Young was in Tientsin on business from Tangshan, a small town about two hundred miles to the north, where he was president of the Tangshan Engineering College, one of the Chinese Imperial Government's Schools.
A Group of our Korean Friends
Every Day is Wash-day in Korea
The Tientsin Middle School, in which Richardson was to teach, proved to be a large modern brick building, its class rooms and laboratories fairly well equipped with the latest western appliances. One of the requirements for entrance into this school was a speaking knowledge of the English language. Otherwise Richardson would have been more useless than he was. Physics was an almost unknown science to him, but he concluded that if he could not bluff it out that he was an authority on the subject he was willing to take the consequences.
During the time that Richardson was connected with this institution the first annual track meet of the schools of North China was held on its athletic grounds. The contest was planned and supervised largely by Americans and the Chinese took a great interest in it. Many schools in the northern part of the Empire sent teams, and several thousand people attended the meet. Among the distinguished spectators, who occupied a box, was the Viceroy of Chili Province with a score of attendants. Richardson worried the old fellow almost to death by taking several pictures of him and his cortége. Richardson was ordered to stop. The Viceroy was more worried, however, by the report of the starter's pistol and when the first shot was fired all his attendants gathered closely about him. Even after it had been explained to him that the cartridges were blank he issued instructions forbidding the use of the weapon altogether. The poor old gentleman was afraid that some one was going to take a shot at him. The following week he sent an order to all the schools in his province prohibiting track meets in the future. Imagine the Governor of New York issuing such an order. He would be hooted out of the state.