My Life in China and America · Chapter
Appendix explained
This appendix contains an address by the Rev.
What happens
This appendix contains an address by the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, delivered before the Kent Club of the Yale Law School on April 10, 1878. The address describes the Chinese Educational Mission in Hartford, Connecticut, detailing its purpose, structure, and the education of Chinese boys for service to the Chinese government. It emphasizes the mission's significance as a remarkable institution and the potential impact of these educated young men on China's future.
Themes in this chapter
Education as a Tool for National Reform
The mission's purpose is to educate young Chinese men in Western knowledge and skills to serve their government, reflecting the belief in education as a means to reform and strengthen China.
Patriotism and Loyalty to China
The address emphasizes that the students are to be impressed with the idea that they belong to their nation and are being educated for its sake, fostering patriotic duty.
The West as Model and Mentor
The mission sends students to the United States to learn from Western educational institutions, viewing the West as a model for modernization and progress.
Characters to notice
- Yung Wing
Although not named directly, the mission described is the Chinese Educational Mission, which Yung Wing conceived and helped establish.
Key passages
“The object of the mission, now of nearly six years’ standing, is the education in this country, through a term of fifteen years, of a corps of young men for the Chinese Government service; that Government paying the whole cost—an annual expense of about $100,000.”
The mission, active for almost six years, aims to educate a group of young men in the U.S. over fifteen years for Chinese government service, with China covering all costs—about $100,000 annually.
This highlights the scale and commitment of the Chinese government to the educational mission.
“The result will be, if all goes well and the plan is carried out—and there is apparently nothing now to prevent it—that in the year 1887 or thereabout there will go from this country to China a body of somewhere near a hundred men who have grown up under exceedingly favorable conditions from early youth to manhood here among us, destined to hold places of importance in the government and in the society of their native land, better equipped in all save experience to do for that land what most needs to be done, and inspired for their work with a more enlightened sense of patriotic duty and responsibility than any other hundred of her sons of their generation.”
If the plan succeeds, by around 1887 about a hundred men will return to China, having been educated in the U.S. from youth, ready to take important roles in government and society, better prepared than any other group of their generation to serve their country with enlightened patriotism.
This expresses the anticipated impact of the mission on China's future leadership.