Yung Wing

• Born: November 17, 1828
• Birthplace: Nam Ping, Pedro Island, China
• Died: April 21, 1912
• Place of death: Hartford, Connecticut

Chinese-born diplomat and social reformer

Recognized as the first Chinese graduate of an American university, Yung Wing served as one of China’s first ambassadors to the United States and deputy commissioner of the Chinese Educational Mission, an innovative program that sent Chinese students to study in the United States during a time of modernization in China.

Full name: Yung Wing

Also known as: Rong Hong; Wing Yung

Early Life

Yung Wing was born in southern China, the third of four children, to a poor peasant family in a remote village near the Portuguese colony of Macao. Yung was sent to a missionary school to learn English at age seven. In his autobiography, My Life in China and America (1909), Yung wrote that his father envisioned opportunities for him as an interpreter for foreign businessmen.

In 1841, Yung enrolled in the school of the Morrison Education Society, which was founded to teach English and Christianity in honor of China’s first Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison. The school was directed by Yale University–educated Samuel R. Brown, who would become Yung’s benefactor and mentor. It was there that Yung prepared for an American education and was baptized as a Christian. By the late 1840s, the Morrison Society’s benefactors had become disenchanted with the school after witnessing young converts using English to broker deals with opium smugglers and sailors. The school closed in 1849, but Brown encouraged promising students to seek higher education. Having secured sponsorships from several Hong Kong families, Brown brought the eighteen-year-old Yung and two other students to Massachusetts, where they entered Monson Academy in 1847.

In 1850, Yung entered Yale College (now Yale University), where he excelled academically and embraced American life, undergoing a brief stint as a football hero during his freshman year. It was during his college years that Yung struggled with his identity. He wrote of failing his family, especially after his older brother died; the ill will caused by his conversion to Christianity; his loss of Chinese language skills; and his worry that he would never marry because of cultural differences between him and traditional Chinese women. Yung became a naturalized American citizen in 1852, and two years later he was the first Chinese American to graduate from an American college. Around that time he befriended Mary Kellogg, the daughter of one of his professors.

Life’s Work

Yung Wing returned to China in 1855. Unable to serve in the government without a Chinese degree, he worked as a translator and started his own trading enterprise. In 1863, reform-minded government official Zeng Guofan commissioned Yung to travel to Massachusetts to buy machinery for China’s first modern arsenal. Yung’s success earned him a government position. With support from the Chinese government, he went on to create the Chinese Educational Mission. The mission fulfilled Yung’s ambition to send Chinese students to be trained and educated abroad, bringing their skills home to assist with modernization and reform. Encouraged by Yung’s experiences abroad and the Burlingame Treaty (1868), which allowed Chinese subjects to attend American public schools, Chinese officials chose to send students to New England. In 1872, conservative government official Chen Lanbin was appointed as the mission’s first commissioner, with Yung working as deputy. Over one hundred students between the ages of ten and sixteen traveled to Connecticut from 1872 to 1875.

In 1875, Chen and Yung were also appointed as ambassadors to the United States; they established China’s first permanent legation in Washington, DC. During the same year, Yung married Mary Kellogg. They went on to have two sons, Morrison Brown and Bartlett Golden. Meanwhile, anti-Chinese sentiment exploded in the United States as the consequence of increased numbers of Chinese laborers in western states.

The students sponsored by the Mission excelled academically and socially, but their cultural assimilation concerned Chinese officials. Chen condemned the students’ acceptance of American ways. Yung’s lifestyle, on the other hand, openly violated Chinese norms. In 1878, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from entering the country. Despite a presidential veto, the bill became law in 1882. The Chinese Educational Mission ended in 1881 due to tensions on both sides of the Pacific. The Chinese government cited US legislative hostility as a pretext to recall the students. With the closing of the mission, both Chen and Yung were dismissed from their diplomatic posts. Yung was recalled to China but soon returned home when his wife became ill. He cared for her until her death in 1886.

During the late 1890s, Yung’s goals were unexpectedly thwarted by both the American and the Chinese governments. While Yung was working to secure American investments in railroads in China, the US government revoked his citizenship. In 1898, Yung supported the ill-fated Hundred Days of Reform movement. Following political turbulence in China, he was forced to flee for his life to Shanghai. He continued to advocate reform, even as he fled to Hong Kong in 1900. Yung returned to the United States in 1902 illegally and without incident. He retired in Connecticut, writing his autobiography and corresponding with Chinese reformers.

Significance

Yung Wing was a liberal-minded advocate of relations between China and the United States in the late nineteenth century. He is remembered as the first Chinese graduate of an American university, receiving his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1854. His assimilation into American culture made him an effective ambassador, though his lifestyle aroused Chinese criticism. Under his guidance, the Chinese Educational Mission trained many of China’s future politicians, doctors, engineers, and diplomats—many of them reformers who worked to create a modern China. He also encouraged the pursuit of Chinese studies at American universities, beginning with Yale, his alma mater. His burial site at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut, attracts many Chinese visitors seeking to honor his legacy.

Bibliography

Leibovitz, Leil, and Matthew Miller. Fortunate Sons: The 120 Chinese Boys WhoCameto America, Went to School, and Revolutionized an Ancient Civilization. New York: Norton, 2011. Print. Impact of Yung Wing’s program is examined based on diaries and letters.

Worthy, Edmund H., Jr. “Yung Wing in America.” Pacific Historical Review 34.3 (1965): 265–87. Print. Analyzes the deep cultural conflicts that Yung encountered, using archival sources.

Yung Wing. My Life in China and America. 1909. Memphis: General, 2010. Print. Autobiography looks back on experiences that had an impact on his life.