In the late nineteenth century, Canadian missionaries developed a medical training program for Chinese students in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in southwestern China. From modest beginnings, the training evolved into a medical and dental college at West China Union University, a joint venture by five Western mission boards. The college provided an institutional setting for the interaction of two cultures for the transmission of Western medical knowledge. Minden describes both the process and the longterm implications by tracing the history of the college and the careers of its students and faculty. The school's history is linked to the political turmoil that has troubled China since the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Minden follows the progress of the college from 1888, taking the reader through the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930s, the Civil War of 1945-9, and the political upheavals in the People's Republic of China. She also explores the background, motivations, and campus life of both students and faculty, and follows their careers up to 1989. Based on extensive interviews and archival research in Canada, the United States and China, this study charts the range of human hope and despair during a turbulent period of history. It contributes to our understanding of the role of Canadian medical missionaries as agents of change in pre-revolutionary China, and elucidates the cross-cultural transfer of technological knowledge.
About the Author: Karen Minden, C.M., PhD, wrote Bamboo Stone during her first career as professor of Chinese politics and Asia Pacific Business at the University of Manitoba, and Director of Policy Studies at the Centre for Higher Education Research and Development. She was a Visiting Scholar at the National University of Singapore, and then Vice President of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. In 2000, she began working in the field of adolescent mental health, and is the founder of Pine River Institute, the first and only comprehensive adolescent mental health and addiction treatment centre in Canada. Her publications include books and articles on health care development in China, science and technology in the Pacific Rim, and adolescent mental health and addiction. Dr. Minden was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2010, for her contributions to addiction treatment programs for adolescents, and for building closer economic partnerships between Canada and the Asia Pacific region. Her particular passions are strategic philanthropy, and youth mental health care, and she serves as advisor to innovative social enterprises. Minden lives in Toronto with her husband, a physician. They have two grown daughters and a granddaughter.