Frogs of China. Alice Boring’s Life and Work. 1. Biography

As we explored the Hong Kong University Compound after our arrival in November 1965 we came across the lily pond. Seeing the occasional plop as a frog jumped into the water, we decided to continue the exploration in the evening. As well as collecting two nightwatchmen as spectators, several frogs were caught. We had no idea what they were so the next day tried to identify them. Fortunately, there was a tiny collection of offprints in the old zoology department’s office. Some were the checklists given by John Romer but others were from the Hong Kong Naturalist series of the 1930s. How those offprints had survived or had been obtained later we had no idea since the then newly-opened science building had been stripped of everything during the Japanese Occupation. However, they were there and as well as identifying the frogs as Günther's frog, Sylvirana (formerly Rana and Hylarana) guentheri, we became acquainted with the name of the author of the key paper, Alice M. Boring.

Alice Middleton Boring*

Only a couple of years ago when I read her short biography in Contributions to the History of Herpetology did I realise that she was the doyenne of amphibians in China. I also found a book on her life had been published in 1999, A Dame Full of Vim and Vigor. That provides a highly detailed account of her entire life together with background on political and military events unfolding in China during the 20th century. After reading it I see why the authors chose that title.

Alice Boring, as well as living in China in interesting times—very interesting times—was, in the early decades of the 20th century, part of the cutting edge of biological research in the U.S.A. Then, in China, she realised that it would be impossible to pursue such studies and turned to describing and cataloguing the amphibians of China. It is for these latter works of scholarship that she is still remembered today, rather than for the original research on cytogenetics with world leaders in their fields of her earlier years.

From a school in Philadelphia and part of a largely Quaker family, Alice Middleton Boring, gained admission to the Quaker-founded women’s college Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania. Teaching at the college were Nettie Stevens (1861-1912) who amongst some confusion about credit at the time appears to have discovered sex chromosomes. There was also Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) who went on to win a Nobel Prize for his work on genetics. After a Ph.D. under Stevens she worked in Würzburg (with Stevens) where they annoyed Theodor Boveri as “the purest blood suckers” (i.e. visiting scientists who visit for a very short time, take up the host’s time and resources and emerge with only superficial findings) and then in Naples.

Returning to the U.S.A. in 1910, Boring got her first job in the agricultural college of the University of Maine where her boss was Raymond Pearl (1879-1940). It would take a book to describe Pearl’s life and career, his many wrong-headed ideas as well as some better ones. Suffice it to say that Boring collaborated with Pearl on reproduction and the plumage pattern of domestic chickens. She advanced rapidly through the ranks to be Associate Professor by 1913. Then, in 1918 at the age of 35, she upped sticks for China on a two-year appointment.

The job she went to was a new one. Rockefeller money had bought out the old Union Medical College in Peking from the joint control of British and American missionary societies and renamed it the Peking Union Medical College. There was though pretty open warfare between the missionaries and Rockefeller employees even though in the end the board that ran the college had input from both. Boring arrived at the time of expansion into a new pre-clinical school. She was fiercely anti-missionary, taught there for two years and at the end of her contract returned to the U.S.A. as professor of zoology at Wellesley College.

Boring was apparently frustrated by Wellesley. Zoology was treated as a poor relation. She entered into negotiations to return to China. It was intended that a new university organised on American lines, Yenching, formed by merging various colleges in Peking (I will stick to the Wade-Giles transliteration instead of the Pinyin ‘Beijing’) should act as a pre-clinical feeder to the Peking Union Medical College, and should take over that function entirely from the College. The university itself was eager not to give Boring a long-term position since they had somebody else lined up for the permanent job. Eventually, she was reassured about her many concerns by the head of the university, John Leighton Stuart (1876-1962) and after making sure she would not be on a missionary’s salary, and that the position at Wellesley would be kept open for her return, she was all set to go: “It would seem like a bit of real contribution to civilization as opposed to teaching in America”. She did not return to Wellesley, preferring Chinese students eager to learn to American young ladies keener to acquire a Mrs as a pre-nominal than a bachelor’s degree after it.

Alice Boring arrived at Yenching University in 1923. She  landed at a time of considerable political and military turmoil which continued until and after her final departure 27 years later. Like her boss, Stuart, Boring took an anti-Western stance. Anti-missionary initially, her position became more nuanced when she argued that the christian groups were also opposed to imperialism and capitalism. She—and Stuart who was born in China, the son of American missionaries—supported the political aspirations of the students, as anti-Western and anti-Japanese rioting flared up and as battles raged between warlords.

Yenching University ca 1937*

Boring was remembered as an austere and tough but kindly task-mistress in preparing students for admission to the medical school. Reading the accounts of her student laboratory sessions with regular tests, my impression is one of overteaching and more like a school class than what would have been expected at the time in an English university. She certainly demanded high standards but also ensured the students were looked after and became proficient in the couth and culture required to move in Western circles and to spend time in the U.S.A. for postgraduate studies. Students who succeeded clearly thought highly of her, both for her knowledge and as a mentor even though she was known by students of both sexes to favour the men. That she was prim, proper, fierce and opinionated there is no doubt. But beneath the prim exterior was something very kind and a little more wild. On a camping trip in Mongolia soon after her arrival in China she wrote: ‘…we take shower baths in the morning by rolling naked in the long wet grass’. Her brother wrote of her as enthusiasm as a ‘menace to society’.

Teaching clearly occupied a great deal of her time (she was in her green lab coat and spectacles nicknamed the ‘Green Grasshopper’ by her students) in Peking. Research was a different matter. She decided that it would be impossible to continue her interest in what was then seen as modern biology. Instead she turned towards the description and taxonomy of the amphibians and reptiles of China. During a long leave at the University of Pennsylvania in 1928-1929 she was in contact with the leading herpetologists of the day to learn all she could about the field and what she needed to do in order to become proficient. At the same time she avoided most of her old acquaintances in cytology and genetics who would undoubtedly have looked down their noses at a move to the world of dead frogs and museums. Pearl though, with whom she was in contact, was supportive. She had already met and helped Clifford H. Pope (1899-1974) on one of his numerous expeditions to China. Further assistance and support was obtained from G.K. Noble (1894-1940) and Albert Hazen Wright (1879-1970).

Boring returned to Yenching to enjoy the new laboratory she had designed and the formal opening of the university. However all was not sweetness and light. First there was the need to raise cash after the Wall Street Crash of 1929; Boring helped but reluctantly. Second there was Stuart, a widower since 1926, who attracted a coterie of female fans. Boring emerged as top dog after what can only be described as a cat-fight with her former friend and house-mate Grace Boynton who taught English. While Boynton was on leave, Boring began to have Sunday dinner with Stuart. When Boynton returned she joined them. Boring asked her to leave. The resultant mutual loathing lasted for many years even though in the end they came to some form of accommodation if not renewed friendship. Students saw Boring and Stuart walking hand in hand over the bridge on campus and tongues began to wag. One staff member noted that Boring became, in effect, social secretary and hostess to Leighton Stuart. She rode with him and travelled with him to make up a foursome on a camping trip. Members of the English department wrote a poem about her ‘something about the power behind the power behind the power behind the throne’. Whatever happened between them though, Stuart avoided permanent commitment. Indeed, during the Japanese occupation he brought one Alice Gregg to the campus. Gregg described herself as “just Stuart’s Shanghai Sweetie”. Grace Boynton described Boring as “frantic” but that Stuart “never seemed aware that AMB was green with jealousy”.

Leighton Stuart's house, Yenching University*

External political forces continued to have major effects on the university campus and student body. After Chiang Kai-shek became established as top warlord in 1930 to head a Nationalist government, Japanese encroachment and occupation of Manchuria was not met by firm action. Student protests demanding action against Japan erupted. Some faculty members backed the students; others Chiang Kai-shek. Boring met Madame Chiang (a former Wellesley student) and was impressed. Time after time, some incident sparked off protests and strikes. Eager to ensure the students did not waste all their time on patriotic protests, Boring once found herself on the wrong side of them when she attempted to hold a lecture during a demonstration.

1937 saw a major shift. Japanese forces pushed into China and occupied Peking. At the time Boring and other staff members of Yenching were on local leave 70 miles south of Peking. They made their way back via Canton and Hong Hong and the university carried on operating with the Japanese in occupation while to the south were the Nationalists and the Communists. Students from the south crossed the lines to and from Yenching, eager to get the best education in Yenching while becoming open to accusations of being unpatriotic. There was a degree of rapprochement between Boring and Boynton with the latter becoming the conduit for information from Yenching to Boring’s family in the U.S.A. since she chose to be evacuated (until returning to unoccupied China) while Boring was insistent on staying on.

After the attacks on Pearl Harbour and on Hong Kong, the foreigners in Yenching were interned, first on campus and then into houses left empty by American diplomats. Finally on 25 March 1943 they were moved to a camp—foul it goes without saying—in Shandong. However, she was not there that long because Alice Boring was down for repatriation in exchange for Japanese internees. She sailed with other Yenching staff on 24 August on board Teia Maru (crowded, dirty and short of food and water) for Goa, then belonging to neutral Portugal. A neutral ship, the Swedish M.S. Gripsholm then carried the 1,440 Americans and Canadians to Jersey City.

Alice Boring clearly felt it hard to be back in the U.S.A at the age of 60. Nobody, least of all her family, was really interested in her life in China and like so many long-term expatriates she remained wrapped up in Chinese affairs. She was a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, even while recognising the shortcomings of his regime. A couple of temporary teaching jobs occupied some of her time. It is not surprising that she headed back to Yenching as soon as it was possible to do so.

Returning to Yenching in September 1946, exactly one year after VJ-Day, she set about gathering equipment for her course. But the civil war was close. Stuart was made U.S. Ambassador to the Chinese government—an episode that did not end well. The end of 1948 brought Nationalist forces retreating through the campus followed by very polite Communist soldiers who got on well with both staff and students. The initial soft approach of the new regime to Western interests hardened. Political events and family tragedies beckoned Boring home. She left Yenching in August 1950 and died on 18 September 1955, aged 72. Grace Boynton, Alice Boring’s rival for Leighton Stuart’s attention, was given the job best described as ‘historical executor’, sorting her letters and papers on her life at Yenching for archiving.

In Part 2 I will cover Alice Boring’s contributions to herpetology and her lasting legacy in China.

*Photographs from International Mission Photography Archive, University of Southern California

Ogilvie MB, Choquette CJ, 1999. A Dame Full of Vim and Vigor: a Biography of Alice Middleton Boring: biologist in China. Amsterdam: Harwood.

Anon. 2014. Boring, Alice M. In Contributions to the History of Herpetology (Volume 1, revised and expanded), Edite by Kraig Adler, pp 107-108. Society for the Study of Reptiles and Amphibians.