From Liverpool to Beijing and Chongqing: William Band’s Adventure in Wartime China

Abstract

Trained at University of Liverpool in both theoretical and experimental physics, William Band accepted in 1929 an appointment at Christian Yenching University in Beijing, China, where he established his career through the 1930s, heading the physics department and nurturing dozens of distinguished Chinese researchers in its MSc program. Despite the Japanese occupation of Beijing in summer 1937, Band continued his work at Yenching—an American property and an oasis of freedom for Chinese students in North China. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, Band joined a breathtaking and successful escape from Yenching, just before the Japanese raid reached the campus. He sought refuge in Communist guerrilla bases in North China, where he taught calculus, college physics, and radio theory to radio technicians of guerrilla forces. After trekking one thousand miles through Japanese occupied areas, escorted by Communist guerrillas, Band arrived first in Yan’an, the Chinese Communist headquarters, where he met and conversed with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and then in Chongqing, China’s wartime capital, where he served in the Sino-British Science Cooperation Office to help war-ridden Chinese scientists until his departure for Britain in December 1944. Band’s adventure provides a unique and useful lens to explore uncharted aspects of science in Republican China.