Nestled in the green hills near the coastal city of Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, is a village called Kuliang, which was once home to a vibrant international community. After the foreign residents left in the mid-20th century, people largely forgot about the thriving community that once called Kuliang home.

Decades later, the stories are being revived thanks to a trans-Pacific partnership. Using old photos, personal networks and new technology, a Chinese professor and a cultural researcher from the United States are rebuilding human connections lost to time.

The collaboration began in 2015, when Elyn MacInnis, a US citizen with strong family ties to China, traveled to Fuzhou with her husband to fulfill two wishes. The first was to scatter her father-in-law's ashes in the Minjiang River, which flows through Fuzhou, thereby honoring his wish to return to the city where he once lived and taught. The second, and more challenging task, was to find the family's old home in Kuliang.

To help with the search, they brought with them a collection of faded color photos taken in the 1940s. Among those who tried to help was Lin Yinan, a Fuzhou native and an associate professor at the Shanghai-based East China University of Science and Technology. "We got the photos and tried to identify the house, but we couldn't pinpoint its location," Lin recalled. "That's where the story began."

Sense of connection

That visit instilled a renewed sense of connection in MacInnis. Upon returning to the US, she delved deeper into the archives to uncover Kuliang's stories and began reaching out to other US families with connections to the mountain village, leading to the establishment of the Kuliang Friends group. The breakthrough came in 2016, when MacInnis found a map of Kuliang and a name list. But it was written in an incomprehensible script: English phonetic approximations of the Fuzhou dialect.

Lin stepped in to bridge the gap."I'm a local," Lin explained. "I can understand the dialect, and I speak both English and Chinese, so I could help decode it."

Lin's and MacInnis' skills proved complementary. In the US, MacInnis took on the role of archival detective, scouring libraries, family collections and online databases for photographs, letters and diaries. Lin in China became the decoder and field researcher, using his knowledge to translate names and verify locations on the ground.

"We instantly became the team — the Kuliang research team — the two of us," said MacInnis. The duo leveraged the time difference to work around the clock, joking that they simply took turns to sleep while the other worked, since they were on opposite sides of the world. "We worked basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week," MacInnis said, "as hard as we could — in archives, on the internet, with other people."

As the flow of information grew, a new challenge emerged: how could the unnamed faces in the old photographs be identified? Lin and his team of students engineered an innovative solution. They developed the Kuliang Genealogy system, which is China's first digital archive for an overseas community. Using facial recognition technology, the system scans old photos, identifies individuals and reconstructs family trees and social networks.

One of the human connections restored by the system led to an unusual reunion. It gave 85-year-old Gail Harris, whose family once spent their summers in Kuliang, the first-ever glimpse of her mother as a 21-year-old, as captured in a Fuzhou college faculty photo. For Lin, such moments strengthened his sense of mission: to rebuild a severed social fabric. "When I see old photos of Chinese and Americans staying together, I just want to tell their descendants, 'Look, your ancestors were good friends'," he said.

With their joint efforts, Lin and MacInnis have traced at least 80 families and 120 houses with links to Kuliang, and the Kuliang Friends network has expanded to comprise more than 50 members. Notable discoveries include the families of Ruth Hemenway, a US physician who served mothers and children in Minqing, Fujian, for 12 years, and Bruce Hayes, a Fuzhou-born hero who served in a coast-watching unit in support of the Flying Tigers during World War II.

"We keep coming across new stories," said MacInnis. "It will never be rote or boring because we find new people and new stories all the time."

Tangible reality

For her, the power of Kuliang lies in its tangible reality. "Kuliang is not abstract or idealized. It's real," she said, citing the true stories and returning descendants as living proof. The community, she noted, was made up of real people — teachers, doctors, scientists and farmers — who had lived, worked and built trust alongside their Chinese neighbors over generations.

This is not something automatic, MacInnis reflected. "The story really is seeing what happens when you take the time to be friends and to work together."

She added that the whole Kuliang bond program has been a joy. For her, it is not only about the historical discovery, but also the chance to share it with a new generation, so they could inherit that spirit.

"It is that friendship that is one of the anchors of peace," she said."We're all looking for that."

jihaisheng@chinadaily.com.cn