Engendered by Asia
Mom grew up in Seoul, Korea, when the Japanese ruled that country. Consequently, she spoke Korean fluently and Japanese well. Her parents were the offspring of two pioneering families of American Methodist missionaries: the Appenzellers and the Nobles.
Her paternal grandparents, Henry Gerhard and Ella Dodge Appenzeller, are still recognized and admired for being the first Western educators in Korea. My childhood memories are filled with references to the Korean language and culture.
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As I am disaffected of the overarching concept of proselytizing and missionaries, I didn’t realize when I began my work in India that I owe much of my attraction to and ease in India to the paradigm of my mother’s family. I’ve gradually recognized that we are two sides of the same coin: they brought their Western Christian ethics and values to Korea, while I bring knowledge and insights about India to the West.
Dad and Mom married in 1942, just as Dad entered the army. They knew he would soon be in combat and worried that he would be killed fighting the Nazis. So, Dad applied for assignment to China, believing that sphere of action to be less dangerous. The army sent my parents to Yale, where they both took a comprehensive crash course in spoken Mandarin Chinese.
Dad was then flown over the Hump into central China and served the last year and a half of the conflict as an army captain of mixed American and Chinese troops. He learned to love Chinese culture and impressed a Chinese general so favorably that this dynamic leader seconded Dad into the Kuomintang (the National Chinese Army) as a lieutenant colonel under Chiang Kai-Shek.
My parents spoke Mandarin when they did not want us children to understand. They both cooked with chopsticks; we learned to love exceptional Korean and Chinese food, and they always enjoyed speaking with East Asians in their own tongues. A Chinese friend who first met Dad when he was in his late eighties was amazed at how fluent he still was sixty-seven years after his sojourn in China. Those examples were formative.
Stephen P. Huyler is an art historian, author, cultural anthropologist, and photographer who has conducted a lifelong survey of the art and people of India. His travels in India over five decades are chronicled in his memoir, Transformed by India: A Life.
