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Yung Wing
Cantonese graduate of Yale who persuaded the Qing court to send 120 boys to study in America from 1872 and wrote the memoir My Life in China and America
In a courtyard in autumn, an old gold-leaved ginkgo tree shades several low desks with open books, each beside a straw mat and cushion, while three children carrying book satchels enter at the gate; a lake and blue hills lie beyond the wall.
Also known as Zi Chunfu
Yung Wing, courtesy name Chunfu, came from Nanping village in Xiangshan, Guangdong, and was schooled by missionaries in Macao, at last at the Morrison school. In 1847 he went to America with its principal, the Reverend Samuel Brown, entered Yale in 1850, graduated in 1854, and returned to China. Joining Zeng Guofan's staff in 1863, he was sent to the United States to buy machinery, which went to equip the Jiangnan Arsenal. He had long urged sending boys abroad to study, and with the backing of Zeng and Li Hongzhang the court sent 120 of them to America in four groups from 1872 to 1875, with Chen Lanbin as commissioner and Yung as his deputy; in 1878 he also became associate minister to the United States. The programme was ended in 1881 and the students called home. Wanted by the Qing after the failed reforms of 1898, he lived abroad, published his English memoir My Life in China and America in 1909, and died in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1912.
Life and times
Dates 1828 CE–1912 CE