Riverside, Calif., October, 2000 -- Two La Sierra University (LSU) professors were filmed for a Chinese television documentary which has the potential of reaching one billion viewers.

Rosalie Lynn, English instructor at La Sierra, invited an eight-person television crew to shoot video of a Chinese dragon robe (a Chifu) first owned by her grandfather, Francis E. Stafford, and then donated to the university. The robe is displayed in the Stahl Center for World Service, in La Sierra Hall. Ms. Lynn was interviewed by the Beijing journalists who are producing a six-hour documentary on Sun Yat-sen, first president of the Republic of China.

John Jones, PhD, dean of the School of Religion, also spoke to Chinese viewers, greeting them in Mandarin and Cantonese. The journalists pointed the camera at him, and through a translator, said, "Say something in Chinese!" Dr. Jones said, "We’re glad you’re all here, and we know you will find this robe as interesting as we do because it has such an interesting history."

Dr. Jones brought out a banner-sized paper, a monument rubbing with Chinese characters in neat rows. He explained that it was an account of Christianity coming to China in 635 AD with Bishop Alopen from Syria. The monument was erected in 781 AD, in Xian, western China.

The media crew is developing the six-hour documentary to highlight historical events surrounding the triumph of the nationalistic, constitutional revolutionaries over the tradition-bound, decaying Qing dynasty, according to Ms. Lynn. Chinese people see Sun Yat-sen and the nationalist revolution, which took place 90 years ago, in a similar manner to the way Americans remember George Washington.

Ms. Lynn says that her grandfather Stafford contributed to the development of the modern printing industry in China. In 1909, Commercial Press Limited, the largest publishing company in the Far East, based in Shanghai, hired Francis Stafford from Pacific Press, to train Chinese workers in the use of their newly acquired three-color printing presses and to develop their photoengraving department.

While in China, Stafford worked at the press during the day, and held evangelistic meetings in the evenings. He left the Commercial Press in 1913 and became the manager and treasurer of the Signs of the Times Publishing House, then director of the Jiangsu Mission. He took several hundred photographs during his years in China. They include images of battlefields with lines of cannons and piles of cannon balls, broadsheets covered with blood-written characters, men being executed on city streets, and Sun Yat-sen leaving Shanghai for Nanjing to be sworn in as provisional president of the newly constituted Republic of China.

The Shanghai Municipal History Museum will exhibit Stafford’s photographs in October of 2001, and is planning to publish a collection of the photos with Chinese and English text.

The Stafford story will be a sidebar to the television documentary. The crew visited La Sierra to film the robe. Francis Stafford acquired the richly embroidered silk robe after the fall of the Qing dynasty. It had been worn in the imperial court and its colors and the embroidered symbols indicated the rank and status of its owner (in this case a woman). The crew suggested that the robes were given to honored visitors to the imperial court (similar to our Biblical story of wedding garments being given to wedding guests). After the fall of the dynasty, these valuable robes were sought after by Western museums.

The robe’s symbols include dragons, pearls, and bats, which are embroidered in gold, blue, white, green, and red, on a brick-red silk background. Each stitch is almost microscopic, and there are so many layers of embroidery that the silk is nearly obscured by the workmanship. The dragons’ scales are layer upon layer of gold knots and stitches. It took years for several extremely skilled artisans to embroider the robe. The robe’s age is estimated at over 100 years.

After the interviews and filming, the Chinese journalists were treated to supper at La Sierra University Commons. LSU President Lawrence T. Geraty welcomed the team, and explained his fondness and respect for the Chinese people by saying that he spent the first years of his life in China. When the journalists heard this, they broke into smiles of recognition.