Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 219, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1918 — Landscape Is Beautiful. [ARTICLE]

Landscape Is Beautiful.

The location for his schools, many of them the rambling buildings of old temples slightly remodeled, is one of the. attractive features of Mr. Chang’s educational plan. With characteristic care he has selected a site so as to include the essentials of a beautiful landscape, according to Chinese ideas of art, such as lakes and dry land, trees and fertile fields with a pagoda, a camel’s-back bridge or some other artistic structure in the background. A visitor sees in the vicinity of the agricultural college experimental fields bearing heavy crops of sea island cotton, sugar cane from America, selected wheat for specific kinds of soil, attractive orchards of apples, pears, figs, and groves of bamboo and mulberry. These is a school of embroidery with 100 young women who are studying under the instruction df a Chinese lady of renown, the most skilled artist in embroidery in China. The course of training Includes drawing’ and painting as well as needle work. In another school an antique art Is being preserved by the teaching of tapestry weaving. A public library has been built and equipped with 113,000 volumes. This library is housed in a charming group of buildings, well lighted, and set amid gardens which are fragrant with roses and bright with the red glow of the berries of the “heavenly bamboo.” The social institutions were equally representative of a spirit of progressive enterprise; among them the home for destitute old people, a distinct novelty in China.