博文
Yung Wing (容闳) --- The first Chinese student to graduate from a U.S. university
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Excerpted from My Life in China and America, by Yung Wing, 1909.
All through my college course, especially in the closing year, the lamentable condition of China was before my mind constantly and weighed on my spirits. In my despondency, I often wished I had never been educated, as education had 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. The more one knows, the more he suffers and is consequently less happy; the less one knows, the less he suffers, and hence is more happy. But this is a low view of life, a cowardly feeling and unworthy of a being bearing the impress of divinity. I had started out to get an education. By dint of hard work and self-denial I had finally secured the coveted prize and although it might not be so complete and symmetrical a thing as could be desired, yet I had come right up to the conventional standard and idea of a liberal education. I could, therefore, call myself an educated man and, as such, it behooved me to ask, " What am I going to do with my education?" Before the close off my last year in college I had already sketched out what I should do. 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. Towards such a goal, I directed all my mental resources and energy. Through thick and thin, and the vicissitudes of a checkered life from 1854 to 1872, I labored and waited for its consummation.
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In 1854, a few months after he graduated from Yale, Yung Wing returned to China. In the subsequent 18 years he took quite a few work shifts from an apprentice attorney, to a translator, a tea businessman, etc. before he finally was called upon for service by Zeng Guo-Fan (曾国藩), then the 'two-river viceroy', to procure machinery for Jiang-Nan Arsenal. It was Zeng who backed up his dream of regenerating China through western education. From 1872 to 1881 he was in charge of the Chinese Educational Mission, which deployed about 120 Chinese boys to the New England. Unfortunately this 15-year educational plan aborted owing to political reasons.
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-103568-358457.html
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