Kuling

Kuling (), now called Guling, was a summer European missionary resort located on top of Mountain Lu, Jiujiang, China. Now it is the tourist and administration center in the Mountain Lu National Park, a World Heritage Site.

, it has 5 residential communities, 2 villages, and 4 other neighborhoods under its administration.

History

European settlement history

Kuling, now called Guling, on the slopes of a wide valley of Mountain Lu, was established in 1895 by the missionaries Edward Selby Little, Dr. Edgerton Haskell Hart and three others, as a sanitarium and rest resort for Western missionaries in southern China. They built their houses in the colonial style of architecture, and added churches, schools, and sports facilities. It was named by Little, as a pun: it is wonderfully ''cooling'' after the summer heat in the plains below. It was also a word that sounded conveniently Chinese to the local people, and has been adopted by them. Kuling was run by the missionaries in a Kuling Council that sold the plots of the land and with the proceeds paid for local services and security. In 1910, Caroline Maddock Hart and four others met to found the Nurses Association of China; with Caroline Maddock Hart being its first president.

The Republic of China history

1934, Soong Mei-ling, then first Lady of the Republic of China, was given a villa in Kuling town, Mountain Lu. She and her husband Chiang Kai-shek both love the villa very much. Chiang Kai-shek named the villa as ''Mei Lu Villa'' to symbolize the beauty of Mountain Lu. The couple usually stay at this villa in Kuling town, Mountain Lu in summer time, so the mountain is called Summer Capital, and the villa is called the Summer Palace.

Prior to 1949, President Chiang Kai-shek chose Mountain Lu as the summer headquarters for his nationalist Kuomintang government, having been introduced to the place by his wife Soong Mei-ling, the daughter of a Shanghai Methodist minister. It was here that in 1946 the U.S. special diplomatic mission representing the President of the United States led by General George C. Marshall met with Chiang Kai-shek to discuss the role of post-World War II China.

Modern history

After the conclusion of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, it became favourite meeting place for the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party because Chairman Mao used Chiang Kai-shek's house as one of his holiday homes. It hosted the Eighth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee, also known as the Lushan Conference or "Plenum", which began on 23 July and convened on 2 August 1959. Kuling also hosted the Second Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee in August 1970.

The movie '' Romance on Mountain Lu'', which has been shown in the Mountain Lu theatre non-stop since 1980, was recognised by Guinness World Records as the longest-running movie in theatres. Each ticket sold to this movie is numbered according to ticket sales to date. As of May 2006, this number is close to 140 million tickets.

Notable residents

* Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1938, for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China. She also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. She spent her childhood with her family in Kuling in summertime. Her father built a stone villa in Kuling in 1897 and lived there until his death in 1931.

* Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) was born in Kuling, Mountain Lu. He was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He was well known for being the illustrator of ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' and the author of the ''Gormenghast'' series of novels.

*Lo-Yi Chang (1907–1988) was born in Kuling. She was spouse of T. V. Soong, then Premier of the Republic of China. She has made significant contributions of promoting interculture understandings between China and western countries.

References

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Lushan City
Township-level divisions of Jiangxi