As I watch the cultural fillers broadcast this week between Olympic events, I’m alert to references to the Forbidden City and its Zhong Shan Park. I look at the trees, watching for a cypress whose trunk rises straight to the sky but whose main branch shoots off to the side just above ground level, before rising as a parallel “second trunk.” I know that it’s highly unlikely that the tree still exists, in its distinctive shape, even in a place like China where so many things change so slowly, and I know it’s even more unlikely that I’d see the tree even if it still lives. But I’m somewhat of a romantic, so I continue to watch for it.

On assignment from church president Heber J. Grant, apostle David O. McKay and his companion Hugh J. Cannon made an around-the-world tour in 1920-21, visiting the missions, examining the business affairs of church schools in distant lands, and in general gathering impressions for what was really the first practical consideration of the church as a truly international organization. They arrived at the Peking [Beijing] train station on the evening of Saturday, January 8, 1921. Continue reading Does a Tree Still Grow in Beijing? →