Yung Wing
Yung Wing (Chinese容 闳, Pinyin Rong Hong, born November 17 1828 in Nanping ( in Xiangshan, Guangdong ) Province, † April 21, 1912 in Hartford ) was a Chinese diplomat and ( with Chen Lan -pin ), the first official representative the Qing Empire in the USA.
Life
Born into a peasant family, he was sent by his father in a mission school in the four miles distant Portuguese colony of Macao, to learn English. From 1841 he attended the Morrison School, which the priest SR Brown, a graduate of Yale University, was conducted. On January 4, 1847, the two Guangzhou left for America, on April 12 they reached New York. Yung Wing enrolled at the Monson Academy in Monson (Massachusetts ). After graduating in 1850 he became a student at Yale, where he 1854 BA received and so as the first Chinese to an American university made the statements. On October 30, 1852 he became an American citizen.
In 1855 he returned to China. For a post in the public administration in China, he would have had to take the classical Confucian civil service exams, so he stayed for a while without good jobs. In 1863 he took a job at the Viceroy Zeng Guofan. In whose behalf he again traveled to the United States, where he was shopping at Putnam & Co. in Fitchburg machines that were needed for the Kiang - Nan Arsenal in Shanghai, China's first modern arms factory.
In 1868, China and the United States concluded the Treaty of Burlingame, where Chinese students, the Chinese government sent the first time through official channels abroad. Article 8 said: . " Chinese subjects Shall enjoy all the privileges of the public educational institutions under the control of the government of the United States " The Viceroys Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang suggested to the Chinese court in front of a memorandum, 120 students for 15 years send to study in the United States. It also military interests played a role suitable students should be trained at West Point and the Naval Academy. The imperial court accepted the plan, and a total of 120 young Chinese were 1872-1875 between ten and 16 years of age with the Chinese Education Commission (English Chinese Educational Commission, CEC) sent into the United States.
Head of the Education Commission in Hartford (Connecticut) was Chen Lan -pin, a classically educated Confucians without knowledge of English, which Yung, who was appointed as his deputy, was the decisive figure. During his stay in the U.S. Yung Wing married Mary Louise Kellogg of East Windsor (Connecticut).
1877 donated Yung Yale University 1237 Chinese books and laid the basis for the local Chinese Studies. 1878 was the first professor of Chinese Studies, Samuel W. Williams, was appointed. In 1878 Chen and Yung from the Qing government with diplomatic powers, and thus to the first diplomatic representatives of China in the United States.
On May 12, 1881, the Chinese foreign ministry adopted the resolution of the CEC. Numerous factors contributed to the fact that the experiment of Education Commission in 1881 stopped again. The conservative Confucians such as Chen were shocked to the degree to which young students adopted American customs. Some dressed to the west, cut off the Manchu pigtail and converted to Christianity. The liberal Yung tolerated the development. Added to this was that none of the Chinese students was admitted at an American military academy, what the Chinese and the Americans disappointed difficult earned the reproach of having broken the treaty. The third factor was the growing anti - Chinese sentiment in America, primarily against the cheap imported Chinese workers ( " coolies " ) for railway construction and mines on the West Coast. This was expressed by the Chinese Exclusion Act in February 1879 ( U.S. President Hayes stopped the law by veto in 1879, in 1882 it gained validity however ).
1882 Yung returned to China, where he was appointed director of Jiangsu Province, was reversed due to the deteriorating health situation of his wife back to the U.S., where they died in 1886.
In 1909, his memoirs were titled My Life in China and America (English: " My Life in China and America " ) published in New York, and in 1915 translated records of the introduction of Western education in the east into Chinese under the title.