A match made at Jiao Tong
Print Edition
LAST Saturday, Shanghai Jiao Tong University invited 120 couples who studied at the school to celebrate its 120th anniversary. Among them, 100-year-old Fei Henian and his 99-year-old wife Xu Manqian were the oldest pair in attendance. They have been married for 75 years.
Fei enrolled at Jiao Tong University in 1934 to study civil engineering. He was elected into the students’ union board and was responsible for organizing a show to welcome freshmen in 1936. While guiding students to their seats at the Wenzhi Auditorium, named after the school’s former president Tang Wenzhi, Fei saw three girls came in.
“I remember Xu Manqian was running ahead of the other two,” Fei said somewhat bashfully. “I led them to their seats and we told each other our names.”
At the time, female university students were rare in China, especially at science and engineering-oriented schools like Shanghai Jiao Tong. There were only ten female students enrolled at the university during Xu’s first year there.
Fei and Xu met frequently at the library and other places around campus. Eventually, they fell in love with each other.
“We had little in the way of entertainment in the 1930s and most of us studied by ourselves in the evening, so we would meet there (at the library) quite often,” Xu recalled.
“There were four girls majoring in financial management in 1936, including me,” she explained. “All of us later married male students from the university. It was a trend at that time for female students to marry upperclassmen, as the males at our school were very outstanding.”
Unfortunately, the following year saw the outbreak of large-scale fighting between Chinese forces and Japanese invaders in Shanghai. With the university’s Xuhui campus no longer safe, its students were evacuated to roughly a dozen temporary locations around the city. Their school would later be occupied by the Japanese army.
Since they were in different grades, Fei and Xu were sent to different sites. Amid the mounting danger, the devoted couple wrote letters to each other and met at public parks on weekends.
Poor in health, lucky in love
In 1938, Fei graduated and was sent to build railroads in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Life was difficult there and he and his colleagues were eventually ordered to destroy the railroad they had built to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Japanese.
Around this time, Fei came down with a lung disease and began vomiting blood. He was sent back to Shanghai for treatment in 1940.
As a Beijing native, he had no relatives in the city. Although still a student, it fell on Xu to look after him. By the following year, the pair was married.
Over the next 75 years, Xu often found herself ministering to her illness-prone husband. To finally cure the lung disease that brought him back to Shanghai, Fei underwent surgery in 1954.
In 1988, he had four-fifths of his stomach removed after he developed cancer. Five years ago, he was laid up for several months with a fractured hip. In each case, Fei says his loving wife was there to nurse him.
Fei was able to return the favor last year, when Xu fell and broke her leg while doing housework.
“When he was young, one of his classmates joked that my husband was the most unhealthy person. But he’s lived just about the longest,” said Xu.
Nearly all of Fei’s former classmates are now dead. Only a handful survive from Xu’s class, although they all live in other cities. Despite their advanced ages, the couple still regularly attend the university’s weekly alumni club meeting, usually held on Tuesdays at one of the city’s coffee shops. Xu and Fei have been fixtures at these gatherings for almost 40 years.
“My parents have attended almost every meeting. It’s their favorite activity,” said Fei Chen, the couple’s youngest daughter, who is 70 now.
The younger Fei usually accompanies her parents to these events. She helps them down the stairs from their second-floor apartment and says it’s the only time each week they go outside.
“I have to free up Tuesday mornings to go with them every week. They get quite upset if they are stopped by bad weather,” she added.
The couple have two sons and two daughters. Counting grandchildren, the family boasts an impressive seven PhDs, the elder Fei explained with pride.
“Most of them graduated from Tsinghua University, and our second son got the first PhD from Tsinghua after China reinstated its doctorate system,” he added. “He also has 12 patents in America.”
While his formal school days ended decades ago, Fei is still an avid learner. In recent years, he’s taught himself how to use Photoshop and uses the program to make digital greeting cards and retouch family photos.
He’s also become a self-taught stock investor, and says he’s never lost money on a trade.
Having survived war and a slew of personal and national calamities, the couple says the secret to a lasting marriage is for both partners to help and tolerate one another.
“We’ve also experienced conflicts and disagreements over 75 years,” he said, “But we always remind ourselves to look after each other and listen to each other’s opinions. We also compromised to keep the family harmonious.
“This is also our advice to young couples today at Jiao Tong University,” he added. “I hope their marriages can last even longer than ours.”
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