Photo of John Lee(back) and his mother Mrs, Lee.
Mrs. Lee was born on June 1, 1905, into a Shantung family deeply connected to the early history of Chinese Christianity. Her father was among the first Chinese Baptist converts and nearly lost his life during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, when Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries were violently targeted during the anti-foreign movement. The family’s survival through that period left a lasting religious and educational legacy that shaped later generations.
She later attended Ginling Women’s College in Nanking, one of the most influential women’s colleges in Republican China. Founded by American missionaries, Ginling became known for educating a generation of highly accomplished Chinese women during a time of enormous political and social transformation. Her education reflected the increasingly international and intellectually ambitious world that many urban Chinese Christian families were entering in the early twentieth century.
Through both education and family background, she helped create the cosmopolitan environment in which John Lee was raised. Family photographs from this period capture a household shaped by religion, education, and cross-cultural exchange, influences that would later become central to John Lee’s own life journey between China and the United States.