By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
People came from all around the world to visit Northern Utah’s old Trappist monastery in Huntsville. For some—including six monks from China—the Ogden Valley abbey was not merely a destination or a curiosity, it was a place of refuge and respite.
Those six monks, along with other Cistercians, eventually started what for many years was called the Trappist Haven Monastery on Lantau Island near Hong Kong. The unusual monastic title recognized that the founders were refugees from the former Our Lady of Consolation Abbey in Yangjiaping, China, and from its daughterhouse, the former Our Lady of Joy Abbey in Zhengding (Chengtufu), about 190 miles southwest of Beijing.
In 1947, the same year (and almost the same time) that Kentucky Trappist monks founded Utah’s Holy Trinity Abbey, a mob provoked by Mao Zedong’s revolutionary communist army soldiers attacked and ransacked Our Lady of Consolation monastery. The monks were arrested, questioned, put on trial, and beaten. Those not killed immediately were cuffed, chained, and forced into a protracted death march.
The monks had to walk long distances carrying heavy loads, were denied rest, and were deprived of shelter despite terrible weather conditions. Many died during the journey and were buried in shallow graves along the way. Soldiers attacked the Our Lady of Joy monastery too, which the monks immediately evacuated as two brothers were killed. Kentucky monk Thomas Merton recounted some of these events in his 1949 book, The Waters of Siloe.
Writer Theresa Marie Moreau also provides a harrowing description of the monastic martyrdom in her 2017 book, Blood of the Martyrs: Trappist Monks In Communist China: “The death squad, Communist soldiers at the ready, loaded their rifles with fresh rounds of ammo. Shots rang out. The monks collapsed upon the blood-splashed, frozen ground. Their lifeless bodies dragged to a nearby sewage ditch and dumped into a heap, one on top of the other. Alerted by the shots, wild dogs, roaming the village’s dirt roads, scavenging for scraps, hurried over to the bodies to investigate. Sniffing, they lapped up the warm blood, steaming in the icy air. It was all over. Our Lady of Consolation was no more. By that spring of 1948, 33 of the abbey’s monks had been martyred during the Death March. Then the Chinese Communists went after Our Lady of Joy. By 1951, two more had died for the faith.”
The surviving monks fled south, dispersed, and some left China. Many found refuge at the Notre Dame de la Prairie Trappist monastery in St. Norbert, Manitoba, Canada. In 1951, they told newspaper reporters how they “ardently desired to return to China.” The displaced monks developed a plan to build a new abbey in British-controlled Hong Kong. Some of them briefly visited Holy Trinity Abbey in 1950, including future Hong Kong leader Father Paulinus Ly. Father Ly arrived in America after he had dressed in disguise and travelled about China trying to gather up the scattered monks.
In 1953, starting their journey back to Asia, six of the refugee monks stayed for eight months at the Huntsville, Utah monastery. Their names (see photo) were Fathers Victor Chu, Simeon Chang, Stanislaus Jen, Malachy Kao, Bede Hwang, and Benedict Chao. They all were from Our Lady of Joy, which had been home to some 70 monks before Mao’s army seized it in the middle of the last century.
Newspaper reports indicate that the Chinese Trappists came to Utah “to acquire the technique of dairy and farm administration” and to “polish up on their English.” The Utah monks said their six counterparts “deeply appreciate the ardent enthusiasm and Christlike charity of their American friends and benefactors who have contributed in no small measure to the re-establishment of the monastic life in the Orient.”
Ultimately, the new abbey in Hong Kong was renamed Our Lady of Joy too, in honor of the monastery from which the six monks who stayed in Utah had fled. It is still open today, home to about a dozen monks. They earn income primarily from a dairy and a bakery. One resident, Brother Nicholas Kao Se Tseien, lived to be 110 years old before passing away in 2007.
I have tried to learn what happened to the six Chinese monks who stayed in Utah some seventy years ago, but so far only have a few details.
I have not discovered any further information about Father Bede Hwang. Father Stanislaus Jen, an architect, designed the new Hong Kong abbey and started the dairy. Father Victor Zhu was the treasurer of Our Lady of Joy for several years. After surviving all the political and military unrest in his homeland, Father Malachy Kao died in 1957 from abdominal injuries inflicted by a bull on the abbey’s dairy farm.
The other two Utah visitors, Father Simeon Chang and Father Benedict Chao, eventually served as leaders of the Hong Kong Trappist community. Father Simeon had filled a similar role while in the United States, and had traveled and spoken to numerous Catholic groups to explain the plight of the Chinese Trappists. From his temporary homes in Canada and Utah, he also had spearheaded a fundraising campaign for the construction of the new Hong Kong abbey.
Father Benedict’s leadership role was especially remarkable, given his narrow escape from mainland China. Mao’s troops had shot him in 1947 while he was standing in his old monastery’s doorway. The bullet entered his left shoulder and emerged from his chest. Despite the long convalescence that followed, he continued his studies and was ordained a priest in Canada.
The Cistercian Order remains a truly diverse global organization today, with some 3,900 monks and nuns in about 160 monasteries all over the world, including—thanks to a little help from their Utah brothers—Hong Kong. A half century before an international cast of ski racers flew downhill at Ogden Valley’s Snowbasin resort during the 2002 Olympics, the Huntsville Trappist monks already had welcomed the world here.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
