During the 1970’s, James Avent recalled with his family some key times during his life in China. Most of these oral recollections are of events in the 1920’s which even by the 1970’s seemed like another age. They were recorded at his and his wife’s Jeanette’s house in Sewanee, Tennessee, which they named Mei-Kan, Chinese for Beautiful View. The house, built in the early 20th century and still there, overlooks Lost Cove and has gone through subsequent owners since they sold it in 1981. Most notably of subsequent uses, the house was the home of Rivendell’s Writer’s Colony until 2018 and its closing was noted in the New York Times as The Literary South Is in Mourning.
The recordings are presented here for listening as well as a transcription. In the background of the recordings, where Avent speaks in his middle Tennessee accent, you can hear the sound of crickets which is omnipresent in the Tennessee countryside during the summer.
Family members in attendance varied over time but were:
• James “Jimmy” Monroe Avent (1895-1995)
• Jeanette Nelson Avent (1905-1989) wife of James Avent
• Daniel Clyde MacKinnon (1929-2018) first husband of Mayna Avent MacKinnon
• Jacqueline Avent (1930-2007) Daughter of James and Jeanette Avent
• Mayna Avent MacKinnon (later Mayna Avent Nance) (1932-2020) Daughter of James and Jeanette Avent
• Michael James MacKinnon (1954-) First son of Daniel and Mayna MacKinnon
• Andrew Reginald MacKinnon (1957-2016) Second son of Daniel and Mayna MacKinnon
• Bryan Avent MacKinnon (1960-) Third son of Daniel and Mayna MacKinnon
• Ellen MacKinnon Koenig (1925-1996) Sister of Daniel MacKinnon
• Walter Nance (1933-) Second Husband of Mayna Avent and childhood friend of the Avent’s
Contents
• World War I and How I came to China
• Landing in China in 1919 and the Trans Siberian Railroad
• A Chinese River Lock on the Grand Canal: 1923
• Sewanee as a football power
• Meeting Chiang Kai-Shek
• Meeting the wife and son of General Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo: 1948
Mei-Kan, aka Rivendell Writer's Colony
World War I and How I came to China
[Jimmy] “Well, during the first world war, I ended up in France with the 31st Division, 116th field artillery. And we got to France in August 1918. And artillery 3rd brigade we were sent to Camp Cuwekwerdon(?) for further training before going up to the front. And while we were there the Armistice was arrived at so we never got to the front. Some of our men, we were just going up, and some of our men went up as liaison officers to guide us to come back and take us in where we were going. After the Armistice, they asked for volunteers to go up with the army of occupation, and I figured that what I had go to France for was over and I saw no reason to volunteer for the army of occupation. I don’t think any of our outfit volunteered. And the first thing we know, we are ordered to be put on a boat and sent back home. Home to New York a little before Christmas. And while going home, Mayes Kirkman from Nashville and myself talked about what we are going to do after getting out of Army. And we decided that we’d both go to South America. This had been in our minds for quite a while, we had talked about it, but we finally made a deal of it, coming home on the transport. When we landed in New York we were went on down to Atlanta for demobilization. Mayes went ahead with his plan to get out. And I finally decided after I got home that that I’d apply for a commission in the regular army instead of going down South America. And I was accepted and ordered from the demobilization in Atlanta to Houston Texas with the 54th field artillery. And no sooner that I had arrived in Houston, they told me that the 54th had orders to demobilize but just stay in town and they’d call me up. I gave my phone number at the hotel there. They’d call me up whenever the order came through for me to go back to another assignment. And after 10 days, I got word that I was to report to Louisville, Kentucky to a training camp. So, I got on a train to go to Louisville being very disgusted to go to a training camp again. And we were put through training that we had already just to keep us busy, I suppose until they finally dispatched us to various outfits. I had one interesting class equitation which I taught. Anyway, Mayes, in the meantime, sent me a telegram after about a month saying, “I’m still going on to New York to South America, stopping off in Louisville, arrange a party.” So, I arranged a party and he stopped off and persuaded me the next morning to go out and resign from the army and go on to New York with him. So, I resigned and went back to Nashville and spent about a week with the family and then headed to New York. We got to New York and started looking for a job. I had a cousin there, Avent Childress, who was a partner in Moran Slide (?), a brokerage house there. He was a graduate of Princeton and he knew the president or vice president, I’ve forgotten, who had been in his class at Princeton. And he says I can take you over to so-and-so and introduce you and probably he’ll take you on to South America, and so he did. And the man said he’d be delighted to have us and said assured us it would be a matter of a few weeks while he could make arrangements for us. So, we preceded to have a high time in New York and spent all of our savings just about. And we lived at the Phi house [transcribers note: The Phi Beta Kappa fraternity] at Columbia. And, well most of the time, a place(?) out in Brooklyn. Mayes had a date with a girl and he came down with the flu and he asked me to keep the date [transcribers note: the flu refers to the great pandemic of 1918-1920]. And I did. And Mayes was still sick the next morning and I got up and went on down to the town and looked around, thought I’d go by and see my cousin, to see if he had any more word and he said, “I did.” I went by and he called up his friend, who said it will still be a little while and tell them not to worry. And I walked on down to the Bowery. This was 26th Broadway where the Standard Oil Company was then. I looked at the Aquarium and walked back up and coming back up to the Subway, I passed 26 Broadway. There was a doorman outside with Standard Oil on the building and I asked him were the foreign service department was. He said “the 14th floor.” So, I got on the elevator went up to the 14th floor. There was a receptionist there and I said I want to apply for a position and I did not say South America or anywhere. And she said, have a seat and after a few minutes she ushered me into the Secretary of the Company, a Mister Durimeth (?). We had a conversation and he sent me around to several different places, several different men, to have me interviewed. And at one place I went to the accounting office and they gave me an arithmetic examination which evidentially I passed and I finally got through I was told to back to Mr. Durimeth and he said, “When would you like to start work?” And I said tomorrow morning. And he said “Well, that will be fine. Now what’s is your family going to think about you going to China?” I said, ‘China? I thought I was going to South America.’ He said, ‘No, this is Standard Oil New York and we don’t operate in South America, we only operate in the Far East overseas - Near and Far East.’ So I said, ‘I don’t think my family will mind me going to China at all.’ So he said, ‘Ok, come in tomorrow morning’. That’s it, and I went back and told Mayes the ropes that I’d gone through and he got up the next morning, I think he still had a fever, and he went down and they took him on too.”
[Mike: What came of Mayes?]
“Mayes was managing Singapore when the Japs came in, he got everybody out except himself. He got on a little coastal steamer to the Dutch East Indies, which wasn’t far, the Japs dropped a bomb on it and killed everyone on it.”
[Mike: Did you keep up with him? Where you were in close contact?]
“We’d correspond, sure.”
[Mayna: How long before you went to China?]:
“The company always employed young men just out of college as a rule and put them through 4, 5, or 6 weeks training. And they had a class going and some of the men that dropped out or had been let out and they needed a couple more men and they took us on maybe a month after the class had started.
[Jeanette: Now was Mel in that class?]
“Yeah, Mel got in February – everyone got in February except me and Mayes, we got in on March 21”
[Mike: Mr. Selfert?]
“Yeah”
Landing in China in 1919 and the Trans Siberian Railroad
[Mayna: When you first went to China, where did you first go?]
“We landed in Shanghai. We left San Francisco the last day of May and arrived in Shanghai the second day of July on the Old Manchuria, one of the Pacific mail boats that I thought was a lighter that was going to take us out to the ocean-going boats – it was so small. I never had a better time in my life than I did on that trip. There were 12 of us on that ship.
[Dan: Where you one of the first white people white people who crossed the Manchurian railway?]
“After the war, this class was the first one.”
[Jeanette, “No Jimmy, were you one of the first white people to go across Siberia by rail?]
“Oh, no. The Siberian railway was operating well before the first world war. [Jackie: I just read a book …] And you could go across then. They had a wide gauge through Russia. The Russian gauge was wider than our gauge. The first call was Manchouli in Manchuria when you went up from the south, say Shanghai, up on Daria, we went from Shanghai by boat to Daria, and you go into Manchuria as a rule. There were no planes then to make a trip. And you got off at Daria and you went by boat, I mean train to Mukden (?). And then Mukden to Manchouli on standard gauge railway. And then at Manchouli, not Manchouli, I’ve forgotten the name of the town. About 100 miles, 150 miles, north of Mukden. You had to change cars, trains, to get on a wide Russian gauge railway. We went from there to Harbin and at Harbin you joined the Vladivostok part of the Vladivostok-Moscow Russian line that went through north Manchuria. They had eventually had two routes. One from Vladivostok. One going north of the Amur River and one going south of the Amur River. The one going south went through China. And after the war, that railway was closed for a long time during the revolution in Russia and whatnot. When my leave was due, I happened to be stationed in North Manchuria and it was quicker for me and cheaper really to go by train through the rest of Manchuria into Siberia and on into Moscow, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and went on down to Paris. Went across to England and took a boat from there, Southampton, to New York.
[Mike: How long were the Bolsheviks still in power?]
“Well, they came into 1917 [Jeanette: 1917] 17 and 18 and I went through in 1926, March ’26. And it was anything but … transportation wasn’t bad. Trains ran slowly. It was 9 days from Harbin to Moscow. And you passed maybe one village a day, two villages a day at the most, cities. Nothing but villages in Siberia until you got into Europe.
[Bryan: Was it easy to get in and out of Russia at the time?]
“Ah, I had no trouble. [Jeanette: who’d want to go?] I applied in Harbin for a passport – for a visa on my Passport. And I took some Russian money with me. And we had to change trains at Manchouli on the border of Siberia and north Manchuria. And changed trains again at Irkutsk. Which was a junction, I believe, of the railway that came in from Vladivostok back into the main line. And then you crossed Lake Baikal, and we did that on moonlit night, it was beautiful sight. We went around – we did not cross it. But all that country at that time was undeveloped. And from Manchouli to Tansk – forgot whether Tansk was in Russia or Siberia – it was just pine forest. It was all you could see from the railway track. And whenever the train stopped, everybody would get off and there’d be a big boiler where you could get hot water. And I’d been advised to take a teapot and tea, which I did, and a few canned goods. And at these railway stops; the Russians would be there with trays of bread and grouse, it wasn’t a grouse, they called it a rapchick – smaller than a pheasant, a little bigger than a grouse. But they had game, and pork, and bread, and butter. I don’t remember any vegetables. Which you got a good meal that way once a day as the dining car was terrible.
[Jeannette: Well my sister did it in 1936, she was married in 36 so I guess it was 37 or 38 and went across the Finland and she said you went into the diner, and she said you could not smell the food for smelling the waiter and you could not smell the waiters for smelling the food. It was so terrible. And then they landed in Finland, it was like going into heaven it was so clean.]
“Everybody I talk to says that Russia is still very, very dirty.]
[???: Did you go there in the first place just to stay a little while or were you going to make a career of it?]
“I went with the idea I was going to make a career of it. And I guess I did. I stayed until I was due to retire.”
[???: I loved the way you were walking by Broadway and looked up and said you’d go in there. I was wondering …]
[Mike: Why was it you were so interested in going to South America?]
“Well we wanted to go somewhere. And that would be interesting. I still think it would be interesting, as interesting as China. And probably a lot more civilized from our standpoint and a lot cleaner probably.”
[Jeanette: (Well if you had, none of us would be here) You wouldn’t be here. Well you were talking about the gauge. When I was in Australia in 1929, the train between Sydney and Melbourne you had to get off and change because of the rail guages. And if that isn’t something in the same country. The end of a province or state, whatever they had then, you had to stop and change.]
[Mike: Well, gramps, if you had to do it again, would you?]
“I couldn’t tell you. Cause there is no chance for me to do it again.]
A Chinese River Lock on the Grand Canal: 1923
[Jimmy] “In about 1923 I made a trip up the Pukou Peking railway, Pukou being on the north side of the Yangtze river and Nanking being on the South. Was to go from there over near the coast overland to investigate an agency that had some trouble. And the deal was that I would go from that agency over to the grand canal and pick up a launch that was owned by the company. And I guess I’d be gone at least 2 weeks when I got back to the launch. Got back to the grand canal and the launch wasn’t there. But a motor sampan, a small rowboat that had a motor on the end of it, was there with a Chinese lauder or boat? and it was about 30 or 40 miles down the canal to the launch where you could not get up that far because of drafts. And I suggested that we go down that evening, it was just about dark, and my interpreter told me there were locks on the canal and you’d have trouble getting through at night. Well, as it said, we were just back from home and I wanted to get some home-side mail. The launch would have any mail that had come in since I left Chinkiang on the Yangtze river. And so, I insisted we go on. So, we piled in the launch with our gear which weighed the sampan down quite a bit. And we took out. And about an hour after we were going down the canal, I began to hear the water rushing, a roar. And I said, oh, the water is running over the dam, is what it is. And imagined that we’d be pulling into a lock and let go through. And of course, the further we went down, the louder this roar. And it seemed like it was we were going right over dam. And all of a sudden, the boat went through this narrow hole that we could hardly see until we were right on it. And the boat dropped about 3 or 4 feet, just plunked right now. And the lauder pulled the tiller way over and almost swamped the boat. And I shouted, “What in the world are you doing, are you trying to drown us!” And my interpreter said, “No, he says that if hadn’t have done that, the boat would have sunk because the water is so swift here. And it’s going faster than the boat. And if we didn’t get out of it, he had no control of the boat which made good sense. But that was the idea of a Chinese lock. Well that was the first of a series 4 locks. Each one of them about half a mile below the other. And we had to go through each of those. Of course, the drop was less each time; the last one was fairly smooth going through. And I’d visualized an American lock where they had gates where you’d go through. And was just a hole where the dam across the canal had been built out on both sides and left a passage just in the middle for a big Chinese junk to go through. So, we finally, anyway, we got through the four dams and locks back to the launch and I got my own mail. That was it.”
[Mayna] “What would happen to vessel that was too big?”
[Jeanette] “It wouldn’t be on the River.”
“It couldn’t’ get through.”
[Mayna] “Did they walk around; did they get out?”
[Jimmy] “No, no, no, that was the only way to get through.”
Avent met Chiang Kai Shek when he was a ‘warlord’ in the 1920’s before he became leader of China. Chiang was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975, first in mainland China until 1949 and then in Taiwan until his death.
[Bryan: Did you ever meet Chiang Kai-Shek?]
“Yeah, once. Before he became the ruler of China. He was going to Canton, south of the Yangtze river and with his troops. I went down to that area to investigate some looting of one of our agencies there. When I got off the launch, some soldiers came along, I couldn’t have told them what I wanted to do and I told them what I wanted to do and they said you can’t do it. I said, “Who’s the commander here and they said so-and-so.” I said, you take me to your commander. And they took me to their commander and their commander was Chiang Kai-Shek. And he gave me a guard to take me into the city to see about the looting and they got me back to the launch. There was nobody in the city, there had been fighting. We were tied up on the neck of the lake. And it was too late when we got out of the city. When we got out, it was almost dark. And the soldiers left me there and took off. Of course, I had an interpreter and two boat men. Just as soon as it got dark, they started shooting across this lake, both sides shooting over the top [of the boat]. I spent the night there, shooting all the time, no one aiming at anything, just shooting.”
[Bryan: What happened to the people that were in the boat with you?]
“We all stayed there through the night. We did not get any sleep. I think I dozed off several times. But, as soon as daylight was on and they could see what they are doing, they stopped shooting.”
[Dan: They stopped shooting?]
“Yeah, they did not care whether they hit anyone or not. They just wanted to see how many people they had on this side or the other side.”
“And I was in between. I stayed up on the deck, put two tables. One on one side and the other on the other. Not sure it would have done any good. If a bullet had come along, it might had helped a little.”
[Dan: What kind of boat were you on?]
“It was a [unintel] launch. Nice deck, wheelhouse. Below deck were sleeping quarters and dining room, sort of a living and dining room”
[56:00 Dan: How many crew?]
“Two I think. Four of us all together”
[Dan: I thought you knew how to speak Chinese?”]
“I always had an interpreter – not always. During the later years, I was able to get-by by myself. You needed an interpreter [Different Dialects]. Not so much different dialects. It gave me an advantage. If you could hear what the guy was saying before the interpreter said it, you heard it twice.”
[Mike: Was it Chiang Kai Shek fighting someone else across that river?]
“He was fighting, I’ve forgotten now. I did not know at the time who he was, I did not remember his name; but when I read about it, that who was there and who was in charge was Chiang Kai-Shek. And I ran into him again in Hunan province after you cross the Yangtze and you come on up, from Hankow, up the Peking-Hankow railway. He was headed for Peking. And he got to Jinan and the Japanese tried to stop him. Jinan was a Chinese city and the Japanese had a lot of interests there. They controlled Tsingtao because they had been given control of it after the first world war. And the Japanese did not want Chiang to go on and unify China. And they tried to stop him in Jinan where I was. And we went through a mob by ourselves before the Chinese troops came in. And then after they came in, there was fighting between the Japanese and Chinese troops. And Chiang was smart enough to march his troops around at night, he marched his troops around Jinan, over the railway and across the Yellow River bridge. And he left enough troops behind to make the Japanese still think he was resisting them. Of course, those troops got killed. He went on to Peking.
[Bryan’s Note: during another recounting of the encounter with Chiang, my grandfather mentioned that this was in the 1920’s and the soldiers he met were commanded by a lieutenant. He was concerned that they might actually kill him so he just started shouting at them saying you cannot kill a European (though he was an American, they were all grouped together by the Chinese there as European). This created enough uncertainty in the lieutenant that he decided to bring him to his commander who was Chiang.]
“But that has hot (?). We had a good day(?). Two square building (?) built by the Germans, big walls (?) upstairs around them was a parfait around them about that thick. And they were machine gunning up and down our street. And bullets were going through our yard cutting off limbs. We’d kneel down and put our heads up over the side and watch the fighting. And there was a lull and the guy, Wolf, who took my camera and went down and slipped out on the street and got a picture. And got troops lying down on the street with sandbags. And that picture was reproduced in the London Illustrated News.
[Dan 1:00:23] “Did they behead people or did they hang them”
“They beheaded them. Not that I know of. They always hung their heads after they cut them off. They would tie them to a stake and shoot them. I got to the city one time, got to the gate just outside the city and there were two fresh heads on the gate. And another one off on the side they had just cut off. Blood all over the place. They cut the heads off with what the chopped grain with to feed the cattle. It’s a wooden bot about that long, hinged down there, meant to cut millet straw, hay.
[01:01:45 Dan] “Similar to a paper cutter?”
“That’s right, similar to a paper cutter. But bigger and stronger. One would get in front of him and hold his head, and put him in it. And just pull it down. It took a lot of pressure and a lot of pull.”
[01:02:16 Mike] “What would they kill them for?”
“I guess these were bandits that they caught in side the city.”
[01:02:26 Andy] “Keep all the other bandits out.”
[01:02:28 Jacky] “Well in 1948, we were going to down Tsingtao and we were stopped at the first city outside of Shanghai and were met by the (?) army and the said we’d probably not like to see what was hanging on the gate as there were bandit’s heads that they had cut off that day. We agreed and turned around.
Dan: “They put a pipe through their head or hang them by their hair?”
Jacky: “They put them into a wicker basket.”
[01:03:35 Mike] Did they get any kind of trial at all?
“I guess they knew what they were doing. I don’t know about the trial. They had a … It was a capital offense in China for stealing. “
Dan: That’s what this program said. The lucky ones ended up in Jail.
“Maybe they did not get out either.”
Dan: The lucky ones at least were not dead.
Friend’s of the Avent’s in Shanghai were the Nance’s who had a medical practice there. Recorded on August 24, 2016, in Sewanee, Tennessee, Mayna is speaking with her son Bryan MacKinnon, Granddaughter Julia MacKinnon, and her second husband Walter Nance.
Walter Nance’s father Dana Nance was a POW in a Japanese POW camp in Manila from 1942 to 1945. As Dana Nance was a medical doctor, his treatment was not as harsh as it might have been under other circumstances.
Recently transcribed by Walter, this photo on right reads:
1942, October, 14
Dear Journal
I am writing this entry from China right now. Currently I am in Tientsin China. There is amazing people and the entire environment is beautiful. We normally wouldn’t be here in China we are here cause my father is in World War Two. My mother and I are hiding because the war has just begun. I din’t know where my father is. AllI know is he is out there somewhere hiding and fighting for me and and for all of us. My father came back for a little while and is saying what is happening with the war and what is going to happen. He is thinking on how to get us to safety and how to save himself in the process. So he thinks of the idea to move the the United States of America. It has gotten to brutal (sic) and we all think it’s a good idea to move to the US where my parents are from. So we should all be we have the leave China (sic). All of the Japanese are Invading near us now so we need to get going. We have to leave some of the friends we made while living here in China and hope they will be OK.
Avent’s daughter Mayna recounts the time she, her mother, brother, and sister met Douglas MacArthur’s wife Jeanand son Douglas MacArthur IV in Tokyo after the Second World War. Recorded on August 24, 2016 in Sewanee, Tennessee, Mayna is speaking with her son Bryan MacKinnon, Granddaughter Julia MacKinnon, and her second husband Walter Nance.
It was just after the War when MacArthur was military governor of Japan. James Avent’s family knew Jean (née Faircloth) MacArthur’s family from when they were both living in Nashville, Tennessee. Their ship had arrived in Yokohama from China in 1948 but all passengers were forbidden by the American authorities from disembarking pending disembarking from some VIP’s that were apparently on board ship. Only later when US Military Police arrived and escorted the Avent’s off the ship did they realize that they were the VIP’s in question. They were driven to the MacArthur residence at the US Embassy in Tokyo. Jean MacArthur had not been home to the US in many years and was interested in any news the Avent’s could relate. Mayna briefly met Jean’s son but did not come away with a favorable impression.
Mayna was 84 at this time and while her memory was not as sharp was it used to be, she was able to recount the memory with some prompting.
In a POW camp during the Second World War
Meeting the wife and son of General Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo: 1948
