider the suggestion.

It was then that she began to teach foreigners Chinese. Miss Porter, to whom she went with her problem, sent her the first two pupils. She found two rooms in a section of a courtyard near enough to the mission school for her daughter to attend classes with other girls of her own age. The expenses of her life were small, her group of private pupils grew larger and as she came to earn even a little more than she needed, this she added to a tiny growing heap of savings. Bit by bit she revived again the hope that when her son had finished his education she would build her school. As a part of this growing plan she held as capital the string of pearls bought so long ago. The jewels, treasured as they had been through each period of vicissitude in her life, had come to have an intrinsic beauty which strengthened her desire to use them where they would luminate the lives of others.

The affairs of government rocked above her head. She was conscious of them but they did not shake her determination to secure the title to a part of the old home where her maternal grandmother had spent her life, to be used for her school.

Then her little daughter fell ill of fever. Long months of nursing made her better but the foreign doctor urged the seashore and Kuei Ping again delayed her school plans, and took from her savings.

Kwan Wa’s marriage and an opportunity to begin the school came in the same year. His work for the year took him to Mukden and his salary was sufficient to make her earnings unnecessary for the family needs.

He, too, shared her plan for the home school and widened that dream to a plan that they should build near it a church for the worship of the Christian God whom they sought to follow.

It was a joyous day when Chia Kuei Ping at last saw the dream again a reality. No new buildings were built. The old compound in which her mother had lived before she was married was large enough for a part to be used as a dwelling and a part for classes. Each overlapped the other so that they were one—a home where education and living are one and the same.

The plan grew more rapidly than she could well manage alone. Then she discovered a man and his wife, childless, followers too of this new religion from the West but members of another of its man-made branches, who wished to help. They came to her to add to her teaching staff, giving their time and their small income to the project.

Again as time passed and the word of the school and its teachings spread, she found that her doors must be widened and her pocketbook fattened to make possible the needed expenditures. It was then that she returned to the task of teaching foreigners to speak Chinese, riding the twenty long miles to and from her home twice a week to the city of Peking.