Exile in One's Homeland: Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Mission

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Yingxia Yao for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies in History, History, and English presented on March 18, 2014.

Title: Exile in One’s Homeland: Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Mission.

Abstract approved: ______Hung-Yok Ip

This thesis examines the influence of Christian missions on Yung Wing (1828-1912) during the nineteenth century, when China was beginning to encounter the

West. Yung was the first Chinese graduate student to enter an American institution of higher education (Yale College, 1854). As a Westernized Christian intellectual, he strove to reshape China by following the American model he learned at Yale. His main project was the Chinese Educational Mission or CEM (1872-81).

The CEM was an early initiative of the self-strengthening movement (1861-1895), an experiment in America supported by the Chinese government. Unfortunately, the

CEM was cut short in midstream and recalled in 1881. This mission itself was a cross-cultural phenomenon aimed at connecting two different cultures. To examine the causes for the revocation of the CEM, I focus on the cultural and personal conflicts between the Qing officials and Yung Wing.

Yung Wing’s life was a paradox with respect to his knowledge of the West. His identification of Western culture was both his strength and his weakness. On one hand, his Western-oriented view helped him perceive China’s weakness and initiate a reformist project. Yet on the other hand, his pro-Western attitude became an obstacle that prevented his plans from being carried out completely. He experienced deep alienation when he returned to China. Though Yung’s educational project of

Americanizing China was not completed, Yung’s life was fulfilled through his students’ continuous contribution to China’s modernization. Yung’s protégés made crucial contributions to the Chinese state, as they were very active in the New

Navy, the Customs Administration, the mines, the railways, and the consular and diplomatic services. Some of them rose to prominence through the fine products of the Chinese Educational Mission, and through them Yung’s dream lived on.

Exile in One’s Homeland: Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Mission

by Yingxia Yao

A THESIS

submitted to

Oregon State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies

Presented March 18, 2014 Commencement June 2014

Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies thesis of Yingxia Yao presented on March 18, 2014

APPROVED:

Major Professor, representing History

Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program

Dean of the Graduate School

I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my thesis to any reader upon request.

Yingxia Yao, Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have many people to thank for their help and support in completing this work.

I am grateful to have had Hung-yok Ip as my advisor. I thank her for reading my very first rough draft, as well as the continuous revisions and reviews of many drafts until the end. My deep thanks to her for much valuable advice, patience, and devotion to this thesis.

Gary Ferngren, my mentor and friend, provided many corrections to my second draft.

I thank him for being an example for me. His encouragement and support in many ways sustained me through both good and hard times.

I am grateful to Wilma Hull, whose generous financial support made it reality for me to study at OSU.

I am grateful for being awarded the Provost’s Distinguished Graduate Fellowship by the OSU Graduate School on the nomination of David Bernell, director of the

Interdisciplinary Studies Program, and with the strong support of Hung-yok Ip and

Gary Ferngren. This generous fellowship enabled me complete my study.

I also thank Raymond Malewitz for being on my committee and helping me revise my paper. What I learned from his class will, I believe, benefit me for the rest of my life.

I also thank Jack Higginbotham for serving as Graduate Council Representative.

I thank too Yanwan Huang for helping me with Chinese documents, which I was not able to have access to in the United States.

Many thanks to my dear friends, Jeffery Wolf, Hongmei Wolf, Ethan Wolf, Haejin

Kim, Paul Cheong, Sarah Song, the Griffiths family, Piawah Sim, Kok Meng Lam,

Quan Zhou, Liping Hu, Huayu Li, Yanqin Zou, Jennifer Miller, Catherine Fang,

Yayu Guo, Mahdieh Tavakol, Jindan Chen, Wanda Mitchell, Amy Stutzman, Tina

Mills, and Carol Meyer, for their long-lasting support and encouragement.

And finally my very special appreciation to my husband Chaoqiang Zhang, whose selfless love and support for all these years is the most beautiful blessing to me.

Without him this work would not exist. I dedicate it to my husband and my nine- months-old baby son Samuel, whose coming into this world brought me tremendous joy and forever changed my life in a way of being both grateful and humble. And my endless thanks to my aging parents, who are my everlasting love.

Writing is a lonesome journey, but it is a sweet comfort to know that Someone is there, always, to listen to and be with me. I am grateful for being known by Him.

Y.X.Y.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2 Yung Wing’s Western Education under Christian Influence ...... 6

2.1 Primary Education in Macao and Hong Kong ...... 8

2.2 At Monson Academy and in Yale College ...... 15

2.2.1 Yung Wing and Samuel Robbins Brown ...... 15

2.2.2 As a Yale man of 1854 ...... 21

Chapter 3 The Chinese Educational Mission ...... 24

3.1 Preparations for the Chinese Educational Mission ...... 24

3.2 The Chinese Educational Mission ...... 32

3.3 Recall of the Chinese Educational Mission ...... 36

Chapter 4 Conclusion ...... 54

Bibliography ...... 59

Chapter 1 Introduction

Since 1978, when China began pursuing the “reform and opening” policy, there are about 1.2 million Chinese students and scholars studying abroad, most of them studying in the United

States. This constituted the third wave of overseas Chinese students. The second wave was made up by those, whose studies were paid for with the Boxer Indemnity funds that the United States remitted in 1908. By the mid-1920s, there were about 1600 students and scholars in America.1

The first wave consisted of the students of the Chinese Educational Mission (CEM, 1872-81), supported by the Qing government, in which 120 Chinese boys were sent to America for learning

Western military techniques and science. In 1850 there was only one Chinese student, Yung

Wing (1828-1912), who studied in American higher education system. This thesis examines

Yung Wing and his main project, the CEM.

In China today Yung Wing’s name is well known as the first Chinese student who graduated from an American institution of higher education (Yale, 1854). Both Yung’s western education and his career in westernizing China, have been the subject of several studies. More particularly,

Western influences on him, his role in the short-lived CEM to the United States and its recall have been considerably explored by previous writers.2 However, not as well described are the

1 Edward J. M. Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World: The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States, 1872-81 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), introduction, 1; Shu Xincheng 舒新城, Jindai Zhongguo liuxue shi 近代中国留学史 (A History of Overseas Students in Modern China) (Shanghai shudian, 1989), 7-13. 2 Cf., Bill Lann Lee, “Yung Wing and the Americanization of China,” Amerasia 1(1971): 25-32; Edmund H., Jr. Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” Pacific Historical Review, 34(1965): 265-287; Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World; Thomas E LaFargue, China’s First Hundred: Educational Mission Students in the United States, 1872-1881 (Pullman: Washington State

Christian influences on him and his career and his Christian faith. Though once Yung Wing refused an opportunity to serve as a missionary in China, as a Christian layman, he sought to live out of the commands of Jesus in the sermon on the Mount through his career as an initiator and promoter of the CEM and later as a Chinese minister to the United States. Hence he maintained his intellectual and familial loyalty to the West and his patriotism to China as a nation rather than to the Manchu emperor.3

On one hand, there is little doubt of Yung’s earnest love for China. Previous writers had done a considerable research on Yung’s patriotism.4 Scholars like Daniel Bays and Ryan Dunch, have drawn their attention to the patriotism of Chinese Protestants and explored extensively their political involvement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 5 As a Chinese Christian intellectual, Yung committed his whole life to the welfare of China. In 1854 after graduation from Yale, Yung chose to go back to his homeland, which was more alien to him though

America was an inviting environment to him. He actually became a U.S. citizen in 1852. Yung returned to China not as a religious preacher but as a cultural missionary. He considered Western

University Press, 1987); William Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem ‘The Closure of the Educational Mission in America,’” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 18 (1955): 50-73. 3 Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 282. 4 See more articles in Wu Wenlai 吴文莱, Rong Hong yu Zhongguo jindaihua 容闳与中国近代化 (Yung Wing and China’s Modernization). Zhuhai: Zhuhai chubanshe. 珠海:珠海出版社, 1999. 5 See Bays’s A New History of Christianity in China (Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), and Dunch’s Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857-1927 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

culture superior to his traditional Chinese culture and hence shouldered a mission to regenerate

China with Western technology and education.6

On the other hand, Western education changed Yung’s mind and inward nature. His attachment to Western culture was strong. His roots in the United States were deep. This personal transformation through Western learning and conversion to Christianity served him to strive to reform China. As a reformer, Yung desired to Westernize China after the American model.

Westernization or Americanization meant two different levels. At the individual level, Yung meant to adopt American educational philosophy, which was to train an entire man: physically, intellectually, and morally. Specifically, when Yung was in Yale, the source of moral training came from Biblical morality. 7 At the national level, Yung hoped that China could become

Americanized by introducing Western science and technology, as well as Western literature and religion. Yung’s life work, the CEM, was the actual implementation of his idea of

Westernization.

Yung himself was a great example of Americanization. It could be seen from several rudimentary aspects: his long years of Western education, his marriage to an American wife, his conversion to Christianity, his nationalization in 1852, and finally his permanent residence in

6 I borrowed the term cultural missionary from Bill lann Lee in his paper, “Yung Wing and the Americanization of China,” 28. This term is accurate to describe both Yung’s strong affection for China and his favor Western culture over Confucianism. 7 Yung’s view on education was influenced most by Samuel Robins Brown and Noah Porter. The former emphasized to train an entire man. The latter insisted religious training and intellectual pursuits should not be separated. When Yung was in Yale, Porter was a professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics. Porter firmly valued classical curriculum. He believed that the first obligation of a teacher was to be a model of the Christian gentleman. Through kindness, love, and wisdom teachers inspired students intellectually and morally. Porter was the president of Yale from 1871 to 1886. See Anita Marchant, “Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Commission in Hartford” (M.A. Thesis, Trinity College, 1999), 82-85, 128.

America since the 1870s. Yung bestrode two worlds. On one hand, he immersed himself in the

Western environment and absorbed American culture. He had adopted a Western mind set and the way of thinking. On the other hand, being a Chinese living in America, he never ceased pursuing the welfare for his homeland. He was both patriotic and idealistic, which his Christian outlook granted. In the words of a contemporary James L. Bowen, Yung “was to be the means, in God’s providence, of opening the door of a new and broader national life for his countrymen.”8

The Chinese Educational Mission was an early initiative of the self-strengthening movement

(1861-95), an experiment in America supported by the Chinese government. This mission itself was a cross-cultural phenomenon. Its beginning and end dealt with encounters and contacts between two cultures. In my thesis, I will make use of Yung Wing’s autobiography My Life in

China and America (1909), and his letters written between 1840s and 1880s. Yung’s autobiography, from his boyhood to 1898 when he returned to China for the last time, traced the development of his project. Yung’s letters, written to his American friends, who were missionaries to China, are crucial since they contained Yung’s views on American culture, as well as Chinese culture. Except for Yung’s memoirs and letters, I also use the diary and journal of his closest friend Joseph H. Twichell (1838-1918). Twichell had a thirty years’ friendship with

Yung. Since 1872, Twichell witnessed the second half of Yung’s life.

In giving primacy to Christian influences on Yung, which in return became a sustained motivation for his life work, I will argue that Yung, as a beneficiary of Christian missions, departed from traditional Confucianism and that in Western culture he experienced personal

8 James L Bowen, “Yung Wing and His Work,” Scribner's Monthly 10(1875): 106.

transformation by and after which he pursued a thorough westernization of China peculiarly through his educational scheme, the Chinese Education Mission. This thesis consists of two major sections (1) Christian influences on Yung’s Westernized education, and (2) Yung Wing and his life work –the Chinese Educational Mission.

Chapter 2 Yung Wing’s Western Education under Christian Influence

Christian missions have a long history in China, but from the seventh century down to the sixteenth century the Christian presence never became permanent until the Jesuit missions. The

Jesuits were brought to China with the founders of the first European seaborne empires in the second half of the sixteenth century. Similar circumstances brought about the entrance of

Protestantism to China in the early nineteenth century when the industrial revolution and new maritime technology empowered the British seaborne empire. In the first decades of the 19th century, the last Qing dynasty was shaken by several disturbing religious events, among which were the apparent near success of the White Lotus rebellion and the Eight Trigrams uprising.

Vigilant of religious groups’ activities, the Chinese court ordered a close surveillance of the so- called “evil cults,” that included Catholic Christianity. Under such circumstances the Catholic church in China had a difficult time surviving, let alone to flourishing. It was in the decades after

1800 that Protestantism appeared in China for the first time. The arrival of the Protestants complicated the Chinese religious landscape. The first Protestant was Robert Morrison (1782-

1834) of the London Missionary Society (LMS), who arrived in China in 1807. From 1807 to the night before the outbreak of the Opium War in 1839, there were about fifty Protestant missionaries assigned to China, but only a handful stayed for a long time. However, the cost of the efforts to advance evangelism was great. Missionaries had to overcome language obstacles and faced frequent illnesses among themselves and their family members. More than this, they were required to live within the tiny enclave of Macau on the coast that was imposed by Chinese government policy on foreigners. In the trading season, foreigners could reside in Canton but were confined to a certain tiny space. Even more troubling for missionaries was the small

number of Chinese converts, fewer than one hundred up to 1839 since their first presence in

China. The 1830s were a difficult time for both Protestant and Catholic missionaries.9

Missionaries in China have been the most immediate channel of Western influence in human and personal terms. Protestants, in the early nineteenth century, were not only interested in saving the

Chinese souls. They also were eager to help them improve their way of life through the dissemination of modern knowledge.10 The Protestant missions were often engaged in education, medicine, publishing, printing, and translating.11 These secular careers were generally considered a means of evangelism. Schools run by Protestant missions were a significant feature of the educational landscape in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Yet about ten years ago

Christian education, as Ryan Dunch pointed out, was “neglected in scholarly treatments of the history of modern education in China.”12 Christian missions were often classed as one facet of the aggression of Western imperialist powers by Chinese nationalists both in the Communist period and earlier in the 1920s. By the same logic, Chinese Christian converts were labeled as

“either pawns of foreign interests or an otherworldly minority of no political importance.”13 It is until recent years that scholars begin to reconsider impacts of Christian missions objectively, more particularly, their educational contributions to promoting individual social mobility, careers and welfare, which served as mediators to enhance a nation’s progress and prosperity.

9 See Daniel Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), chapter 2 & 3. 10 Ssu-yu Teng and John K Fairbank, China’s Response to the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 134. 11 See Li Zhigang, Jidujiao zaoqi zaihua chuanjiao shi. 12 Ryan Dunch, “Mission Schools and Modernity: The Anglo-Chinese College, Fuzhou,” in Education, Culture and Identity in Twentieth-century China, ed. Peterson Glen, Hayhoe Ruth, and Yongling Lu, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 112. 13 Ryan Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857-1927 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), xvi.

Protestants often resided in coastal cities such as Hong Kong, Macao, and Canton. It was from these places that many of the earliest Chinese modernizers emerged. “A sizeable number of these pioneers were either Christians or deeply indebted to Christian missionaries for their ideas and views.”14 Yung Wing was one of these forerunners. He received Western education in such a religious milieu in Southern China.

2.1 Primary Education in Macao and Hong Kong

Yung Wing (Rong Hong or Jung Hung) was born on November 17th, 1828, in the small village of Nan Ping (now Zhuhai). China in 1828 was still isolated, with no ports open to international trade except Canton, which was open only for a short time throughout a year. But Yung’s birthplace was four miles from Macao, which was a Portuguese trading colony and given much exposure to Western influence. Yung was the second son of a humble peasant family. The events of his early education suggest a departure from traditional Confucian learning, which most of his contemporaries had. At the age of seven he was put in Mrs. Gutzlaff’s mission school for girls as one of only two boys. Yung explained as a “mystery” the fact that he was not enrolled in the orthodox Confucian school where his brother was put. He later speculated that his father anticipated increased contact between China and the West and believed that a Western education would be beneficial to gain a career in business or diplomacy.15 As he wrote, “This I take to be the chief aim that influenced my parents to put me into Mrs. Gutzlaff’s Mission school.” 16 In a

Christian view, he summed up that events in his life “were entirely left to Him who has control

14 John K Fairbank ed., the Cambridge History of China, Vol. 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 538. 15 Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909), 3. 16 Mrs. Gutzlaff was the wife of Charles Gutzlaff, a medical missionary in the early 19th century. Ibid.

of all our devising and planning, as they are governed by a complete system of divine laws of antecedents and consequences, or of cause and effect.”17

Mission schools at the very outset had difficulty in attracting Chinese students. Most of the students were from the lower classes. The only parents willing to place their boys under the charge of Westerners were the very poor; those in some way connected with the missionaries or the foreign patrons of the school, or parents who had been observant enough to realize that mastering English could help get well paid in the business circles of the south coast. It was under such conditions that Yung entered Mrs. Gutzlaff’s school. English was taught so that students could read the Bible and some other Christian literature like Pilgrim's Progress. 18 Both the teachings and Christian personality of Mrs. Gutzlaff had a long-lasting influence on Yung Wing.

He remembered her in his memoirs as a remarkable woman full of “kindness and sympathy” and he came to respect her as one like a mother to him19.

In 1839, Mrs. Gutzlaff’s school was disbanded after Yung attended it for about four years. Mrs.

Gutzlaff took three blind girls with her to the United States. Yung had to return to his village and resumed his Chinese studies. The Sino-British Opium war broke out in 1840. Though the

Chinese emperor and most of the officials did not even know where England was, let alone appreciated of Western “barbarian” technology and tongues, Yung already gained some English skills, which later earned him several rice sheaves.20

17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 8. 19 Ibid., 4. 20 Ibid., 9-10.

In 1840 Yung’s father died, which made the burden of supporting a family fall upon him and his siblings. He had to support his family by “hawking candy” through his own village and neighboring village.21 Later his English skills got him a job helping a Roman Catholic priest fold papers. Yung’s destiny would have been different if it were not for Mrs. Gutzlaff’s concern.

Before she left for America, she asked Dr. Benjamin Hobson, a medical missionary, to look for

Yung and bring him to the newly-established Morrison Education Society School, an institution named after Robert Morrison, the first English Protestant in China. Yung left the printing office and came home to seek his mother’s consent. With some reluctance, she finally agreed. Yung’s departure from traditional learning at the very beginning was made possible by his parents. But the pursuit of an unconventional education was then chosen by him, a twelve-year-old boy. The decision was made against his mother’s will, since most of his contemporaries sought official success through Confucian learning and a civil-service examination, Yung fixed his mind upon

“barbarian” learning, the first time that Yung cast his lot with Western side.

Opened at Macau in 1839, the Morrison Education Society was formed by foreign merchants and missionaries in memory of the Rev. Robert Morrison. The Rev. Samuel Robbins Brown (1810-

1880), an American missionary and Yale graduate, was the principle of the school. In 1841, when Yung arrived, there were already five other boys enrolled. 22 Yung was the youngest student in his class. When the first Opium War ended in 1842, the school was relocated to Hong

Kong. It remained there until it was closed in 1850. Like Mrs. Gutzlaff’s school, the Morrison school had a difficult time in getting the Chinese students enrolled. Twenty years later, Tongwen

21 Ibid., 9. 22 The five boys are Yung Wing, Wong Shing, Li Kan, Chow Wan, Tong Chik, and Wong Foon. Since they, including a few other persons, are best known by their Cantonese names, I retained here their Cantonese names, for other Chinese names I keep the Mandarin Pinyin romanization.

Guan the government-established language school in Beijing, faced the same problem as the

Morrison school did. Knight biggerstaff writes:

It was said that the families of bannermen called to the Peking school regarded studying there such [as] a disgrace that they resisted it with every available means and that only boys who were so stupid or so lazy that they could make no progress in the banner schools or whose families were without political influence of any kind actually enrolled.23 During the 1860s, only a few progressive officials, who were supporters of self-strengthen movement, acknowledged Western technology but not Western values. Not until the Sino-

Japanese War in 1894 did sinocentrism completely to give way to an idea that China was only one nation in the world.

While the Chinese viewed themselves as the center of the world, Yung’s Western education enabled him to gain a new perspective, which was formed in the Morrison school. He advanced far ahead of his contemporaries. To consider the influence the Morrison school had on its students, the central question becomes what the students learned in it. The students studied arithmetic, geography, and reading, with classes in English training in the morning and Chinese in the afternoon. The school aimed to train Chinese to gain knowledge of both Western learning and Chinese education so that they could identify themselves with the welfare of the Chinese and advance China’s enlightenment by transmitting the benefits of their Western education. The school’s objective was to provide its students with the dynamism of Western thought, which drove the mind in a quest of knowledge and “truth” for its own sake.24 But “truth” here was not

23 Timothy Weston, The Power of Position: Beijing University, intellectuals, and Chinese political culture, 1898-1929 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 14-15. 24 Carl Smith, Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 21.

the Chinese understanding of the ethics of truth, which denoted the maintenance of harmonious personal relationships. Truth was defined as a kind of religious understanding that conveyed moral “absolutism.” This absolutism came from the Bible, the word of the Christian God. After several years’ study in this school, most of the Chinese students acquired a biblical perspective, which can be seen by their letters. These letters were written in English, and they reveal that these students had a good command over the English language as well as were able to reflect on religious issues from a Christian perspective. One of those students gave labor a religious explanation through the letter:

In order to secure our happiness, it is necessary that men should labour. It is the inevitable lot of men, but it is a blessing, which lays the foundation of future happiness as well as present. Now let us labour; labour not riches; labour for good: labour for our fellowmen: labour for the glory of our Creator: and remember that our labour will not be in vain. The Lord will reward us in this world, and that which it to come.25 It is not coincidental that the ethic of labor or work conveyed in this letter is resonant with the

Puritan’s understanding of work as a calling from God. The students’ acquired a protestant perspective that set them apart and sometimes was viewed as a threat to their fellows.

There was also a rift between Western education and Chinese learning in the eyes of the Chinese students. When they identified with Western education, the students began questioning and criticizing Chinese learning. Yung Wing wrote a letter in 1842 that was presented to the Trustees of the School. Interestingly this letter prophetically reflected Yung Wing’s future role in the promotion of the Chinese Educational mission:

The Chinese have schools, but they learn but few things, and their learning is different from that of other nations. They only repeat their lessons, without thinking or understanding them. When they have learned five or six years, their teacher explains to them a little out of the book. I think

25 Chinese Repository, XIV (1845): 512, in Smith, Chinese Christians, 31.

there not one school in China as good as the schools in the United States or in England. There are a great many Chinese boys and girls not educated as in your country, because the Chinese are stingy fellows. That is the reason they can’t have good education.26 Yung Wing also criticized China in one of his letters to Mrs. Brown: “In our country the people are so proud that they swell up as balloons.”27 These two passages clearly show that Yung considered Western schools and their way of learning to be superior to Chinese ones.

In 1847 Mr. Brown announced that he had to return to the States because of ill health. But he would like to take three students with him to the United States to complete their education. Yung wrote, “When he [Brown] requested those who wished to accompany him to the States to signify it by rising, I was the first one on my feet.”28 Besides Yung, the other two boys were Wong Foon and Wong Shing. Although Yung had no idea of this distant country of America at the age of eighteen, his eleven years in missionary schools directed him to this unknown place without hesitation. But first Yung had to go home and ask his mother’s permission. He recalled:

My mother gave her consent with great reluctance, but after my earnest persuasion she yielded, though not without tears and sorrow. I consoled her with the fact that she had two more sons besides myself, and a daughter to look after her comfort. Besides, she was going to have a daughter-in-law to take care of her, as my elder brother was engaged to be married.29 In Yung’s time it was taught that a Chinese son ought not to travel to a distance where he would not be able to pay the services owing to his parents. Confucius said, “While his parents are alive, the son may not go abroad to a distance. If he does go abroad, he must have a fixed place to which he goes.”30 For Yung, the cost of going abroad was a temporary sacrifice of filial duty. His

26 New York Observer, 25 June 1842, 101, in Smith, Chinese Christians, 24. 27 Smith, Chinese Christians, 25. 28 Yung, My Life, 18. 29 Yung, My Life, 19. 30 Confucian Analects, trans. by James Legge, 1893, http://www.cnculture.net/ebook/jing/sishu/lunyu_en/04.html (last accessed on February, 2, 2014).

decision showed again that Western learning had a great attraction to him. The whole event revealed that Yung deemed Western education of much more value than Chinese Confucian learning. Yung “resolved in favor of the West.”31

In turn, several patrons in Hong Kong promised to support the three students’ families during their expected two-year sojourn in the States. They also promised to support (defray) the students’ expenses while in America. Yung recalled that they included two Scotchmen, Andrew Shortrede, editor of the “Hong Kong China Mail,” and A. A. Campbell, as well as A. A. Ritchie, an

American merchant, and the Olyphant Sons, David, Talbot and Robert, three brothers, who later became leading merchants of New York. Yung recollected with gratitude:

Though late in the day for me to mention the names of these benefactors who from pure motives of Christian philanthropy aided me in my education, yet it may be a source of satisfaction to their descendants, if there are any living in different parts of the world, to know that their sires took a prominent part in the education of the three Chinese youths, Wong Shing, Wong Foon and myself.32 If we associate these students’ careers with the education the Morrison school provided, it is not hard to find that it proved to be successful and beneficial to its students. The school provided a ladder of mobility for its students, especially those from the lower classes. As for the first class of the school, Wong Foon graduated from the University of Edinburgh, where he studied medicine and became the first Chinese to obtain a degree in Western medicine. He practiced medicine in Canton and taught at the Canton Hospital Medical School. Wong Shing served for twenty years as superintendent of the London Missionary Society press and later collaborated with Wang Tao in establishing the Chinese daily, Xunhuan ribao (Universal Circulating Herald).

He led the second Chinese Educational Commission to the United States and served as

31 Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 272. 32 Yung, My Life, 19-20.

interpreter for the Chinese legation in Washington.33 Tong Chik, known as Tong King-sing, organized China’s first steamship company. He also inspired the building of China’s first native- built railroad and China’s first modern coal mines. Another of the students was employed by Lin

Zexu, the imperial commissioner sent to Canton in 1839 to suppress the opium trade, as an interpreter.34 Yung Wing’s upward mobility began with his education at Mrs. Gutluff’s school and the Morrison Society School, through which he obtained the opportunity to further his education in the United States. His educational pursuit led to his deep immersion in Western learning, and culminated in a university degree. Yung’s Western education launched him into a new phase of the career. As the first returned Chinese student, he moved beyond the translation profession and became a successful tea merchant. He then got involved in politics. His association with a few influential reformist officials took his career to the international stage. He served as Deputy Commissioner for the CEM, and then associate minister to the U.S., Spain, and

Peru.

2.2 At Monson Academy and in Yale College

2.2.1 Yung Wing and Samuel Robbins Brown

It was an exciting moment for Yung to come to the United States though the journey was a long and boring one. Brown and the three boys, in 1847, took the ship “Huntress” run by the Olyphant

Brothers, who gave them a free passage. The ship took the old route from China through the

Dutch East Indies, and around the Cape of Good Hope to New York. After ninety-eight days,

33 See Nicolas Standaert, and R. G. Tiedemann, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume Two, 1800 to the present (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 253-54. 34 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 19-20.

they finally arrived in America. Study in America proved to be a turning point in Yung’s life.

The person Yung felt most deeply indebted was Brown, who was Yung’s mentor and friend.

Brown was a pioneer missionary in Asia. He worked for nine years in China and twenty years in

Japan. Brown’s influence on Yung was revealed in many aspects.

First, Brown enrolled the boys at Monson Academy and placed them under the care of his own mother, Mrs. Phoebe H. Brown. Under Mrs. Brown’s Christian influence, Yung converted to

Christianity and became a member of the Monson Congregational Church during the two years at Monson. We do not have evidence to show when Yung became a Christian, but it could be speculated that it happened during his studies at Monson before his enrollment at Yale. The

Church of Christ at Yale under the date June 1, 1851 had a note about Yung’s Christian affiliation: “Yung Wing admitted on letter.” Edmund H. Worthy explained this note as “Yung was a member of a church at Monson which sent a letter to the Yale Church of Christ attesting to his faith and membership in the church.”35 But Worthy speculated that Yung was converted to

Christianity before he came to America for he believed that “Brown, the missionary, probably would not have gone to the trouble of bringing a heathen to America.”36 However, Yung’s life- long friend Twichell, in his opening address before the Kent Club of the Yale Law School in

1878, said that Yung became a Christian when he lived in Mr. Brown’s mother’s family. “Mr.

Brown’s mother was…a royal woman whose name is memorable in the church of Christ as that of the author of the hymn, ‘I love to steal awhile away.’ It was while a member of her godly

35 Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 271. 36 Ibid.

household that Yung Wing became a Christian believer.”37 Since Twichell and Yung had thirty years’ friendship, Twichell’s explanation is more reliable.

Second, Brown acted as Yung’s mentor and guardian to keep him from any harmful influences.

The arrival of the three boys at Monson created a sensation to the local people. The three

Chinese boys were in a garb never before seen in Monson. “They were taken as girls because of their long cue. Their caps, cues, and silk coats furnished themes for conversation in church, school, and street.”38 Brown kept a close eye on the boys’ studies and growth. He reported their early days in America to the Morrison society:

The boys have been highly gratified and often surprised at what they have seen from place to place, and wherever they have been, have won the esteem of all who know them. Of course they have been great objects of curiosity, and it has been annoying to them to be gazed at; but their aversion to it is a security against any evil consequences, while I have taken every pains to keep them out of sight, and unexposed to temptation…Hitherto there is not the slightest symptom of injury to the boys. On the contrary they are noted for their modesty, Grammar, Natural Philosophy, and Day’s Algebra, with Composition and Elocution, and they do as well as any of the 17 and 18 in their class and better than a good many.39 Third, Brown helped Yung many times financially. Before they departed for America, Brown helped to find three Hong Kong benefactors who promised financial provision for the boys’ studies abroad and their parents for two years during their absence. At Yale, Yung had financial

37 Joseph H. Twichell, “An Address Delivered before the Kent Club of the Yale Law School, April 10, 1878,” in Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909), 252. 38 William Elliot Griffis, L. H. D., A Maker of the New Orient: Samuel Robbins Brown – Pioneer Educator in China, America, and Japan: The Story of his Life and Work (New York & Chicago & Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1902), 108. 39 Morrison Education Society Annual Report, 1847 (Hong Kong, 1847), 7-8, in Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 267.

problems, which were finally resolved by Brown, who managed to secure some funding for

Yung from the Ladies Association of Savannah, Georgia.40

Brown brought Yung to his family and friends, whose support later laid the foundation for

Yung’s life work. From serving as Yung’s teacher in China to becoming Yung’s mentor in

America, Brown was the most significant person who transformed Yung’s life trajectory. Yung’s two sons, Morrison Brown and Barlett Golden, were named after Robert Morrison, the first

Protestant missionary to China, Samuel Brown, and Shubuel Barlett, at whose house Yung stayed when he first arrived in America.41 William E. Griffis’s biography on Brown recorded

Yung’s writings in 1901, which showed Brown’s early educational influence on Yung:

In the schoolroom Dr. Brown was at home. He had tact, patience, and kindly ways. He easily won the confidence of his scholars, by coming down to their level. There was none of that austerity and sham loftiness which characterize some school-teachers, who wish to hide their shallowness and lack of pedagogic resources by keeping their pupils off at a distance. He was one of those rare men who mold and shape the character of the age through the men who they have trained. The men who had the privilege of the doctor’s early training, though few in number, have yet all turned out well, and have done work in after-life creditable to any teacher. The doctor took pride in them, while they cherish his memory and that of Mrs. Brown, the companion of his toil, with the deepest gratitude and reverence.42 Upon the close of the expected two years at Monson, Yung developed a strong desire to obtain an American liberal education, which was clearly revealed in Yung’s letter to a famous missionary Sinologist and Morrison Education Society trustee Samuel Wells Williams, whom

Yung had met in Hong Kong. He wrote:

40 Yung, My Life, 36. 41 Lee, “Yung Wing and the Americanization of China,” 30. 42 Griffis, A Maker of the New Orient, 104. Since this book was published in 1902, there are no bibliography, footnotes, and other citations.

As Ashing is going back to China this month, it gives me a good opportunity to write to you.43 How long I am going to stay here is a question not yet decided but you will probably hear from me with regard to that point in my next letter which I anticipate to write…I have one particular and important subject which I wish to communicate to you in this letter, and if you are so kind as to carry out what I greatly desire, you will do me a favor which has a intimate relation to my future sphere of life. The one and particular subject is this, that I earnestly wish that you would give employment to my brother Yung Asum and, if I do not ask too much, I have one more request to make which is this, that I wish you would talk to my uncle Yung Ming Cheong about my staying in this country several years longer. The reason why I made these requests of you is perhaps obvious, for I have a great inclination to get a liberal education, and there is great probability so much so that it amounts to almost certainty that I am going to stay…44 Williams was Yung’s another important Christian friend. Yung sought Williams’s mentorship through frequent correspondence with him when he entered Yale. Williams also provided advice and occasional material help for Yung either to find a job for Yung’s brother or buy Chinese books for Yung. 45 In the same letter on April 15, 1849, to Williams, Yung described how his compatriots including his family members devalued Western learning. He continued to privilege

Western learning:

Of course you are aware that my feelings would not allow me to leave my mother and the brothers and sisters, since I promised them all when I left China to return in two or three years and you know ful [sic] well the prejudice of the Chinese, how they misrepresent things, and that they are not able to see as you or any enlightened mind do, the object, the advantage, and value of being educated.

43 Ashing is Wong Shing. He returned to China in the spring of 1849 because of ill health. Worthy’s research discovered that Yung had a memory error with the time of Wong Shing’s return. See his paper “Yung Wing in America,” 268. 44 Unpublished letter from Yung Wing to Samuel Wells Williams, April 15, 1849, Yale Sterling Memorial Library (Hereafter referred to as YSML), in Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 268. 45 Because Yung chose to remain in America rather than go to Scotland, he lost the support of his patrons in Hong Kong. He also lost his patrons’ support for his family. That was why he asked Williams to find a job for his brother.

Ignorance and superstition have sealed the noble faculties of their minds, how can they appreciate things of such worth?46 Meanwhile he felt tortured for not going back as he promised. Once again seeking after a

Western education temporarily surpassed his filial duties. Since Yung declined the three Hong

Kong patrons’ offer to go Scotland for further study, he was beset by financial difficulties. His future was uncertain with no funding to maintain his stay in America. As a Christian, he had trust in God’s providence. “I threw all my anxieties to the winds, trusting to a wise Providence to care for my future, as it had done for my past.”47 Yung was later advised that the trustees of the

Monson Academy would appropriate funds for him on the condition that he signed a pledge that he would go back to China as a missionary after graduation. This opportunity was regarded as

God’s provision by his Christian friends. To their surprise, Yung declined this financial backing by believing that the pledge would limit his usefulness. He wanted to keep open his choices for service to China. He wrote:

I wanted the utmost freedom of action to avail myself of every opportunity to do the greatest good in China. If necessary, I might be obliged to create new conditions, if I found old ones were not favorable to any plan I might have for promoting her highest welfare… the calling of a missionary is not the only sphere in life where one can do the most good in China or elsewhere. In such a vast empire, there can be hardly any limit put upon one’s ambition to do good, if one is possessed of the Christ-spirit; on the other hand, if one has not such a spirit, no pledge in the world [would] melt his ice-bound soul… I was poor, but I would not allow my poverty to gain the upper hand and compel me to barter away my inward convictions of duty for a temporary mess of pottage.48 Yung himself did not feel that he was called to be a missionary. He withstood pressure by his decision, which was against the views and hopes of the most of those who were close to him. It

46 Yung Wing to Williams, April 15, 1849, “Yung Wing papers,” in Kevin Scott Wong, “Encounter the Other: Chinese Immigration and Its Impact on Chinese and American Worldviews, 1875-1905” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan. 1992), 178. 47 Yung, My Life, 32. 48 Yung, My Life, 34-36.

was a costly decision, which showed Yung’s extraordinary maturity beyond his age. He, “with an independence characteristic of him even at that age,” as Twichell put it, cut himself off from the resources of Christian foundations. He knew that it was not best for him to be a missionary though he never doubted the value of Christian missions. 49 “Yung could not bring himself to forsake America for Scotland, neither did he want to pledge himself to become a missionary.”50

Eventually it was Brown who helped him remain in America and secure some funding.

2.2.2 As a Yale man of 1854

Yung studied at Yale from 1850 to 1854. He was the sole Chinese in the whole campus. He was widely known and respected. On the day of his graduation, some of local people came to his graduation specifically for the sake of seeing him graduate. How was he shaped by his time at college? How was his career built upon his education the United States?

He was inadequately prepared during pre-college, but he studied diligently at a cost of his health suffering during his freshmen year. He was not a native speaker but was gifted at English and won the first prize in composition twice, which was an extraordinary achievement for a non- native speaker. With his natural reserve and his poverty, he did not mingle in the social life of college. “He had not many intimates,” in the first year of his college life, Twichell commented.51“He came to college in his cue and Chinese tunic, but put off both in the course of his first year.”52 But as the time for him to go home drew near, he was deeply Americanized, as a naturalized citizen he wore Western dress and behaved like a Westerner. His college education

49 Twichell, “An Address,” in Yung, My Life, 254. 50 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 21. 51 Twichell, “An Address,” in Yung, My Life, 255. 52 Ibid.

bestowed on him the knowledge and values that sensitized him to human suffering, as he described in his memoirs:

[My American education] has unmistakably enlarged my mental and moral horizon, and revealed to me responsibilities which the sealed eye of ignorance can never see, and sufferings and wrongs of humanity to which an uncultivated and callous nature can never be made sensitive.53 Yung Wing’s own words provided a good explanation of his transforming experience both in mind and heart, which was a mixed feeling of being both occidental and oriental. In the preface to his autobiography, he wrote:

Would it not be strange, if an Occidental education, continually exemplified by an Occidental civilization, had not wrought upon an Oriental such a metamorphosis in his inward nature as to make him feel and act as though he were a being coming from a different world, when he confronted one so diametrically different? This was precisely my case, and yet neither my patriotism nor the love of my fellow countrymen had been weakened.54 Though he was poor, he managed successfully to live through this financial hardship by working part-time at Yale and secured support from the Ladies Association of Savannah. With cash, clothing and some other necessities sent by that Association, together with working part time in

Yale, Yung managed to complete his four-year college education. When he was a sophomore student, he was naturalized as an American citizen. His naturalization and his conversion to

Christianity indicated the sense of ease and belonging he felt in America. He regarded the United

States as his adopted country.

Most importantly, an idealism was born in him after his liberal education training at Yale. He confided his dream to his classmate Carrol Cutler:

53 Yung, My Life, 40. 54 Yung, My Life, Preface.

I was determined that the rising generation of China should enjoy the same educational advantages that I had enjoyed; that through western education China might be regenerated, become enlightened and powerful. To accomplish that object became the guiding star of my ambition.55

But as Twichell summed up, “The idea was born [in Yale], the dream was taking shape, but the way was long to its realization.” We shall see through long years’ labor and waiting, how patient and perseverant he was. However, his American education planted also seeds of his eventual frustration which came from the revocation of the Chinese Educational Mission.

Upon his graduation, Yung made another difficult decision, which was to return to China. After all these years, he felt at home with his American friends. He spoke and wrote in English. He thought and acted like a native. While China became distant and foreign to him, he almost forgot his mother tongue. He had no friends there. He had nothing to be concerned about except his humble family and relatives. Not only so, but considering his alienated educational background, at least from the view of Chinese conservatives, “he could not fail to encounter, among his own people, prejudice, suspicion, hostility.” Twichell said of his return that was like facing an

“exile.”56 Indeed, China in 1854 had not changed much in terms of its attitude toward Westerners and their learning since Yung left for America in 1847. Though it opened five treaty ports in

1842 after the first Opium War, almost the whole China was still cut off from the rest of the world. No one had any idea of foreign affairs. High-class officials considered Western education as abnormal training and would not even mention it in their conversation. So Yung would be taken as a foreigner rather than a Chinese. Even worse than that, The Taiping rebellion shook the

Qing dynasty and everywhere China was filled with shabbiness, affliction, and dead bodies.

55 Yung, My Life, 40- 41. 56 Twichell, “An Address,” in Yung, My Life, 257.

Chapter 3 The Chinese Educational Mission

3.1 Preparations for the Chinese Educational Mission

Yung was torn between staying and leaving. Eventually he followed what he believed to be

God’s direction, but did not know what he would do once he returned to China. During the

Christmas season he wrote to Samuel Wells Williams:

I shall take my degree of B.A. if I live in the summer of 1854. After that I shall be thinking of going home and study my profession afterwards. In relation to a profession, I have not as yet come to a definite conclusion. One thing is certain however that I am going to study agricultural chemistry. I may possibly study medicine and surgery. There are so many things, and every one of them is so valuable to a man who intends to benefit his country, that it is extremely trying to know which to choose. I shall not rely upon my own judgement not consult my own inclinations in regard to the choice. I hope God will direct me; with his aid I hope to decide satisfactorily.57 Though Yung did not have a clear picture what he would do after his return, he saw himself as an instrument for God to carry out His plan. Being an idealist, he returned with great confidence; however the prospects that awaited him looked bleak. In April 1855, after a voyage of 151 days,

Yung set his feet on his homeland. Yet China did not seem inviting at all. The first shock Yung

Wing experienced was the Viceroy Ye Mingchen’s decapitation of seventy-five thousand innocent Chinese. Yung was shocked by the wholesale slaughter, which “eclipsed even the enormities and blood-thirstiness of Caligula and Nero, or even the French Revolution.”58 His

Western degree was not appreciated by his fellowmen. He changed jobs three times in the first

57 Yung to Samuel W. Williams, Dec. 30, 1852, YSML, in Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 274. This letter of Yung’s, as well as others and his memoirs quoted in this thesis, have been transcribed exactly as Yung wrote them, with no corrections. 58 Yung, My Life, 55.

year in China. His weak command over his mother tongue only made him look like a foreigner in the eyes of his contemporaries. However, he made his mind to readjust to his country.

First, he took six months to recover his Chinese. Second, his Westernized background and

English language skills enabled him to work as an interpreter for foreign enterprises. He first worked as the secretary to Peter Parker, who was a Presbyterian missionary and a physician who opened an ophthalmic hospital in Canton. Yung knew him because Parker, like Yung, was a Yale graduate. Yung introduced himself to Parker and asked for a job. Though Parker had little work for him, Parker hired Yung as his personal secretary with a modest salary of fifteen dollars. Yung had imagined working in a place where he would know powerful mandarins and businessmen.

However, even Parker’s goodwill could not enable Yung to associate influential officials and wealthy merchants, and so he moved on.

Yung then tried to practice law in Hong Kong, but Hong Kong’s British barristers saw Yung’s bilingual background as a potentially competitive factor to them. A group of prominent lawyers argued that Yung must not practice law in Hong Kong. They won finally, and he had to leave.

The third job was to serve as translator at the Imperial Customs in Shanghai. This time his salary was abundant but he hated the bribery in the official system. He wrote in his memoirs, “I did not care to associate myself with a pack of Custom-house interpreters and inspectors, who were known to take bribes; that a man who expects others to respect him, must first respect himself.”59

He left eventually.

He found no satisfaction from his jobs and his dream seemed far away. But he lived by his perseverance. Years later he reflected:

59 Yung, My Life, 65.

In a strenuous life one needs to be a dreamer in order to accomplish possibilities. We are not called into being simply to drudge for an animal existence. I had had to work hard for my education, and I felt that I ought to make the most of what little I had, not so much to benefit myself individually as to make it a blessing common to my race. By these shifts and changes [job shifts] I was only trying to find my true bearing, and how I could make myself a blessing to China.60 Yung was a pragmatic idealist. The next turn he made was to get involved in the tea and silk business. His work experience in a British firm as an agent to purchase tea and silk profited him much, and he decide to go into the same business by himself. Eventually he became a wealthy merchant, accumulating a great amount of money, some $ 25,000.61 His involvement in the tea and silk business gave him an opportunity to visit Nanjing, which was occupied by the Taiping rebels. The conversations between him and the Taiping leader Hong Rengan, which took place in

1859, made him realize that the Taiping regime had no interest in supporting his plan of sending

Chinese youth to America. Yung sympathized with the rebels because of their self-proclaimed

Christian identity. But he was appalled by the unconventional Christianity that they practiced, and by the corruption of the regime.62

The Taiping rebellion raged for fourteen years, from 1851 to 1864, and shook the ruling foundation of the Qing dynasty. During the process of suppression, Zeng Guofan rose to political prominence and became the most powerful official in the Qing court. At the end of the rebellion,

Zeng was appointed Viceroy of the Liang Jiang provinces, which were the richest provinces in the country. Zeng was a member of the Hanlin Academy but interested in Western military techniques as well. He established small arsenals in Jiangxi in 1855 to manufacture foreign guns and ships. He also established an arsenal and a shipyard in Anqing in 1861. In his time it was

60 Yung, My Life, 65-66. 61 See Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 275. 62 See Yung, My Life, 118-120.

very rare to find a man like Zeng, who was rooted in Confucianism and put his faith on

Confucian virtues of sincerity, yet valued Western technology and science. Even the Americans thought highly of Zeng, calling him “a statesman of highest order, and a man of greatest energy and most rigid integrity.”63 In a Christian view, the New York Times wrote of Zeng,

Providence had endowed Tsang Kwoh Fan [Zeng Guofan] with extraordinary talent to quell rebellion, to govern mighty people, to carry on able diplomacy with foreign powers, each of which requires abilities of the highest kind and rank among the ablest men of the age; and he left a fame which Chinese historians and poets delight to celebrate.64

After suppressing the Taiping uprising, rather than seeking personal power, Zeng devoted himself to the Restoration movement to tackle China’s problems. Zeng was one of the few imperial officials who would be willing to acknowledge the superiority of Western science and military power and he was willing to learn from the Westerners. Most of the official elites, especially conservatives, derided Western civilization. There was an obvious conflict between the progressive officials, who advocated learning from the “barbarians” for preventing a military invasion, and the conservatives, who claimed that Confucianism was superior to all other cultures and thought that learning from the “barbarians” would destroy Chinese traditional culture. Though he was an embodiment of the Confucian principles of administration, together with Ding Richang, Yung’s fellow native of Guangdong, Zeng truly appreciated Yung’s western education. None of those conservative officials had been impressed with Yung’s Yale degree.

63 New York Times, 18 August 1873. 64 Ibid.

Hence it was Zeng that helped Yung “toward his guiding star”- having Chinese youth educated in the United States.65 However it was a long process for the two men to realize the project.

It was the interest of Zeng in Western military techniques that brought Yung to his attention in

1863. Yung made his name known by translating an epitaph for the head of the British firm that had hired him before. Yung’s translating jobs brought him the acquaintance of Shanghai’s influential officials and wealthy merchants. One of them was Zhang Sijia, who introduced Yung to Li Shanlan. Li was a renowned mathematician, who had translated many Western mathematical works into Chinese. It was Li that recommended Yung to Zeng Guofan. Many years later, Yung recalled the knowing of Zeng, “In the great web of human affairs, it is almost impossible to know who among our friends and acquaintances may prove to be the right clue to unravel the skein of our density.”66 In 1863, Yung received three letters from Zeng’s staff members, which showed Zeng not only had an extraordinary interest in Yung’s Western education but also would assign governmental work to him.

China in the nineteenth century saw a sword-and-fire encounter with foreign powers. From

Zeng’s view, Yung was exactly the person he was searching for to strengthen Imperial China by adopting Western military techniques. Zeng and his lieutenant Li Hongzhang undertook an initiative to learn from the West. During the process of suppressing the Taiping rebellion, they came into close contact with foreigners and realized their military power. From 1862 on Zeng often received foreign visitors or officials. He developed a continuous interest in Western ships, guns, machines, and training soldiers. Li Hongzhang hired an American, Frederick Townsend

65 Steve Courtney, Joseph Hopkins Twichell: The life and Times of Mark Twain's Closest Friend (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 145. 66 Yung, My Life, 77.

Ward, to aid him with Shanghai’s defense from the rebellious troops. Li was awed by Ward’s military training. His troops won the title of the “Ever-Victorious Army”. But hiring foreigners could be both expensive and untrustworthy. That was why progressive reformers such as Zeng and Li launched self-strengthening movement with the Qing government’s support. The Chinese,

Li wrote to Zeng, had to “strive for self-strengthening and not to mix with foreigners.”67 Hence a

Chinese individual with Western experience would be the first suggestion for self-strengthening leaders. In the diary of June 3, 1862, Zeng recorded a conversation with his staff members: “If we wish to find a method of self-strengthening, we should begin by considering the reform of government service and the securing of men of ability as urgent tasks.”68 Under this condition,

Yung became the most appropriate candidate that attracted Zeng’s attention. That was why

Zeng’s men sent three consecutive letters to urge Yung to come to Anqing in 1863. Thus Yung was able to become “of value to the dragon throne because of his acquaintance with American thought and Occidental culture.”69 In Zeng’s view Yung, who was familiar with the Westerner’s rituals and customs, could be greatly used for the government service.

What Zeng and Yung valued were different, but it did not prevent the two men from working together to bring forth the Chinese Educational Mission. Zeng’s effort to modernize China was based on Confucian ethics. In his letter to Li Hongzhang, he described that the very essence of the self-strengthening movement:

Confucius says, “If you can rule your country, who dares to insult you?” If we are unified, strict, and sober, and if hundreds of measures are fostered, naturally they

67 Samuel C. Chu and Kwang-Ching Liu, eds., Li Hung-chang and China’s Early Modernization (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 120. 68 Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response to the West, 62. 69 William Churchill, ”Review”, Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 42(1910): 383- 384.

will not insult and affront us without reason…and if we are humble and modest, certainly we shall have no anxiety. The way to win the hearts of people coming from afar lies in this, and the method of self-strengthening also lies in this.70 By contrast, Yung’s enterprise of westernizing China came from his thorough process of inculcation and his identification of the Western way of living. His Western educational experience convinced him that “China’s only hope was to scrap her ancient philosophical civilization and adopt as rapidly as possible the technological, progressive civilization of the

Occident.”71 In the intellectual level, the two men were completely opposite to each other. One was a Confucian scholar, thoroughly Chinese; the other was a Christian, deeply rooted in

Western culture. But mutual interests, which were to restore and regenerate China and make her prosperous in order that she could stand up equally among the family of nations, brought the two men together.

Several weeks after Zeng’s interview with him, Yung was dispatched by Zeng to go abroad to purchase machinery, which laid the technical foundation for the Jiangnan Arsenal.72 Yung’s plan of sending Chinese youth to the United States for education was too bold to propose when he met Zeng in Anqing. He temporarily postponed his radical educational project but worked on a more practical one, which was to establish a machine shop. That was exactly what Zeng desired to have. Yung was given a full charge of purchasing machinery. In 1864 Yung brought his nephew Yung Shangqin with him.73 On Yung’s return Zeng convinced the throne to grant him a mandarin of the fifth rank as a reward for his successful purchase of the machinery. Zeng wrote:

70 Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response to the West, 63. 71 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 23. 72 See more about the interview between Zeng and yung in Yung, My Life, 137-153. 73 From then until 1868, Yung Shangqin attended Yung’s alma mater, Monson Academy, where he was known as Lemuel Yung.

Yung Wing is a foreign educated Chinese. He has mastered the English language. In his journey over thousands of miles of ocean to the extreme ends of the earth to fulfill the commission I entrusted to him, he was utterly oblivious to difficulties and dangers that lay in his way. In this respect even the missions of the Ancients present no parallel equal to his. Therefore, I would recommend that he be promoted to the expectancy of one of the [Jiangsu] subprefects, and he is entitled to fill the first vacancy presenting itself, in recognition of his valuable services.74

For the first time his Western education paid off in his quest for influence. Yung became a translator for the Jiangsu provincial government. The Jiangsu governor was Ding Richang. Now

Yung had two powerful officials backing him up for his dream plan.

Connections between historical events are often unexpected. The tragic event of the Tianjin massacre turned out to an opportunity to promote the realization of Yung’s educational plan. In

1870, rumors about French Catholics mistreating Chinese children spread. The French consul, along with French priests and nuns, had been the chief victims of the massacre. In the autumn of this year, Zeng Guofan, along with Li Hongzhang and Ding Richang, were sent to Tianjin as the

Imperial Commissioners to resolve the diplomatic dispute with French authorities. Ding took

Yung as his secretary to settle the dispute.

Early in 1868, Yung drafted his educational plan, but for various reasons, it did not reach the throne. After the Tianjin affair he reminded Ding again of his educational scheme. Ding persuaded Zeng and Li to lend their support to Yung’s plan. So in October 1870, Zeng and Li presented to the Qing court a proposal, which they credited to Ding rather than Yung. Without receiving a response from the emperor, Zeng and Li presented again a detailed plan, which was based on Yung’s original proposal. This joint memorial recommended that one hundred and twenty boys be sent to the United States, where they were to study for fifteen years before

74 Yung, My Life, 165-66.

returning to China. Like other self-strengthening projects, the goal of the CEM was to resist foreign aggression through the absorption of Western technological knowledge. To argue for the necessity of going abroad, in Zeng and Li’s memorial, they cited the ancient Confucian philosopher Mencius, “He who wishes to learn the Ch’i dialect should place himself in the midst of Chuang or Yü”[names of streets in an old city of Ch’i, modern Shandong] and a proverb, ‘To hear a hundred times is not as good as to see once.’75 Therefore, if China wanted to learn secrets of Western science and technology, it should send her youth abroad. Eventually it could be expected that the returned students, after fifteen years’ study abroad, could offer their services in the prime of their lives. The memorial continued: “Although not all of them will necessarily become mighty instruments, yet out of a large number of talented men some extraordinary ones will certainly emerge from their midst. This is the theory of obtaining five out of the ten selected.”76 Zeng and Li’s argument was very persuasive. After Prince Gong, the head of the

Zongli Yamen (the Foreign Office of the Qing court) reviewed this proposal and voiced his support, the throne finally gave its sanction to the educational scheme in 1872. In the same year,

Zeng Guofan passed away. It was his will to have his lieutenant Li Hongzhang supervise the

CEM.

3.2 The Chinese Educational Mission

The CEM was motivated by Yung Wing’s patriotic endeavors. When Ding Richang told him one night that Zeng and the other viceroys agreed to memorialize the throne to adopt his proposals,

Yung was too excited to sleep. “This piece of news was too much to allow me to sleep any more

75 Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response to the West, 92. 76 Ibid.

that night; while lying on my bed, as wakeful as an owl, I felt as though I were treading on clouds and walking in air.”77 When it was approved, Yung told Twichell that he could neither eat nor sleep. Twichell said “he [Yung] had a genius for waiting.”78 “He [Yung] walked on air, and he worshipped God. It was sixteen years after his return to China and twenty years after he set out for this goal that heaven had at last granted his prayer.”79

The CEM was to be based in the United States. There were two reasons for this decision. First,

Yung had firsthand knowledge of the United States. Second, the 1868 treaty between China and the United States “provided for mutual rights of residence and attendance at the public schools by the citizens of the two countries.”80 Zeng and Li’s joint memorial cited Article VII of this treaty to persuade the throne to carry out this educational experiment in the United States.81 The

1868 treaty was negotiated on behalf of China by the former United States minister to China,

Anson Burlingame. Its original goal was to encourage and regularize the immigration of Chinese workers to meet American labor demands after the Civil War. Article VII stated:

Citizens of the United States shall enjoy all the privileges of the public educational institutions under the control of the government of China, and reciprocally, Chinese subjects shall enjoy all the privileges of the public educational institutions under the control of the government of the United States, which are enjoyed in the respective countries by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation.82

77 Yung, My Life, 180-81. 78 Twichell to Robert Stiles, April 23, 1878, Charles Ives Papers, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale Library (Hereafter referred to as CIP), in Courtney, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, 145. 79 Twichell, “An Address,” in Yung, My Life, 270. 80 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 33. 81 Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response to the West, 92. 82 Shih-shan Henry Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 1868-1911 (Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, 1983), 24-29.

The Burlingame treaty had a special appealing to Zeng and Li, who intended to send Chinese youth to American military schools such as West Point and Annapolis to master their superior techniques.

Yung Wing found fulfillment in developing the CEM project. He was appointed the associate commissioner of the CEM. He aimed to create more educated Chinese men in his own image. He had lots of work to do. One issue was how to select the best candidates. Li Hongzhang gave

Yung a list of requirements that the prospective students would have to meet. First, they had to be “pleasant to look at.” Second, the students had to be very young, between ten and sixteen, so that after fifteen years they could contribute the best of their life to the state. Third, they should be gracefully named.83 Otherwise, they would need to be renamed in an elegant way. Recruiting bright students was no easy task. In the 1870s, there was no national newspaper in China to spread the news of the government-sponsored educational experiment. Those who got the news were suspicious. What is more, terrifying stories were told by the local elders to frighten the boys from signing up with Yung. One boy recollected, “The wild men over there [America] would skin us alive, graft the skin of dogs onto our bodies and exhibit us as they would some uncommon animal.”84 Furthermore, studying abroad appeared to contradict traditional filial piety.

Confucius said: “While one’s parents are alive, one should not travel to distant places.” Finally, not all Chinese parents responded to the news. Only those from the south coast showed their interest in it because they had much more interaction with foreigners than those in the interior of

China. The result of it was that more than 70% of the 120 candidates were from Canton, and over

83 Hu Jincao, Boy Students, Documentary Television series, Beijing, China, CCTV, 2004. 84 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 36.

a third from Yung’s own hometown.85 Most of the CEM students came from rural surroundings, not cosmopolitan cities. The late-Qing diplomat and poet Huang Zunxian might exaggerate the inconspicuous background of those boys: as he put it, those boys were “only the sons of humble homes” and “farm boys in rags.”86 But it is true that the royal descendants showed no interest in studying abroad since no Manchus, who were the rulers of China, took part in the CEM. As for the parentage of these youths, only one-sixth of the boys, that is four boys, came from scholar- official families. In the late nineteenth century, personal and family success largely depended on distinguished performances in the “Confucian-based civil service examination system, which had no place for a non-traditional education whether acquired at home or abroad.”87 This may have explained why Yung was not fully trusted by the throne, who always assigned him as deputy commissioner and minister, while Chen Lanbin, a conservative Confucian scholar with a minor position in the government, was the major director of the Qing’s foreign affairs even though the latter knew no English at all and had little knowledge of foreign cultures. In a letter to Guo

Songtao, Li Hongzhang compared Yung Wing with Chen Lanbin. He said: “[Yung’s] proficiency in foreign languages and his familiarity with foreign conditions would make him a better diplomat than Mr. Ch’en Lan-bin [Chen Lanbin].”88 It shows that the Qing court valued an official with Confucian learning more than that with a Western degree.

In 1872, Yung came to the U.S. one month before the chosen students’ arrival to make necessary arrangements. A contemporary reviewer of Yung’s autobiography commented: “Yung’s first

85 See Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, chapter 2. Rhoads had done a detailed study on the boys’ recruitment. He used many statistics to explain that kinship and native-place ties played a crucial role in the background of the CEM students. 86 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 52. 87 Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 21. 88 Li Hung-chang, Collected Letters, P’eng-liao chen-lao: 20chuan in Li Wen-chung-kung i-shu han kao [Complete Works 1921] 17.18 a-b, trans. Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 72.

duty was to make such provision for the young students sent from home into the unknown system of an alien civilization that there should be none of the hardship through which he had so painfully made the track.”89 In 1873, the second detachment of Chinese youth came to the United

States. The third group of Chinese students left China in 1874; Yung had obtained authorization to construct a new building for the Chinese Educational Mission in Hartford.90 It was to be a three-story building and could accommodate seventy-five students at a time. The Chinese students moved into it in January 1875. Yung hailed its construction as a symbol of the Chinese political elite’s commitment to the mission. He confided that the motivation of constructing such a handsome building was permanently to “have the educational mission as deeply rooted in the

United States as possible, so as not to give the Chinese government any chance of retrograding in this movement.”91 But unfortunately the Qing government disbanded it anyway in 1881 without considering the fact that had spent such a great amount on the construction of the building.

3.3 Recall of the Chinese Educational Mission

There are several reasons for the disbandment of the CEM. First, the boys’ rapid

Americanization and their neglect for their Chinese studies incurred severe criticism from the conservative camp. The Chinese government from the very beginning had reservations about the impact of the mission on the young boys. These reservations were revealed in the mission’s stipulations. Students were barred from becoming naturalized as American citizens and converting to Christianity. Those who did not obey would be recalled immediately.

89 Churchill,”Review”, 383-384. 90 The building was constructed at a cost of $43,000. It was sold in 1889, eight years after the Mission’s closure, at the price of $8541.36. It was a great loss. See more in Hung, “Huang Tsun- Hsien’s Poem,” 61. 91 Yung, My Life, 190.

In reality, it was inevitable that the CEM students, who were young when coming to America would adapt to their new surroundings. For instance, it only took a year or two for the third contingent of boys after their arrival in America to embrace American culture openly and freely.

The boys’ Americanization was demonstrated in several aspects. One is that they adopted an

American mode of dress. The boys were teased by neighborhood children and their classmates as being like girls for wearing Chinese long gown and jackets, and especially for their long plaited queues, which were a symbol of their loyalty to the Emperor. However, they were absolutely not allowed to remove their queues. Some hid them inside their clothes, while others circled and pinned them on the top of their heads covered in their hats. Several students who dared to remove their queues were dismissed from the program immediately.

The Chinese Educational Commission in Hartford was mostly concerned about two issues: the queue and being a church member. The boys had been forbidden to convert to Christianity before they left for America. But a considerable number of them chose to convert to this foreign religion. This fact indicated the boys’ deep acculturation. Yet it was inescapable that for the boys would not be influenced by the religious atmosphere in which they were immersed. The dominant faith of the host families was Protestant Christianity. In the beginning the boys were expected to say grace at the dinner table, go to Sunday school, and attend church services with their host families. Later on, when the boys went to schools, religious services in some schools were mandatory for students. For instance, at Williston Seminary, which was established as a

“Christian, but unsectarian institution,” students were required to attend morning prayer each weekday at the school’s chapel and worship twice each Sunday at the nearby Payson

Congregational Church, though worship at other churches was permitted.92 Similarly, Yale in the nineteenth century was a college where religious influence was strong. In the 1840s and 1850s,

Yale was in the forefront of sending missionaries to China. Thus Yung Wing’s nephew, Rong

Kui (Yung Kwai) recalled, “Growing up in a Christian atmosphere, the boys, who were then at an age most susceptible of impressions, could not but be more or less influenced by their religious surroundings.”93 The boys themselves were keenly aware of religious matters when they first arrived in America. However, after a year or two, the young Chinese students learned to appreciate American culture, accept American social mores, and adopt the American ways of life. Their host families did not press the boys to go to church with them. There was no attempt at religious indoctrination at all. Many of them became Christians out of their own volition.

More than that, eight of the Chinese Christians at Williston founded the Chinese Christian Home

Mission to bring China under the influence of Christianity. Later this Christian organization was reorganized and had its Latin name the Societas Condita Causa Augendarum Rerum Chinensium

Christiana (“A Christian Society founded for the sake of Advancing the Interests of the

Chinese”). One of its committee members, Tang Guoan, the founding president of Tsinghua

College, which aimed to prepare future Boxer Indemnity scholars for the United States, participated in the drafting of the society’s constitution. Its membership once maximized to twenty five. The introduction of the constitution indicated the degree of Americanization among the Chinese students. By converting to Christianity, the students obtained a new identity, with which they hoped to transform and save China with the strength of a foreign religion.

92 Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 152. 93 Yung Kwai, “Recollections,” 7, in Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 152.

The boys’ Americanization was shown in some other aspects, such as participating in a variety of sports, and socializing freely with young female friends. Li Gui, the customs official sent to the

Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, wrote an account of it. He met the boys and asked some of them about their lives in the United States. He described their clothes as Western in style.

According to Li, when he asked them if they missed home, the boys answered, “There is no point in being homesick… [Our host families] treated us like family.” When they were asked why they wore Western costume, the boys explained that it was owing to the inconvenience of changing clothing in playing sports. “We follow the local customs with two exceptions: We do not cut our queues, and we do not go to church.”94 Li also described how these young boys interacted with their female teacher naturally and cordially, which was unimaginable in China then. Another example of the boys’ Americanization is shown in Huang Zunxian’s poem. In 1881, when the

CEM was recalled, the Chinese students left for Shanghai and stopped by Japan. Huang was then a secretary of the Chinese legation in Tokyo. He observed, “As I watch the ocean liner sailing homeward/Ten thousand thoughts fill my bosom with sadness.”95 He described:

A caller wants to discuss conditions in the old country; The boys blush and know not what to say. Though they can use the foreign tongue to call one another to play, To summon the waiters to the dinner tables, To chat on varying subjects among themselves, Or to sing high-pitched solos, Yet, as for the Shanghai or the Canton dialect, They have forgotten and ceased to understand.

94 Li Gui (李圭), A journey to the East: Li Gui's “A new account of a trip around the globe,” trans. Charles Desnoyers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 220-225. 95 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 56.

Some even practice the Christian religion, Follow people into churches To partake the eucharist And to turn the leaves of the Scriptures. They live in a mirage, a paradise, And are showered with fragrant blossoms by the fair ones. They have found the country of superb happiness; They are too happy to think of their fatherland.96 The boys’ Westernized style was too much to be borne by Chinese conservative officials, especially the Commissioner Chen Lanbin and his successor, Wu Zideng. Wu, like his predecessors, was a member of the Hanlin Academy and held the jinshi degree. From the day

Wu arrived in Hartford in early 1880, he was distressed by the degree of Americanization among the Chinese boys. According to Rong Kui, Wu “was shocked at the behavior of the boys who dared to look him in the face and were not inclined to say ‘yes’ to every word that came out of his mouth.”97 Later when the students were summoned to his presence in Washington, Wu scolded them for not kowtowing and accused them of forgetting their ancestors and showing no respect to their elders. Yung sided with the students in favor of their Westernization. Conflicts between Yung and Wu were personal, positional, and cultural. Yung described Wu as measuring things and his pupils only by Chinese standard, as he wrote, “He [Wu] must have felt his own immaculate Chinese training had been contaminated by coming in contact with Occidental schooling which he looked upon with evident repugnance.”98 Likewise, Yung’s liberal approach to education was at variance with Wu and other conservative colleagues, who laid the blame

96 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 53-54. 97 Yung Kwai, “Recollections,” 10, in Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 143. 98 Yung, My Life, 203.

squarely on Yung as for the weakening of the boys’ Chinese language and then sent secretly a stream of unfavorable reports to Li Hongzhang and Zongli Yamen. Li’s letter to Chen Lanbin on

May 10, 1880, reveals these conflicts within the mission staff:

Jung Tseng-hsiang [Rong Zengxiang, the Chinese tutor of the mission] came to call and told me that the pupils had really neglected their Chinese studies and that this had arisen because Mr. Yung held firmly the idea not to have the students spend too much time on Chinese learning. Even during the summer vacation, Mr. Yung alone would not agree to have them review their Chinese lessons.99 Yung’s attitude toward religion and his position at adopting both Western technology and religion was at variance with the conservative camp as well. Yung believed that China should adopt both American technological advancement and Christianity. He “foresaw a chance in the education of Chinese students gradually to bring his countrymen up to an advanced point of civilization, in harmony with the progressive spirit of modern times, both in national and religious matters.” 100 Yung favored Christianity over Confucianism. Both he and his friend

Twichell assumed of the superiority of Christianity over Confucianism. This view of religions, which was prevalent before the 1880s, was held typically by evangelical Christians.101 Twichell recorded his conversation with Yung in his journal:

Mr. Wing [Joseph Hopkins Twichell (1838-1918), the minister of the Asylum Hill Congregational church in Hartford for fifty years, often called Yung by this name] said that he was persuaded anew of the hand divine shaping his whole career and that he feels as never before what a worm in himself he was. We talked about it for some time on the street, he hinting at some patriotic projects which now it seemed practicable for him to realize. He displayed the sentiments of a Christian

99 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 67. 100 “China’s Educational Mission: Why the Scheme is Abandoned - an Illiberal Spirit Predominant,” New York Times, July 16, 1881. 101 Grant Wacker, “Second Thoughts on the Great Commission: Liberal Protestants and Foreign Missions, 1890-1940,” in Joel Carpenter and Wilbert R. Shenk, Earthen vessels: American Evangelicals and foreign missions, 1880-1980 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 281-82.

in his whole tone and manner − said that the event impressed him with a sense of God’s love and purpose toward China. “He will not leave,” he remarked, “400 millions of souls under a cloud of darkness, despoiled of their rights and oppressed in their minds.”102 Twichell’s journal also furnished a testimony to Yung’s strong affection for China, which flowed from his Christian faith. Yung did not get caught in a dilemma between his role of serving

Chinese government as an associate commissioner and that of a practical Christian in private life regarding how to deal with the CEM students’ conversion to Christianity. When, in 1876-77, several students wanted to join a church and sought Yung’s advice. He advised them against becoming a professed Christian. Joseph Sawyer recorded how Yung responded to this situation:

In his reply Dr. Wing advised against the proposed action, believing it would endanger the educational enterprise. He reminded the applicants…that the right to study the Christian Bible and the religion based on it was accorded them, but a public profession of Christianity, with membership in a Christian Church, was to be avoided, so long as they were Government students.103 Twichell admiringly commented Yung’s way to deal with this hard situation:

You will observe how shrewdly Yung manages the delicate matter of religion. Practically and in all essential respects the way is left open to Christian influence and instruction, and numbers of the boys have become Christians, though it is not allowed, for evident prudential reasons, that they make a formal public profession of their faith.104 Before Wu’s arrival in 1880, the Chinese Educational Commission in Hartford had tolerated the students’ Christian activities so long as they did not professed to be a Christian publicly. This is why many of the CEM boys were practicing Christians privately, which actually broke the government’s regulations, but were not dismissed from the program.

102 Joseph H. Twichell, journals, Feb. 11, 1876, YSML, in Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 277-78. 103 Joseph Henry Sawyer, The Chinese Christian Home Mission, in Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 156. 104 J. H. Twichell to Robert Stiles, Hartford, 23 April 1878, in Folder 5, Box 33, CIP, in Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 156-57.

However, Wu’s arrival speeded up the CEM’s premature demise. In 1875, Chen and Yung were appointed respectively Chinese chief minister and associate minister to the United States. Yung’s new appointment in Washington did not allow him to stay involved in the CEM affairs. He later was told by Li Hongzhang to stay away when Wu was trying to undo the impact of American culture on those Chinese boys. Wu also tripled the amount of time that was spent on the Chinese studies by the boys. He ordered Rong Kui and Tan Yaoxun, who publicly professed their

Christian faith, and other three students to return China in 1880 for various reasons.105 Yung wanted to help his nephew Rong Kui remain in America but did not want his action to defy the

Chinese government’s regulations. Twichell told this story in his diary:

Dr. Yung Wing came to me and offered to pay Yung Kwai’s [Rong Kui] college expenses, at the rate of $700 a year, if he could manage to stay in the country, the only considerations being, first that he would repay the money when he could, and second that he would tender his services to the Chinese Government when his education was completed. Desiring to conceal his connection with the matter, Yung Wing directed me to instruct or request Yung Kwai to inform him as a piece of news of this offer and ask his opinion as to accepting it. Accordingly on my way to Keene Valley in August, Yung Kwai met me by appointment at Springfield and I opened the business to him. The result was that when some weeks later the company of students returning to China set out, Yung Kwai and the other offender in religion, Tan Yew-fun [Tan Yaoxun], whose fellow students of his own detachment had meanwhile offered to contribute enough from their allowances to pay his way through Yale College, slipped away from the rest at Springfield, went into concealment, and remained behind.106 Wu criticized the students, as Yung feared, in unsparing terms. Rong Shangqin, one of the students, later wrote that Wu, whom he called “a bigoted and fanatical conservative,” made the charge that the boys were being “Americanized and denationalized, and that they would do no

105 Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 160-65. 106 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 45-46. Rong Kui did what he promised, remaining in the service of the Chinese Government for the rest of his life. He was first an interpreter and later secretary in the Chinese legation in Washington.

good, but positive harm, to China, if they were allowed to finish their studies.”107 In December

1880, Wu left for Washington for a visit and, as usual, complained to Chen Lanbin that while the students had not “learned all the useful arts and sciences they have already adopted all the bad customs.” 108 Wu wrote to Li Hongzhang, suggesting the students be sent back to China immediately. In his letter to Zongli Yamen on March 29, 1881, Li attested, “But, Mr. Wu, after his arrival at the Mission year before last, wrote in several letters to tell about numerous abuses in the Mission’s administration and to advocate its abolition soon.”109

Nevertheless, Yung did Wu injustice by attributing the mission’s recall to Wu. He criticized Wu harshly.110 In fact, not only Wu, but Chen Lanbin, Zeng Jize, and other conservative officials in

China together contributed to revocation of the mission. This lack of cooperation among the

CEM staff and the constant conflicts between them eventually led to the demise of the mission.

Li Hongzhang wrote in a letter to Chen Lanbin on August 6, 1879:

Mr. Ou E-liang’s [the CEM Commissioner] letter shows that the conflict with Mr. Jung Tseng-hsiang’s party arose from the suggestion to recall the Mission before it had accomplished its purpose. But the words were intended for public good and should not be disregarded merely because of personal differences. That the program of sending boys to study abroad wastes money, breeds corruption, and will show little result has been very much the criticism from Chinese intelligentsia.111

107 Yung Shang Him, The Chinese Educational Mission and Its Influence (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1939), 10–11, in John R Haddad, The Romance of China Excursions to China in U.S. Culture, 1776-1876 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), http://www.gutenberg- e.org/haj01/haj11.html#note15 (last accessed January 31, 2014). 108 Document C, in Hung, “Huang Tsun-hsien’s poem,” 68. 109 Document I, in Hung, “Huang Tsun-hsien’s poem,” 68. 110 Yung, My Life, 204-05. 111 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 66.

In the same letter, Li quoted Zeng Jize: “Our naval students going to England and France will not be much benefited and even our students in America will hardly turn out to be successful.”112 At court, another conservative official, Li Shibin also found fault with students in America and criticized them because they had “joined a church” and he considered the Chinese Educational

Commission officials extraordinary lax in controlling the students. 113 Though Li Shibin’s criticism was misleading, it upset the Court, which then ordered Li Hongzhang and Chen Lanbin to investigate the matter. “Mr. CH’EN [Chen Lanbin] has long been at loggerheads with Mr.

Yung.” Li mentioned this in his letter to Zongli Yamen on March 29, 1881. Chen insisted that all the students should be recalled immediately after discussion with Wu, who later recanted his earlier proposal for a total recall and supported a partial recall. Yung was right to say that Chen as selfish, irresponsible, and devious in character. Finally, Prince Gong, the head of Zongli

Yamen, who liked Chen Lanbin well enough to have him appointed chief minister to America in

1875 and to take him into Zongli Yamen in 1882, sided with Chen’s insistence on complete abolition immediately. The news came on 8 June 1881, and the court record read:

The Foreign Office memorializes to have the Educational Mission in America abolished and to have the students recalled and given such employments as they are qualified for. Approved.114 Thus William Hung concluded:

It was the triangular quarrel among him [Yung], CH’EN [Chen Lanbin], and Wu that wrecked the Mission beyond salvage, he [Yung] was of course not without responsibility for the failure…Li’s [Li Hongzhang’s] greatest fault in dealing with

112 Ibid. 113 Li Shibin, memorial, GX 6/11/16 (17 December 1880), in Yangwu yundong, 5:249, in Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 167. 114 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 70.

the Mission was his persistent wishful thinking that he could by some means get the three men to cooperate with one another.115 Yung disagreed with the two Chinese commissioners. Ironically, we may consider that it was

Yung’s Western-oriented perspective that failed the mission. If Yung was right in viewing Wu

Zideng as a conservative, who measured things and people by Chinese standards, he himself used New Englanders’ frame of reference to judge China. In his view, New England, known for its industrial progress and Puritan culture, was a model for China. Yung once said at Twichell’s fireside that “the first rays that lightened my way shone from the old New England states of

North America and God willing those boys shall be educated there, every one of them.”116 In reality, those CEM boys were immersed in a strong religious atmosphere. Clara Capron, the daughter of the principle of Hartford Public High school, where a great number of the boys enrolled, lived next door to the mission. She recalled Yung’s decision to put the Chinese students in Christian families. She wrote:

Yung decided to place most of the boys in Hartford, Connecticut. The basic plan upon which everything else rested, was to insure that all the boys would be placed in private Christian homes.117 Yung’s own transformational experiences through Western learning and a Christian faith convinced him that China's salvation depended on the training of China’s youth in Western countries and the adoption of Western religion as well. That is why he devoted much of his career to the effort of remaking China into a modern and powerful nation in the modern world by

115 Ibid., 72. 116 Twichell, “The Chinese Educational Mission,” Harford Daily Courant, December 14, 1874, in Courtney, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, 146. 117 Clara Day Capron, “Yung Wing and his Chinese Mission,” Wellesley Alumnae Magzine, January 1955 (typed manuscript, 1954, Connecticut Historical Society), in Anita Marchant, “Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Commission in Hartford” (M.A. Thesis, Trinity College, 1999), 65.

advocating Western-style education and absorbing the boys in an American environment. He dealt with the students’ conversion to Christianity in a shrewd way; in essence he supported the boys’ conversion to a religion he chose many years ago. Yung mentioned several times in his memoirs and letters to his friends that he desired to root these young Chinese boys in American culture as deeply as possible. His purpose of establishing a new building for the mission at

Hartford was to have the educational mission as deeply rooted in the United States as possible, so as not to “give the Chinese government any chance of retrograding in this movement.”118

Once he crossed the boundary of the self-strengthening reformation movement, which focused on introducing Western technology, the compatibility shared by Yung’s vision and the self- strengtheners would be gone.

Furthermore, Yung’s reformist project differed from those initiated by reformers such as Zeng

Guofan and Li Hongzhang. Yung’s interest in reforming China was radical, culturally speaking.

He believed that only a thorough Westernization of values would enlighten China. Yung’s

Westernized and Christian mentality steered him away from Sinocentricism.119 According to

Yung, China was judged to be inadequate, backward, ignorant, and superstitious as seen through the prism of American standards. Unlike Chinese Confucian officials, who believed in Chinese cultural superiority, Yung had come to believe that a Westernized package, including science and technology, literature and religion, were necessary to strengthen China.120 Though he once declined an opportunity to preach as a religious missionary to China, he saw his role to be that of

118 Yung, My Life, 190. 119 Lee, “Yung Wing and the Americanization of China,” 28. 120 Ruthanne Lum McCunn, Chinese American portraits: personal histories 1828-1988 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books), 1988, 17; Lee, “Yung Wing and the Americanization of China,” 28; Stacey Bieler, “Patriots” or “Traitors”?: A History of American-Educated Chinese Students (Armonk, N.Y., and London: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), 2.

a cultural missionary. His approach to changing China was cultural, but not political.121 Zeng

Guofan and Li Hongzhang, as the most powerful officials of the Qing state, were progenitors of the self-strengthening movement, which was to strengthen the dynasty by using Western military instruments. A presumption held by Zeng and Li was the superiority of Chinese civilization, which they intended to preserve as the essence of the state. Their thought was later developed into the ti-yong theory: Western learning for application, and Chinese learning for essence.

According to the ti-yong theory, Confucianism was taken as the root, by which the Qing state could stand firmly; while Western learning, like a branch borrowing from foreign cultures, could be grafted into the root of the Chinese Confucianism. Comparing to Yung’s reformist outlook,

Zeng and Li’s interest in reform was limited and conservative. Parts of Yung’s reformist vision were compatible with the thinking of Zeng and Li. Nevertheless, Yung and Li’s collaboration was a limited one as well. Though he appreciated Yung’s “proficiency in foreign languages and familiarity with foreign conditions [that] would make him a better diplomat than Mr. CH’EN

Lan-pin [Chen Lanbin],” Li perceived Yung’s Chinese education as a “defect” and

“insufficient.” 122 Likewise, no doubt Yung complained of Li’s commitment to the mission:

“Instead of standing up for the students, [Li] yielded to the opposition of the reactionary party and gave his assent to have the students recalled.”123 Finally, both Yung and Li, with Zeng’s demise in 1872, were defeated by the conservative camp headed by as Wo Ren. Wo Ren was a tutor to the emperor and the head of the Hanlin Academy. He was recognized as a leader to oppose Prince Going in 1867. His response to Western intrusion was to shut all Western technology and values out of China’s door. In response to Prince Gong’s view that natural

121 Lee, “Yung Wing and the Americanization of China,” 28. 122 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 72. 123 Yung, My Life, 210.

science should be taught in Tongwen Guan, a language school established in Beijing in 1861, he said:

Astronomy and mathematics are of very little use. If these subjects are going to be taught by Westerners as regular studies, the damage will be great... The way to establish a nation is to lay emphasis on propriety and righteousness, not on power and plotting. The fundamental effort lies in the minds of people, not in techniques. If astronomy and mathematics have to be taught, an extensive search should find someone who has mastered the technique. Why is it limited to barbarians, and why is it necessary to learn from the barbarians?... Since the conclusion of the peace [the first Opium War in 1840], Christianity has been prevalent and half of our ignorant people have been fooled by it. The only thing we can rely on is that our scholars should clearly explain to the people the Confucian tenets.124 Both the self-strengtheners and the conservative officials in the court were advocates of cultural ethnocentricism. As Yung sided with the students in favor of their Americanization, it was inevitable that he was seen by them as a dangerous person to Confucianism. Hence Yung was isolated from making a decision on the students’ future. In the last two years of the CEM, letters and telegraphs between Li Hongzhang and Chen Lanbin, Wu Zideng were many, but the communications between Li and Yung were few. Yung said, “I was ruled out of the consultation altogether as being one utterly incompetent to give an impartial and reliable opinion on the subject.”125

Yung strove to save the mission with many his American friends’ help. Twichell was one of the most enthusiastic supporters. Twichell wrote in his diary:

During the month of October, Yung Wing, in consequence of new perils having arisen, threatening the existence of the Mission, chiefly through the alarming representations made to the Chinese Government by Wu, the Commissioner, asked me to draw up a circular, to be signed by the heads of all the higher class of institutions at which the students had been placed, expressing the opinion that the

124 “Doc. 19 Wo-Jen's Objection to Western Learning, 1867”, in Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response to the West, 76-77. 125 Yung, My Life, 210.

scheme of the Mission was excellent, its success so far manifest, and that its abandonment was greatly to be deplored. This I did, and forwarded the circular to U.S. Minister Angell, with the request that he present it to the viceroy, Li Hung- chang [ Li Hongzhang]…Wing wrote to me asking me to go to New York and see Gen. Grant, and try to enlist his services on behalf of the Mission, the prospect of which was by this time darker still…I went to my friend Mark Twain and solicited his good offices in aiding me to gain access to Gen. G. with whom he had an acquaintance. He readily undertook to do this and wrote to Gen. Grant asking for both of us an interview with him the following Tuesday at New York. He also described to him the nature of the errand we were coming on and enclosed to him a copy of my lecture on Mission. Dec. 21st, we were at the Fifth Ave. Hotel betimes in the morning, were received most kindly by Gen. Grant, who launched out in as free and flowing a talk as I ever heard, marked by broad, intelligent and benevolent views, on the subject of China, her wants, disadvantages. Now and then he asked a question, but kept the lead of the conversation. At last, he proposed of his own accord to write a letter to Li Hung Chang, advising the continuance of the Mission, asking only that I would prepare him some notes, giving him points to go by. Thus we succeeded easily beyond our expectation, thanks largely to Clemen’s [Mark Twain’s] assistance.126 When Yung realized the impending collapse of his brainchild- the CEM, in a letter to Twichell, he desperately and yet cynically remarked:

General Grant’s letter, the circular, and your note to Li Hung-chang ought to accomplish something. If the greatest general of the age and the whole might of American learning and Christian character are not heeded in their advice, then I say let China go to the dogs.127 Grant’s five-page personal letter and the university president’s circular helped postpone the recall of the mission for two months. But Yung was unable to avert the recall. Man proposes;

Heaven disposes.

There were some other reasons that caused the collapse the mission. The Qing authorities were disappointed with the emergent anti-Chinese immigration movement in the United States. The anti-Chinese movement started in the West coast under the support of the Democratic Party in the 1860s and its target was Chinese contract laborers. By the end of the 1870s, the anti-Chinese

126 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 49-50. 127 Yung to Twichell, journals, Dec. 30, 1880, YSML, in Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 281.

movement gathered so much momentum that even Republicans favored restrictions on Chinese immigration. In 1880, the American government pressed Beijing to revise the 1868 Burlingame treaty so that the immigration of Chinese laborers (though not students) was regulated, limited, or suspended.128 At the same time, the American government refused the permission to the CEM students to attend West Point and Annapolis for no explained reason. Finally the CEM’s cost turned out to be considerably higher than the original budget. All these factors played into the hands of the conservatives in the court. In such condition, all the saving efforts were to no avail.

On 8 June 1881, the Guangxu Emperor gave his consent on the Zongli Yamen’s proposal to order an immediate and total termination of the CEM. It was one month later that the news came to the States. It was disastrous and despairing news for Yung. According to Yung’s friend, the most important American novelist Mark Twain, the “order came upon him with the suddenness of a thunderclap. He did not know which way to turn.”129 Twichell noted in his journal:

July 9th. Another dispatch from China received yesterday removes all doubt. The Mission is doomed. After all that has been done to save it, it must die ultimately and all its glorious promise fail. Alas. Alas. The disappointment of all its friends is extreme. Poor Wing, it is heaviest of all upon him. God sustain him. It is apparently, or in my judgment, the result of his separation from it. That gave the opposition a change which has been abundantly improved. Surely ’tis a strange Providence.130 Yung wrote many years later, “Such [to root the mission in America deeply] was my proposal, but that was not God’s disposal…”131

128 Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World, 170-73. 129 Edwin Pak-Wah Leung, “The First Chinese College Graduates in America: Yung Wing and His Educational Experiences,” Asian Profile 16(1988): 458. 130 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 51. 131 Yung, My Life, 190.

By the time of the recall of the mission, only two students had completed their undergraduate study. Over sixty of them were in colleges and technical schools. The majority of them had just started their technical training. In the eyes of the conservative camp, the boys’ Americanization was a contamination of traditional Chinese culture. The conservatives believed that the

Educational Mission was, if not a disaster, at least unsuccessful. Even Li Hongzhang said of the boys: “Foreign odor, too heavy; Chinese education, not enough.”132 There was a unanimous agreement throughout the court, that owing to deep Americanization among the boys the mission exceedingly deviated from the original goal of the government, which was to merely learn the secrets of Western military technology. However, the Americans considered the educational scheme of a great success. In response to the recall, the New York Times commented on the

Chinese government:

But, as we should naturally expect, the Chinese students in America acquire politics and Christian ethics, as well as the books provided by tutors…It is unreasonable to suppose that bright young men like those educated in the United States at the cost of the Chinese Government should content themselves with absorbing the principles of engineering, mathematics, and other sciences, remaining, meanwhile, whole irresponsive to the political and social influences by which they were surrounded.133 In 1881, the boys carried both their luggage and these social influences home. Despite years of discouragement and insufficient technical training in China, the CEM boys remained patriotic to

China and loyal to the Qing court, and they contributed their best years to the service of the

132 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 73. 133 New York Times, July 23, 1881.

government. Some of them eventually commanded high positions in government. Many of the boys became prominent in their professions.134

134 LaFargue devoted his five chapters in introducing the boys’ career after their return to China, see his book China’s First Hundred, 67-145.

Chapter 4 Conclusion

The mid-1870s witnessed the peak of Yung’s career and his personal life. On 24 February 1875,

Yung married Mary Louise Kellogg, who was the daughter of a renowned physician. Miss

Kellogg was the tutor of two CEM boys. Twichell performed ceremonies for his marriage at the bride’s family home. An interesting account of the marriage was recorded in Twichell’s journal:

My wife and I often used (before this union was contemplated) to suggest the thought of marriage to Wing as we sat at our fireside, and to his reply that there was no Chinese woman he would marry and no American lady who would marry him, we have many a time replied that as for the latter point he had no proof on it, and that we did not believe he judged rightly upon it.135 Yung’s marriage with Mary proved to be a happy one. They had two sons, Morrison Brown

Yung and Bartlett Golden Yung. Both of them returned to and made a permanent residence in

China. Morrison died in Beijing in 1934. Bartlett died in Shanghai in 1942.

The year 1881 marked the end of Yung’s career for the service to the Chinese government. He returned to China and spent less than a year trying to persuade the Chinese government to allow some of the students to resume their studies in America; however, his efforts were fruitless. He was called back to the U.S. in 1883 owing to his wife’s illness. Between 1883 and 1895 he devoted his time to care of his two sons and his sick wife who died in 1886. The death of his wife and the blow of his life work left a great void in Yung’s life. Raising his two sons became

Yung’s chief joy during those nine trying years. The last time Yung answered China’s call was in 1895, when China was defeated by its neighbor Japan. He went back with no government

135 LaFargue, China’s First Hundred, 42-43.

position and was called by Zhang Zhidong, who he knew nothing about. Yung left his second son to his old friend Twichell. He wrote in his memoirs:

I was deeply affected by this act of self-denial and magnanimity in my behalf as well as in the behalf of my son Bartlett, whom I felt perfectly assured was in first- class hands, adopted as a member of one of the best families in New England.136 Between 1895 and 1898, Yung made various proposals and suggestions to government officials, such as construction of railroad, establishment of a national bank and so forth, but none of them were adopted. In 1898, because of his involvement in the revolutionary party a price of $70,000 was placed on Yung’s head by Cixi. That forced Yung to flee to Hong Kong. In the same year,

Yung’s American citizenship was unfortunately revoked because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was passed in 1882. In Hong Kong he became a man without country. Finally in 1902,

Yung managed to enter in America. But it was not known how he got in the United States since his diary, written in 1902, left only some sketchy phrases on his entry.137 There was no record in the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service.138 From 1902 to 1912, Yung went into semi-retirement. His autobiography was written during this period and published in 1909. At the age of 83, Yung died on 22 April 1912. Twichell conducted his funeral services. A local newspaper reported Twichell’s speech on Yung:

Hartford knows my opinion on Yung Wing and I have often spoken of his personal qualities in public and of his many admirable traits of character…

136 Yung, My Life, 227-28. 137 Yung Wing’s diary for 1902, Connecticut State Library, Hartford. Available online: http://cslib.cdmhost.com/cdm/ref/collection/p15019coll14/id/781. Last time accessed on February 21, 2014. 138 Worthy discussed how Yung entered in America. See his paper “Yung Wing in America,” 283-85.

Few people have any conception of the work he has done for the enlightenment of his race and of the good he had accomplished.139 Yung straddled two worlds. However, his life in China was much more difficult than that in the

Western society. Yung was an enthusiastic patriot. Yet he had to fight alone in China. Only a few officials appreciated his Western education. The very essence of the CEM was to replicate many

Yungs, by which China, as a nation, could be transformed and stand equally with other nations.

However, Yung’s project of Westernizing of China was alien to his fellows: “His missionary spirit met only rebuff and ridicule, and his patriotic motives made of him a crank in the eyes of most mandarins.”140 These obstacles and frustrating encounters with conventional Confucian officials did not weaken his patriotism, which sprung from his Chinese identity and his religious faith. Despite the fact that he felt alienated in his own country, he chose to follow what he believed to be the word of God: “If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”141 To Yung, “his own” and

“his own house” meant China as the nation in which he was born.

Yung Wing’s life was a paradox with respect to his knowledge of the West. His identification of

Western culture was both his strength and his weakness. On one hand, his Western-oriented view helped him perceive China’s weakness and propose reform plans. Yet on the other hand, his pro-

Western attitude, in some degree, became an obstacle to prevent his plans from being carried out completely. His pro-American attitude predetermined his inability to bring his vision of change to fruition. Li Hongzhang pointed out that Yung “does not quite understand the basic proprieties

139 The Hartford Daily Times, 22 April 1912, 11:4, in Anita Marchant, Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Commission in Hartford, (M.A. Thesis, Trinity College. 1999), 94. 140 Kiyoshi K. Kawakami, “The Life Story of Dr. Yung Wing: Some Interesting Disclosures of Old Time Official Corruption in China - Light on the Taiping Rellion,” New York Times, March 12, 1910. 141 1Timothy 5:8 and Twichell, “An Address,” 257-58.

in matters of government.”142 Hence he was not able to find his own way through the labyrinth of

Chinese official politics by heavy reliance upon Western friends’ help. Once he lost the support of the Chinese powerful officials, like Zeng Guofan and Ding Richang, his project was doomed to failure and he faced frustration. Worthy rightly pointed out, “Paradoxically, Yung’s good intentions were often betrayed by the very quality which made him useful---namely, his deep- rooted and thorough Westernization.” 143 Standing upon Chinese soil, he looked to the West, and his world was lonely in his time.

Though Yung’s educational project failed, his name has remained organically connected with the

120 boys and the CEM. Twichell commented Yung of his work, “Undoubtedly had there been no

Yung Wing, that illustrious good deed of theirs [those 120 Chinese boys’] had never been performed.”144 It is a “personal accomplishment of one Chinaman against the background of the tradition and conservatism of the Middle Kingdom.”145 To his comfort, Yung’s boys made a continuous contribution to China’s modernization that shortened the distance between China and many advanced industrialized countries. And Yung’s protégés made crucial contributions to the

Chinese state, as they were very active in the New Navy, the Customs Administration, the mines, the railways, and the consular and diplomatic services. Some of them rose to prominence through the fine products of the Chinese Educational Mission, and through them Yung’s dream lived on.146 And he was deeply revered by those who followed in his footsteps and came to the U.S. to learn from the West:

142 Hung, “Huang Tsun-Hsien’s Poem,” 72. 143 Worthy, “Yung Wing in America,” 281-82. 144 Twichell, “An Address,” in Yung, My Life, 273. 145 Churchill,”Review”, 383-384. 146 Hu Shi, “Yung Wing One Hundred Years After His Graduation,” Chinese Studies in History (2002): 87–95.

As an “Educator, Reformer, Statesman, patriot,” they asked when they reflected on the needs of China, “who but men of his loyalty and firmness, of his prophetic insight and high idealism, of his patience and courage to bring possibilities into realities, who but such men can shoulder the responsibilities of peace and reconstruction?”147

147 C. T. Kwei, “The First Chinese Graduate of Yale,” Chinese Students’ Monthly (1916): 258, in Bieler, “Patriots,” 16.

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