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.
