The Story of The Chinese Educational Commission to the United States 1872 - 1881
R. C. DeAngelis
Following the enlightened reigns of the emperors Kang Xi and Qian Long, the nineteenth century marked a decline of the Qing Dynasty under the later Manchu rulers. Western nations, seeking Chinese luxury products such as tea and silk, lacked goods for exchange. British demands for tea had the British East India Company ship 23,300,000 lbs of the commodity in 1800. British and American trade in wool, furs, sealskins, sandalwood and other goods failed to keep pace with the demands for specie to purchase Chinese products such as high quality and hand painted porcelain, jade, toys, wallpaper, and artificial flowers. Silver, whether ingots. Mexican dollars, French crowns or Indian rupees, was the exchange preferred by Chinese hong merchants. The one commodity that foreign traders could depend upon to earn the needed specie was opium. The rising demand for opium then entering China illegally through the Portuguese entrepot at Macao was noted by British and American traders. Although initially believed to have medicinal value, the western traders were fully aware of the debilitating effects of the habit-forming drug. Paul S. Forbes was a scion of a large Boston merchant family that traded in China in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Paul and his older brother Bennett were affiliated with two of the largest American trading firms in China, Bryant and Sturgis and Russell and Company of Boston and Providence. Paul described a Chinese addict in a letter to his wife from Canton in 1843: "He must smoke every day or he can't walk about! His nerves are so unstrung that the tears roll down his cheeks, but as soon as he has smoked his first quantum, his energy returns."
The Peking government determined to stop the ravaging effect of opium on its nationals and made several efforts to suppress the trade. Profits were so great that corruption among Chinese bureaucrats, who collaborated in the smuggling of the drug, made suppression nearly impossible. In 1839, Lin Zixu, an Imperial Comissioner, seized the stocks of opium at Canton and resulted in what is known as the Opium War. Following hostilities the infamous "unequal treaties" were imposed, and a growing unrest in China manifested itself in the Taiping Rebellion, a precursor to the collapse of the Qing. A few miles southwest of the Portuguese colony of Macao, in Guangdong province, is the village of Nanping, now called Zhuhai. There, on November 17, 1828, the third of four children was born to humble parents who sought to educate him in foreign mission schools.. Rong Hong (Yung Wing in Cantonese pronunciation) grew up amidst China's turmoil and was of the generation who pursued the search for China's equality in the family of nations.
The western appetite for commerce had a spiritual counterpart in a desire to evangelize the world. Shortly after the founding of the London Missionary Society (1795), the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was established by a group of New England churches in 1810. Americans observed the work of the British missionary Robert Morrison in China and launched their own philanthropical missions to enlighten the Chinese by sending Protestant missionaries Elijah Bridgeman, Dr. Peter Parker, and Samuel Wells Williams to establish educational and medical missions. In 1841, Rong's mother enrolled him in the school of the Morrison Educational Society in Macao. Rong's mentor was Samuel R. Brown (1810-1880), Yale University, Class of 1832, who was sent by the American Board of Missioners to teach in China. Brown was twenty-nine years old and Rong was the youngest of the handful of Chinese students at the school. The illness of Brown's wife forced him to return to the United States in the winter of 1846-47. Brown brought with him to America Rong Hong and two brothers named Huang (Wong in Cantonese). Funded by Cantonese merchants, and sponsored by Brown, the boys entered the Monson Academy in Massachusetts, once attended by Brown himself. Upon graduating from Monson, Rong Hong entered Yale University in 1850. Without Chinese financing, Rong received scholarship aid from "The Ladies Association" of Savannah, Georgia, and the Olyphant Brothers of New York. Rong supported himself by working in a library and managing a boarding house, yet twice he won the prize in English composition in his sophomore year and graduated from Yale in 1854.
Upon his return to China, Rong found that his western education did not prepare him in the Chinese classics and he was unable to pass the Chinese civil service examinations. He served as secretary to Dr. Peter Parker, U.S. Commissioner at Canton, and as a translator for the Imperial Customs in Shanghai. He worked as a comprador in the tea trade and later established his own business as a tea trader and became a wealthy man. In 1863, friends of Rong introduced him to the Viceroy Ceng Guofan (Ts'eng Kuo-fan), a leader in the "Self-Strengthening" movement, an effort to bolster China's ability to resist Western encroachments. Ceng sent Rong to America, to purchase machinery from Putnam and Co., of Fitchburg, Massachussetts, to be used to establish the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai. In 1867 Rong persuaded Ceng to found a school to train mechanics and foster technical development. Rong served as interpreter and translator for Viceroy Ceng and was promoted to Mandarin of the fourth rank. Rong Hong believed that China had to adopt Western education and train Chinese in technology rather than employ foreign specialists. Rong hoped to persuade China to send Chinese youth to Western nations for training in science and technology. By 1870 Ceng Guofan and Li Hongzhang began to think along the same lines.
Through the concerns of men like Williams and a fellow missionary, W.A.P. Martin, who enlisted the support of Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of the Imperial Maritime Customs, that China reform, and the efforts of Chinese leaders such as Ceng, China made progress in dealing with the west. In 1861 the tsungli yamen, or foreign ministry, was created to deal with the foreign powers. These men were instrumental in having Washington send Anson Burlingame to China. Burlingame developed a sympathy and enthusiasm for China and undertook a mission of visiting the capitals of the powers to seek a policy of restraint in pursuing concessions in China. Upon his return to Washington, Burlingame negotiated a treaty between the U.S. and China which sought to protect the rights of Chinese in America who, as Williams noted, were victims of popular animosity and discrimination. Article VII of the Burlingame Treaty in 1868 declared that "Chinese subjects shall enjoy all the privileges of the public educational institutions under the control of the Government of the United States."
With the support of Ceng and Li, Rong's educational proposal of August 18, 1871, was approved by the Court:
A detachment of thirty students shall be sent every year for a consecutive four-year period. The total number will be 120. Each student shall study for fifteen years and then come back to China. Their age upon return should be no more than thirty years old, the best time to serve their homeland.
Upon approval, four groups of thirty, totaling 120 students were sent to the United States between 1872 and 1875. The youngest student was ten years old, the oldest was sixteen, with the average age twelve. In 1872 the Court appointed Chen Lanpin (Ch'en Lan-pin), a Confucian conservative with no knowledge of English, as Commissioner of the Chinese Educational Mission, and Rong was named Deputy Commissioner. The first group of students, accompanied by Commissioner Chen, two instructors in the Chinese classics and one English interpreter, arrived in Springfield, Massachusetts, in September, 1872. On the advice of Dr. B. G. Northrop, Commissioner of Education for Connecticut, the boys were placed in twos or fours with Connecticut families to be prepared for entry into elementary school. On October 1, 1872, Commissioner Northrop noted that "The response to the call for homes and instruction for Chinese boys has been surprisingly prompt and cordial." The boys gathered at a center constructed by the CEM at 400 Collins Street in Hartford to study Chinese language and the classics, honor their Confucian obligations before sacred tablets of Confucius and the Emperor, and have the Emperor's instructions read to them at regular periods.
During the years 1872-1881 the students' academic achievements were matched by their victories on the baseball diamond and in the ballroom. Their baseball team, the "Orientals," won many games aided by their fine '?southpaw' pitcher, Liang Dunyan (Liang Tun-yen), later to become the last Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Qing Empire. When Zhong Monyu (Chung Mun-yew) called the strokes as coxswain for the Yale crew, they defeated Harvard in the boat races in 1880 and 1881. An American classmate, who went on to become a Yale faculty member, recalled the Chinese students' charm with the ladies in the ballroom: "at dances and receptions, the fairest and most sought-out belles invariably ... accepted the attention of Chinese rivals with more than a yielding grace."
The Chinese Educational Mission coincided with an age of great technological development in America. The students witnessed Alexander G. Bell's first telephone in 1876, and Thomas Edison's phonograph (1878) and his incandescent lamp in 1879. The students attended the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and displayed some of their homework at the Educational Pavilion, and won Merit Awards from the Board of Jury. President Ulysses S. Grant held a special reception for them and shook hands with each of the students. Acknowledging Rong Hong's achievements, Yale University awarded him an honorary LL.D. degree in 1876. In 1878 Chen and Rong were appointed as the first Minister and Associate Minister to the United States from the Qing Empire, and presented their credentials to President Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House.
After 1875, there were 120 boys in America and the older ones began to adopt western manners. The cut off their Manchu-imposed queue, traded their long Chinese gown for western suits, and some smoked tobacco while some had converted to Christianity. Rong, whose education at Yale was liberal and pragmatic understood the boys' transition. Rong had become accustomed to American family life and married Miss Mary Kellogg of East Windsor, Connecticut, in 1875. Minister Chen, a Confucian conservative, was shocked at the Americanization of the boys. In 1880, Wu Sidun (Woo Tsze-tun) became Commissioner and filed negative reports about the behavior of the boys who had strayed from Chinese orthodoxy. These reports led the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to condemn the CEC in a memorial on May 12, 1881 which concluded, "...The best way to solve the problem is to dissolve the Chinese Educational Mission in America immediately."
Despite appeals from former President U.S. Grant, President Porter of Yale University, and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain, who had been friendly with Rong Hong), the young Chinese were sent home in the summer of 1881 and the CEC came to an end. At the time of the recall, two students had graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University and about sixty others were in colleges and high schools. Cui Guoyin (Ts'ui Kuo-yin), Minister to the U.S., challenged Rong's personal integrity and claimed that the CEC did not train a single capable student. The accomplishments of the Chinese Educational Comission students' tell a different story.
Many of the students of the CEC served China with distinction and contributed to China's modernization in the waning years of the Qing and the dawn of the twentieth century. Tang Shaoyi (Tong Shao-yi) studied at Columbia University for two years and became a close friend of Dr. Sun Yatsen. Tang served as the first Prime Minister of the new Chinese Republic in 1912. Liang Bixu (Liang Pe-Yuk) negotiated the American reimbursement of the Boxer Indemnity while Minister to United States in 1902. The fund balance was subsequently converted to a scholarship fund for Chinese to study in American universities. Tang Guoan (Tong Kuo-an) became the first president of Qinghua (Tsing Hua) College in 1911, the forerunner to Beijing University.
Among the many who attained prominence, one holds a very special place in Chinese engineering and technology. Zhan Tianyu (Jeme T'ien-yow) arrived in America with the first group of thirty students at the age of eleven. He was enrolled in Seaside Institute for Boys in West Haven and lived in the household of the Headmaster, Luther Hopkins Northrop. Zhan attended Hillhouse High School in New Haven before entering Yale. He spent summers in Hartford mastering the Chinese classics in preparation for the Chinese Imperial exams when he returned home. Upon graduation from Yale in 1881, he returned to China and dedicated his life to designing and constructing railroads in China. One of these, the Beijing-Kalgan line, was built solely by Chinese without foreign assistance. Finished in 1907, it is recognized as an engineering masterpiece.
In 1909, Zhan Tianyu was the first Chinese to be elected to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Four years later he founded the Chinese Engineering Society which became a national organization, and he became its first president. Zhan was the first Chinese to receive an honorary degree from Hong Kong University. After his death in 1919, a bronze statue of him was erected at the Qinglung Railroad Station. The Chinese government built a railroad museum in Zhan's honor near the Great Wall at Badaling.
Rong Hong returned to his family in Hartford in 1883. After his wife died in 1886, Rong left his two sons in the care of his father-in-law and returned to China in 1895 to work with Chinese patriots in the Reform Movement following China's defeat by Japan. When the Empress Dowager usurped power and crushed the reforms in 1898, Rong, with a price on his head, fled to Hong Kong. In 1902 Rong Hong returned to the United States; he died in Hartford on April 12, 1912, at age eighty-four, and was buried beside his wife at Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, where a stone noting his achievements for China and America remains.
