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Nuquist, Andrew E., Chung Chi, photographers.

[Photo archive of a U.S. missionary’s experiences and travels in China, Korea and Europe.]

China, Korea, Poland, and other locales, 1927–1930. 5 oblong 4to albums (7” x 12”), black paperboard covers. 2,052 photos mounted on black paper leaves; 1 large format image (8.5” x 10.5”) plus margins, mounted on paperboard (12.5” x 15.25”); 1 8vo notebook, black cloth spine and gold paperboard covers. 131 pp. of manuscript.

A substantive archive of over 2,000 photos by U.S. missionary-teacher Andrew E. Nuquist, half of which extensively document city and rural life in China where Nuquist lived and worked. Contents include a large-format image featuring Chinese General Bai Chongxi of the National Revolutionary Army, as well images documenting trips Nuquist took to Japan, Korea, Poland, and the Great Wall of China; hunting and hiking trips, and more. The albums are accompanied by a later manuscript list extensively detailing each image.

Nebraska-born missionary and teacher Andrew E. Nuquist (1905–1975) lived in China from 1927 to 1930, working as a Missionary Teacher for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Tunghsien—located some fifteen miles east of Peking (Beijing). These five albums and one large-format image constitute a fascinating pictorial record of Nuquist’s work, travels and varied activities while in China. His manuscript list of the photos amounts to a journal that identifies (and at times extensively details) each image, its often-lengthy descriptions possibly transcribed from another source (his diaries?) or written later from memory. Many of these descriptions have rich narrative content. Following his time overseas, Nuquist taught Political Science at the University of Vermont. In addition to the photo content relating to Nuquist’s missionary years (primarily represented by Albums 2, 3 and 4), the five albums are rounded out with many images of Nuquist’s family and friends back home in the U.S.

Archive contents:

One notable large-format original photo was taken by Chung Chi in June 1928. Shown in the photo (left to right, as noted on the verso) are “two Chinese officers, James Hunter, two officers, Chinese General Pai Chung Hsi [Bai Chongxi], Dr. George Wilder, army officer, [an unknown man], Andrew E. Nuquist” (included in one photo album here is a smaller photo of this same group of men from a different angle.) General Bai (1893–1966) was a Chinese general in the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China and a prominent Chinese Nationalist leader. From the mid-1920s to 1949, Bai and his close ally Li Zongren ruled the Guangxi province as regional warlords with their own troops and considerable political autonomy. Bai’s relationship with President of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) was by turns antagonistic and cooperative: he and Li Zongren supported the anti-Chiang warlord alliance in the Central Plains War in 1930, and then supported Chiang in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. Bai would serve as the first defense minister of the Republic of China from 1946–48. After losing to the Communists in 1949, he fled to Waiwan, where he died in 1966.

Also pictured in this image is Wisconsin-born George D. Wilder (1869–1946), who after studying at the Oberlin Theological Seminary traveled to Tungcho, China in 1894. In Tientsin, China, Wilder began his evangelistic and educational work, and was elected pastor of a native church in Tungcho. During the Boxer Rebellion, Wilder assisted hundreds of Chinese Christian refugees and U.S. soldiers in caring for the wounded, and offering other material assistance. Wilder began teaching at the University of Peking in 1910 and continued to teach in theological schools until 1938. He then served as Secretary of the North China Committee on Coordination of Emergency Relief in Tehsien. Due to escalating conflicts between Japan and China, Wilder was detained in Japan and returned to the U.S. in 1943.

Album 1: 658 photos, picturing Nebraska; Manhattan, Kansas; the Blue River flood of 1927; the Dam at Crete Mills, Nebraska; the Sesquicentennial Expo in Philadelphia, and so forth.

Album 2: 529 photos, with extensive China content: the city of Peking and its various inhabitants (beggars, poor people, street cleaners, etc.); temples; gates; pagodas; walls; farm scenes; one of Nuquist’s students playing an instrument; a student orchestra composed of Nuquist’s students; “soldiers from Chow Chow who had surrendered after a long siege”; bridges and palaces in Peking; the Pei Hai in Peking; Buddhist temples; the Hatamen and Chien Men gates; homes of fellow missionaries; the Peking City wall; the Temple of Heaven; a public gathering in Tunghsien welcoming southern troops of Pei Chung Hsi, 1928; religious-devotional scenes; “an old Chinese scholar”; shots taken in Kamakura, Japan; shots of over 10,000 soldiers; the Summer Palace in China; funeral processions; market scenes; vendors; shops; a “Chinese version of a Punch and Judy show”; Nuquist’s personal Chinese-language teacher; fellow ex-patriots and missionaries; winter views; scenes at the American school where Nuquist taught; Peking Bay; shots from a trip Nuquist took to the Great Wall of China; a Confucian temple; a few color postcards, and more.

Album 3: 556 photos, taken in Seoul, Korea; China; Poland; Cologne, Germany; Geneva, Switzerland. Pictured are mountain and hiking scenes in the Diamond Mountains (North Korea); views from a ship traveling along the Korean coastline; rice-haulers; temples; monasteries; waterfalls; nature scenes; visits to North China Missions; domestic scenes in China; Taoist monks; multiple trips to Korea; Shan Hai Kuan (Shanhai Pass); visits Nuquist took home to the U.S.; “the largest hung bell in the world in a temple north and west of Peking”; courtyards; refugees; school scenes and building scenes at school; fellow English teachers; street scenes; travel via train; moats; constructing buildings at Nuquist’s school campus; images taken in a Seoul museum in Korea; gleaners laboring (“very poor folk who depended on grain”); girls and boys schools; the Polish countryside, 1930; the Rhine River; multiple images of a “hunting trip to Shansi [Loess] in Jan.–Feb. 1930”; scenes in Shansi Loess picturing cave homes, hunters, coal mines, and local inhabitants and their families; a detailed photo and narrative account of Nuquist’s week-long excursion in Shansi Loess; a boar hunting trip in Pei Niu Jing (“In August 1929 a party of us took a trip to Pei Niu Jing, a famous mountain west of Bitaha[?] … We hiked over 100 miles & had a fine trip”); and many of the same subjects featured in Album 2.

Album 4: 110 photos, picturing the Chinese school where Nuquist taught and its school children. Also included are photos taken in the U.S. of Nuquist’s family and friends.

Album 5: 199 photos, primarily comprising family photos taken in Wisconsin; Osceola, Nebraska, and elsewhere.

REFERENCES: George D. Wilder Papers: 1904–1971 at quod.lib.umich.edu

CONDITION: One album with both covers detached, another with one cover detached, photos generally very good.