Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 17, 2004|Volume 33, Number 3

Yung Wing organized the Chinese Educational Mission, which brought 120 students to the Northeast in the 1870s.

Series honors graduation of Yale's
first Chinese student 150 years ago

A series of events this year will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the graduation of Yung Wing, who became the first Chinese person to receive a degree from an American university -- and perhaps any Western institution -- when he earned his bachelor's degree from Yale in 1854.

The Asian American Cultural Center and its affiliated student agencies have organized the series, which will open at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 27, with a lecture titled "Yellow in a White World" by Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Rm. 211 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St. Yale College Dean Peter Salovey will offer introductory remarks.

Born in 1828 in a small village in Guangdong province, Yung received his early education in a missionary school under the tutelage of a Yale graduate, the Reverend Samuel Robbins Brown. Yung accompanied Brown to the United States in 1847, where he enrolled in the Monson Academy in Massachusetts and later at Yale.

After graduation, Yung returned to China, where he engaged in various projects to promote China's modernization. He is best known for organizing the Chinese Educational Mission, which brought 120 Chinese students to colleges in the Northeast, including Yale, in the 1870s. Many of these students went on to play important roles in China's development in the decades that followed. In 1877, Yung donated his 1,237-volume Chinese book collection -- the first of its kind in the United States -- to Yale. It formed the nucleus of the University's East Asian Collection, which today is considered one of the finest in the West.

"The students involved in the Chinese Educational Mission in the United States numbered only 120, but it established the tradition of Chinese students studying around the world," said President Richard C. Levin at the Aug. 3 celebration hosted by the Yale Club of Hong Kong in honor of Yung's 150th anniversary. "The system of overseas study that Yung Wing inaugurated has grown dramatically over the last quarter century, since Deng Xiao-ping's reforms began and the door to student exchange was reopened. More than 700,000 Chinese students and scholars have participated in educational programs in 108 countries. These Chinese have enriched every foreign university in which they have enrolled.

"Today, we remember Yung Wing on the 150th anniversary of his graduation from Yale not because it is a Yale story, but rather to celebrate the expansion of his vision, which is today embraced so boldly by China's leaders."

The Yale campus series in honor of Yung will feature two events per semester.

The first speaker, Harold Hongju Koh, took up his new post as dean of the Law School in July, and is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law there. Koh is one of the country's leading experts on international law, international human rights, national security law and international economic law. He has received more than 20 awards for his human rights work, and was named by American Lawyer magazine in 1997 as one of the nation's 45 leading public sector lawyers under the age of 45. In 2000, he was named by the magazine "A" as one of the 00 most influential Asian-Americans of the 1990s.

The Yung Wing 150 Celebration Series has received support from the President's Office, the Office of the Secretary, the Yale College Dean's Office, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Association of Yale Alumni.

For further information, visit www.yale.edu/aacc or call (203) 432-2906.

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