on November 19, 1911, past the whole line of blazing imperial shore
batteries, in broad daylight, is considered by the foreigners of Hankau
as dangerous and courageous a piece of work as the recent revolution
exhibited.
XVIII
MODERN EDUCATION IN CHINA
There are twelve modern universities available for the education of
the four hundred millions of people in China, located respectively at
Hongkong, Shanghai, Nanking, Changsha, Wei Hsien (Shangtung province),
Tientsin, Suchow, Tai Yuan, Peking, Hangchow, Wuchang and Canton.
One of these is British, nine Mission, one Chinese, and one American
Collegiate.
Hongkong University counts among its former law students Wu Ting Fang,
foreign minister of the Nanking republicans; among its medical students
Doctor Sun Yat Sen, president of the Nanking republican government; and
Kang Yu Wei, the original reformer of China, who inspired the imperial
reform edicts of 1898. The university is a growth of Queen’s College,
Anglican (London Mission), and other foundations. Part of the land was
given by a generous Parsee, Mr. Mody, and part of the endowment by Sir
Paul Chater, both residents of the colony. One gift of $1,000 came from
Chang Ming Chi, at the time viceroy of Canton (Kwangtung province).
The Hongkong and Cantonese Chinese are generous contributors. The
colonial government and other private founders intend to put the
university on a broad basis worthy of the great colony, and equipped
for the vast opportunity offered to influence China in the ways of
permanent progress. The Cantonese are, and have always been, leaders
of republicanism and modernity, and most of their advanced students
will avail of the superior advantages offered by the new Hongkong
University. There are nearly half a million Chinese in the crown colony
itself. Chinese pupils of the London Mission Girls’ School on Bonham
Road, Hongkong, have recently won high honors in the art examinations
of the Royal Drawing Society, London.
The splendidly housed and equipped St John’s University at Shanghai is
American Episcopal. The tourist should take a rickshaw out to Jessfield
suburb, five miles from the River Bund, and see its modern buildings,
with adapted Chinese roofs. Its leading spirit has for years been a
New Yorker by birth, Doctor Francis Pott, son of the noted publisher.
Its theological school is, of course, Episcopalian. Most important is
its famous medical school, headed by Doctors Boone, Lincoln, Jefferys,
Tucker, Myers, and Fullerton, whom all Central China loves. Chinese
doctors, such as Tyau, Waung and Koo, assist. The school of arts is
equally famous and brilliant, though perhaps not so imperative. I
hope the day will soon come when this model university will have a
larger science school, not of mediocre equipment, but endowed by some
American at least half as richly as a standard American college would
be endowed in science. The library, museum, dormitories and teachers’
school all need endowments. The university has a full-fledged modern
athletic department, and it is thrilling to see the Chinese boys
“play up, play up, and play the game” of American football, baseball,
etc. The football team has mowed down the Municipal Police team on
many occasions. Track teams and rowing teams from St. John’s are yet
going to make China famous at Olympics and Henleys. Military drill is
exceedingly popular, and many of the four hundred boys, who represent
every province, jumped into the front rank in winning China’s
republican revolution, though St. John’s has not yet taught politics.
It should and will perhaps add a strong branch in political economy.
The debating society is popular, as one could expect in the New China,
and the dramatic society is successful, for the Chinese are born
actors. The students also have a modern orchestra. The university is
not a “griffin”, for it dates back to 1879. Five large buildings stand
on the twenty acres of campus.
The Chinese pay in fees $20,000 a year, which is the record for “self
help” in China. The college does a work free that it should not be
compelled to do, and that is to instruct the families of missionaries.
Soon schools for this purpose will be opened at Shanghai, Kowkiang
(Kuling mount), and elsewhere in the Far East. Even the poor of foreign
families are instructed free at St. John’s whose bowels of compassion
so move for the whole East that verily she would exhaust herself in her
altruistic zeal. One hundred dollars a year keeps a medical, science,
art, political, pedagogical or theological student at St. John’s.
St. John’s asks what added American tourists and others will take a
“share”, as they call it a Jessfield. The answer is that thousands
will. Six hundred dollars keeps one of the best students in America a
year to finish. St. John’s asks who will thus enable America to teach
the leaders of China, and forever sit closest to their hearts, as they
rule the widest political and economical opportunity on earth. America
and England should remember that if good does not sit on the bench in
the New China, evil will. Japan coerced China out of that immense 1895
indemnity. She should morally pay part of it back, and part should go
to the famous St. John’s University of Shanghai, where America has
stood so long as a lighthouse amidst the dark waters of remote places.
The University of Nanking (New York State charter) is a union work
of the American Methodists, the American Presbyterians, and the
Disciples of Christ. Its strategic situation at the cultured capital
of the imperial Mings, the high-water mark of the Taiping rebellion,
and the capital of southern republicanism, is at once apparent. The
leaders of the University took a dramatic part in bringing about the
bloodless surrender of Nanking to the victorious republicans, who
might have avenged the imperialist Chang’s atrocities. Doctor A. J.
Bowen is president, and the following noted educational and medical
leaders assist: J. E. Williams, J. W. Drummond, E. C. Lobenstine,
Doctor Garritt, Alexander Paul, Frank Garrett, C. S. Settlemyer, Doctor
E. Osgood, the noted Doctor J. C. Ferguson, Doctor Henke, Mr. Martin,
Mr. Millward, Mr. Bailie, Doctor R. Beebe, and W. F. Wilson. This
university does its immense work with only $44,000 a year, because
every one works for a pittance, the salary of the president being
only $1,500 in a land where life for the foreigner is expensive. That
is to say, the president of the University of Nanking altruistically
accepts in salary less than would the shorthand writer in the railway
office at Nanking, both of whom come from America; the one a cultured
gentleman of power, the other probably only a machine mind. The five
hundred Chinese students themselves contribute the remarkably large
sum of $13,000 a year in fees. The departments include science, arts,
theology, pedagogy, athletics, and practically the all-important
medical department, because the East China Medical Association (dean,
Doctor Shields) works in connection with the University. Nanking will
always be a political, naval, military, scientific and cultured center,
and therefore the university will have a great influence in teaching
the coming leaders of the New China.
There is nothing narrow-minded about the college, for it teaches
the Chinese language, literature and philosophy. The extensive
grounds cover in the aggregate forty-three acres. There are several
dormitories, chapels, residences for staff, and a Y. M. C. A. The
best building is the large science hall. The university, surely run
economically, needs larger funds for an endowment from America, because
it has not the heart to turn away many promising but poor students who
must be accommodated practically free. Thirty dollars boards a worthy
student for a year, and the college is always glad to hear from those
who will support scholarships, increase the buildings and equipment,
or add to the library and endowment. Athletes of the university are
making their mark, and may extend their triumphs to the Olympic games.
Football and track athletics are popular. There is a library, museum,
students’ magazine, press, and of course a debating society. The
college band, the largest in China, numbers seventy pieces. The boys
showed their mettle in benevolent activities when they contributed
five hundred dollars for the famine and flood victims, and besides
volunteered for work in the stricken districts of Nganhwei province.
Model farm colonies in the distressed sections have been undertaken
by the university. The university now makes a special appeal for a
larger library and reading room building, or institute, to throw open
to the great metropolis, and in Chinese fashion, they propose to have
a self-supporting tea-room which will be a college club and city
institute; a people’s institute in other words. This would be a very
popular move in a city which politically will remain either as the
first or second city in China. The Chinese themselves prefer it for the
capital; the foreigners in North China are using their influence to
have Peking retained as the national capital. While hot Nanking is not
so healthy as Peking, the writer believes that the foreigners should
bow to the wish of the Chinese, and have Nanking named as capital. The
higher classes of Chinese are timid as yet of the religious hall, but
they are enthusiastic attendants at lecture halls, libraries and clubs.
Nanking University intelligently proposes to miss no opportunity.
Yale University (Missionary Society) has its collegiate school and
splendid medical school and hospital at Changsha, the capital of
conservative inland Hunan province, the former center of “Darkest
China.” The staff, in addition to the Chinese members, are Dean
Brownell, W. J. Hail, D. H. Leavens, K. S. Latourette, Doctor E. H.
Hume, Nurse Nina Gage, and the wives of the staff. All the men are
from Yale University, New Haven. As might be expected, wherever a Yale
man goes, there is to be found the manly athletic temperament, and
Yale at Changsha has its champion football team which is repeating the
Camp round-the-end runs, the Heffelfinger plunges, etc.! Yale in China
agrees with the Nanking plan of including Chinese in the curriculum.
While Yale College mainly supports the work, help for the hospital
has come from such churches as the Broadway Tabernacle, of New York,
and private donors. Chinese physicians, fully equipped from a western
standpoint, like Doctors Yen and Hou, assist. This is the intelligent
educational, medical and mission plan throughout all China: “Help the
Chinese to help themselves.” Yale College took a leading part in curing
opium habitués, and in this astonishing reform in China Yale has been
prominent. That the Chinese are not parsimonious or unappreciative is
proved by the following facts. Among many others, the governor of Hunan
province sent his check for seven hundred dollars, covering his own
and the subscriptions of the officials under him, though he felt free
to criticize foreign intervention in financial and railway matters in
his province. The governor of Chekiang province subscribed one hundred
dollars, Ex-grand Councilor Chu gave one hundred dollars, Colonel Niu
gave two hundred dollars.
The University of Pennsylvania has a similarly popular medical
department at Canton, and Harvard University plans shortly to have a
medical branch at Shanghai. Their choice of effort is perfect in wisdom.
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
The splendid military company of St. John’s University, Shanghai.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Presbyterian Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
Shangtung University, at Wei, leading Presbyterian University. Located
in Confucius’ province, and influential in the new intellectual China.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
The largest foreign University in China, St. John’s American Episcopal,
at Shanghai. Very influential in the New China.]
The Shangtung Union University, now located at Wei, will probably be
moved to Tsinan, the capital of the province in which Confucius and
Mencius were born. It is a union of the American Presbyterian and the
British Baptists, and later the Anglicans, the American Baptists,
Congregationalists and Methodists will join. The total endowment of
this effective university is only $35,000. There are five hundred
students. There are collegiate, science, pedagogical, medical, Chinese,
athletic and women’s departments. There is an attractive, towered,
large main building, science hall, dormitories, museum and a unique
observatory. The chief members of the faculty are the well-known
Messrs. Bergen, Hayes, Bruce, Burt, Luce and Whitcher, and the college
is able to draw upon the many foreign notables at Peking and Tientsin
for popular lectures. China urgently needed advanced education. The
individual missions, brilliant in parts, were in general endowed so
poorly that they could not furnish it. Therefore they united all over
China, and better results are being obtained in specialization by this
intelligent method, which has established an example for the western
world to follow. Subscriptions should as usual be sent to the mission
favored by one’s early training or allegiance, and when they reach
China they are applied in some needy department of the union work.
In union, there is no lapping over or duplication, and the result
is efficiency. When any member of the union lags, a united appeal is
addressed to the home board. The high aim of this extensive University
of Shangtung is to have an income of $150,000 a year. In all these
universities the preparatory and pedagogical departments are not
neglected. The need is urged of a large assembly hall, library, science
hall, dormitories, scientific equipment, Y. M. C. A., etc., at Tsinan
for this university, which stands where four great roads of influence
meet and its opportunity is therefore inspiring. China, Britain,
Germany and Japan come together closely in Shangtung province, and
the university’s sphere is so wide a one that the present constricted
income is insufficient. The students contribute nearly $2,000 in
fees, though many students must necessarily be taught free. Shangtung
University has always stood high for its special work in translating
and printing important books into Mandarin Chinese. It is interesting
that the students have developed choral work perhaps more than most of
the colleges. China has neglected music in the recent centuries, but
St. John’s, Nanking and Shangtung Universities are teaching it to her
again.
The Pei Yang University, of Tientsin, is the leading engineering and
technical institute of China. Its teachers are Americans, British
and Germans. English is taught. It aims to be the Stevens Institute,
or Boston Tech. of China. The Chinese board has been sometimes
obstructive, depending on the intelligence of the directors. However,
the school does wonderful and will do better work when affairs become
settled in China. Its hope, as in every other institute, is in its
graduates even more than in its professors, and certainly more than its
native directors of the old type! It will soon have the fine German
technical schools of Tsingtau to emulate. The Pei Yang University
has sent out many notable graduates who have at once advanced to
leadership in China. One is now vice-president of China.
The Shansi University at Tai Yuan, the provincial capital, was
established in 1901 by the English Baptists with “Boxer” indemnity
funds restored to China at the request of Doctor Timothy Richard, the
promoter of the Red Cross in China, and president of the university
for ten years. It is English and Chinese in personnel, and has passed
through bloody waters in the many disturbances which have surged around
it.
Peking University is also a union in educational work of the American
Congregationalists, American Presbyterians and London Mission, and in
medical work, of the Methodists and Anglicans in addition. This is
decidedly the leading medical college in China, and includes a women’s
medical college, nurses’ training school, hospital and dispensaries.
World famous names in connection with the university are Doctor
W. A. P. Martin, Doctor J. W. Lowrie, Doctor Smith, Doctor Wherry,
Doctor Fenn, Doctor Leonard, Doctor Hall, Doctor Mackey, Doctor Young,
and Doctor Lewis. The medical school led in the heroic efforts to stamp
out the virulent pneumonic plague in Manchuria in 1911.
At beautiful Hangchow, the “bore city,” the American Presbyterians are
erecting a full college equipment on a lovely site outside the city
wall, on a hill near the water. The students run the grounds, gardens,
roads, etc., on a “self-help” plan. The famous mission press, which
is doing wonderful work in translating and publishing, is retained,
however, at cultured Soochow for the present. At Soochow the American
Methodists have established a large university. It has a prominent
clock tower, an unusual feature, which is highly appreciated by the
modernized Chinese.
At Wuchang, where the republican revolution broke out in October, 1911,
the American Episcopals have Boone University, and Oxford and Cambridge
will establish here the extensive university on which Lord Salisbury’s
son, Lord Cecil, after his visit to China, wrote a charming book in
1910. At Canton is the Canton Christian College.
These are the leading universities. The Chinese themselves intended
to establish government universities, high and preparatory schools,
at all the twenty-one provincial capitals, but to date only those at
Peking, Paoting, Tsinan, Tai Yuen, Nanking, Shanghai, Chingtu, Yunnan,
Tientsin, Hangchow, Fuchau and Canton have been established, and they
have drawn mainly on the mission universities and foreign-trained
students for professors. The new education was naturally organized
by the government first in the metropolitan province of Pechili. It
included a university at Tientsin, a provincial college at Paoting,
seventeen industrial schools, three high, forty-nine elementary
normal, two medical, three foreign language, eight commercial, five
agricultural, thirty middle, one hundred and seventy-four upper,
one hundred and one mixed, eight thousand six hundred primary, one
hundred and thirty-one girls’ schools and one hundred and seventy-four
night schools in the industrial cities. Is this not an inspiringly
comprehensive program? Both the Board of Education and Yuan Shih Kai
deserve credit for largely taking the suggestions of the foreigners at
Peking and Tientsin in establishing in Pechili province this system
of modern education, which stands as a model for the other twenty
provinces and territories. Many modern buildings have been erected,
but where sufficient money was not available, the fine old temples and
barracks have been impressed, and the surprised sad gods overthrown.
In many cases the gentry and guilds have donated buildings. The
government finds its greatest difficulty in securing teachers, and
they are exhausting the supply that the mission universities are able
to certificate. This new proof of the friendliness of missions had
much to do with the disinclination of the republicans and imperialists
to take the lives of foreigners during the recent revolution. In
preparing pupils to go abroad for further training, the government
has maintained at Peking a special school. At Chingtu, the capital
of Szechuen province, the provincial government established railway,
medical, normal, mining, engineering, agricultural, foreign language
and military schools, and owing to its success Szechuen led in the
agitation for provincialism versus nationalization in railway and
other matters, and this really opened the revolution in September,
1911, a month before the outbreak in Hupeh province. The students in
the universities at the provincial capitals are clothed and boarded at
government expense, the student signing for three years and promising
to answer a draft for government service.
Japan has lost her grip to a degree, and America particularly and
Britain have taken her place in educating China. The Chinese complain
of the “enormous” cost of a foreign teacher, but have him or her
they will! The American educational advance has been astonishingly
brilliant. What America is doing for Chinese education can be judged
by the statement that the American Presbyterian Church alone has three
hundred and fifty-nine institutions of learning in China, and I believe
the Methodist denomination has even more, for that church leads in
world missions, as is well known. America does not pay for all of
this, for no race surpasses the Chinese in generosity and “self-help.”
The Hackett Presbyterian Women’s Medical College of Canton, under the
charge of the celebrated Doctor Mary Fulton, aims “to supply each
city with two modern physicians.” What a brave contract! Charities
and orphanages are the special field of the Roman church; there is no
work that can equal theirs in China in this regard. The Protestants
and Chinese prefer to train the more advanced mind. The American
Presbyterians have a beautiful high school at Fati, Canton; an academy
at Ningpo, a high school at the south gate of Shanghai, and an academy
at Peking. The list is too long to enumerate. The annual reports of
the various Foreign Mission Boards make illuminating reading and give
the names of the heroic educational pioneers. The brilliant work of
the presses, like those at Shanghai, Peking, Wei Hsien (Shangtung) and
Soochow, the ten thousand little rills of income, the contributions of
the broad-minded Chinese officials and students, are all surprising.
How much they are doing with so little money! How much they could do
for American and British educational influence in China with only a
little more money! It is “up to” the American and British business man,
if he decides to be both kind and “wise in his generation.”
The women of America and Britain are doing their share, especially in
hospitals and nurses’ and girls’ schools. The American Presbyterian
women have at Canton and elsewhere model institutions, similar to many
throughout the crowded land, which land is going to heal itself, with
foreign help, of all its diseases: bodily, mental, economical and
international. I have known several people of late who have inherited
legacies, and happening to read a China book, they were curious to see
what a little money, that came so easily, altruistically “invested”
there, would do. They have erected a few hospitals and schools, and
their joy has not ceased when they saw the wonderful results in the
able hands to which the philanthropy was committed. The impetus they
thus gave to the progress of the world was greater than the same amount
would have caused anywhere else.