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BYU: BYU China Conference, McKay Centennial Celebration seek continued growth

By Stacey Kratz - BYU | Apr 9, 2022

Courtesy Bradley Slade

Peter Chan explains David O. McKay’s 1921 visit to China. This visit laid the groundwork for many future interactions BYU and the McKay School have with China.

Yuánfen, 缘分, is a powerful concept in China. More active than karma, it encompasses the power of life’s many interwoven chances to bring people together and create natural bonds among friends.

The fruits of yuánfen were evident at two Brigham Young University events held on one weekend: the annual China Conference, sponsored by the McKay School of Education, and the Centennial Celebration of David O. McKay’s Visit to China.

At the centennial celebration on Feb. 11, Peter Chan, chair of the BYU China Conference Advisory Board, outlined the McKay School’s work in China: A relationship with Beijing Normal University, e-learning materials for Chinese teacher training, McKay School student teaching in Guangzhou and more.

“What we have done is the continuation of a long history of interactions with China dating back to David O. McKay’s visit a hundred years ago,” said Chan.

Decades before McKay’s visit, in the 1850s, four missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spent time in China, and in 1910, missionaries Alma Taylor and Fred Caine made a 49-day visit there. Taylor’s report on China possibly influenced the decision to send McKay, an educator and church apostle, and Hugh J. Cannon on a year-long trip around the Pacific Basin.

The Chinese leg of the journey included touring Beijing Normal University — then called Peking Normal College. It was the only Chinese college that Cannon and McKay visited and one that “aroused wonderment” in the missionaries, Cannon wrote.

On Jan. 9, 1921, McKay and Cannon bowed their heads in a grove of cypress trees near the Wumen Gate to Beijing’s Forbidden City to pray for God’s mercy for China so that “the progress of pestilence, starvation, and ultimately death stalk no more through the land.”

McKay’s grandson, John McKay, said that the blessing took place at a time in which many suffered “the devastating effects of famine, the lingering aftermath of World War I and other difficult conditions.”

John McKay, who affectionately called his grandfather “Papa Dade,” said the McKay School’s relationship with Chinese educators is a harvest of David O. McKay’s efforts: “Papa Dade would be thrilled to see this gathering, in this location, as we build bonds of respect of friendship, of understanding and ultimately of love.”

Bonds with China strengthened over the decades following McKay’s visit. Journalist and Utah native Helen Foster Snow reported on China during the 1930s and sought relief for oppressed Chinese workers. After her death, Snow’s family donated her photographs, documents and writings to BYU.

Speaker Changyun Kang of Beijing Normal University noted that, in 1979, BYU was the first American university to send a performance group, the Young Ambassadors, to China after the resumption of diplomatic relations with the United States.

“Time flies, a hundred years of ups and downs, adversities and adventures, have passed like an arrow,” Kang said. “The friendship between the Chinese and American people has withstood the test of time.”

BYU political science professor Eric Hyer said he likes to take students to the very spot where David O. McKay uttered their prayer in 1921, a difficult time in China.

“I’m sure that the place looked quite hopeless to them,” Hyer said. “But in their perfect vision, they saw a future for China that would be better.”

Jeff Ringer, BYU’s associate international vice president, outlined the university’s larger interests in China, from study-abroad programs and performing arts tours to the China Teachers program, which sends about 75 people per year to teach at 18 Chinese universities. These efforts, Ringer said, open doors for faculty and students to pursue projects in China.

This continuing goodwill, despite complex relations between the United States and China, meant that “last year was actually a busy year for BYU activities in China,” said Chan at the 2022 BYU China Conference, held on Feb. 12.

An exhibit on the 90th anniversary of Snow’s arrival in China, featuring materials from the BYU library, toured China. BYU is offering a course analyzing U.S.-China relations through Snow’s life and work, and the McKay School participated in the China Education Innovation Expo.

“This conference has fulfilled its initial purposes” as a student leadership event, Chan said, “but it has also achieved something unique: it has provided a platform for BYU affiliates who have an interest in China to get to know each other and to dialogue with one another.”

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