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THE WIND BLOWS WHEN IT CHOOSES

Part 1: Where the Story Begins: Interviews with K. H. Ting

The common Chinese idiom, “The waterfront pavilion gets the moonlight first”, can be applied here to describe how Ma Jia1 built up a friendship with the Bishop K. H. Ting. More than 20 years ago in 1994, Ma Jia was a lecturer at Nanjing University, one of the most recognized universities in China. As an active Ph.D. scholar, Ma Jia also taught a survey course about Chinese literature at Nanjing Union Theological Seminary (NJUTS), China’s most prestigious seminary. Ma Jia soon realized that the president of NJUTS, K. H. Ting, just happened to also be the vice-president of Nanjing University. Ma Jia and K. H. Ting also shared a common friend, Professor Wang Weifan,2 the Academic Dean of NJUTS. While familiar with Ma Jia, Wang Weifan was also K. H. Ting’s colleague and old friend; Wang described their friendship and partnership as one that “waxed and waned but endured over fifty years.”3

On one occasion, Ma Jia inadvertently expressed to Professor Wang the difficulties of publishing his doctoral dissertation that explored Christian cultural influence on modern Chinese literature. Wang Weifan had been a well-recognized scholar in the field of Christian culture in China, as well as an expert on Chinese literature. During the 1940s, Wang studied Chinese ← 1 | 2 → literature at National Central University, which led to a desire...