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.
For the girls and women of China, St. Hilda’s School, at Wuchang, where the revolution broke out on October 10, 1911, does a great work under the auspices of the American Episcopal women of Philadelphia, a few of whom bought land outside the east gate of that old capital, where the famous Chang Chih Tung was for many years viceroy. The girls’ college sprang up under the watchful eye of Bishop Roots, who has made a noble name among the Chinese. The opportunity of this school is to be yet the Barnard College or the Girton College of China, and of the need of it, by women for women, all this volume could not say enough. No land is sure of its progressive condition until the women are freed, educated and progressive. The enjoyment of continued progress by the men is not certain until the girls and women are swinging alongside of them on the great road of life at the same pace, and with equal opportunity. There can not be real companionship between inferior and superior; women and men must be equal. Therefore the eyes of all China and America and Britain are on such institutions as St. Hilda’s. It, too, is run on the share principle, fifty dollars per girl per year, to put a modern woman as a lighthouse in China to advance the world cause of womanhood.
The Yangtze valley, in particular, is the sphere of America’s influence, and where the high tide of rebellion swept, America’s educational influence will now follow, since fate has launched her there in the colleges mentioned, and others not mentioned for want of space. Lord Cecil plans to have the vast English foundation of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges at Wuchang (see his enthusiastic book), and if America has its equal at the other end of the brimming Yangtze at Shanghai, honors will be equal. Germany is not going to neglect the opportunity, as she has plans for Nanking and Hankau. Much luck to her. Contentia in bona! America and England have won a vast advantage, however, over Germany and France, in that China, on recommendation of the Board of Education, has adopted English as the official language for the study of science, geography, travel and international politics in all Chinese universities, technical colleges and high schools. This victory was brought about through the influence of the Chinese students who had studied in Britain and America, and a comparison of the technical and educational books issued by the different countries, the report being that the English language had three to one in its favor. When the nations wish to study about China or any foreign country, they have to take up or translate books written in English, for the American and Briton are the most curious concerning the world’s countries and naturally the authorities on comparative ethnology and international economics.
The Y. M. C. A. has come to China, and at Tientsin maintains a school as an adjunct pf the religious, literary and athletic work. Industrial schools have been opened, and they will do a vast work in recovering China’s lost arts and extending her commerce. There is a government industrial school at Peking for the production of the famous and almost lost cloisonné, rugs, furniture, etc. The patterns for rugs are memorized. At Tientsin the pattern is hung over the worker’s head. The schoolboys of old China were most familiar with the first two lines of the Trimetrical Classic: “Man in the beginning was essentially holy.” In Mandarin this is pronounced: “Jin chi tsu, sing pun shen.” The pronunciation of the province of Szechuen is a little heavier, viz: “Jen dze tsou, sin pen chan.” Now the boys of New China are concluding that “Man in the beginning was essentially misinformed!”