In 1943, the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) was forced to evacuate to the Canadian West China Mission in Chengdu, Sichuan. As part of an extraordinary mass migration to Free China during the Japanese occupation, the refugee PUMC transformed nursing at the Canadian mission, initiating the second university nursing program in the country. Both programs were closed by the new Communist government in 1951, and degree programs lay dormant in China for the next thirty-five years. Nursing Shifts in Sichuan offers both a cautionary tale about the fragility of transnational relations and a testament to the resilience of educated women.