| The determination to recall the Chinese youths who were sent to this country in 1872 and since then to be educated is evidence that the progress of the Chinese government toward liberality has been somewhat overrated. Yung Wing and Chang Lai Sun, who were chiefly instrumental in procuring the consent of the government to the experiment, are enthusiasts on the subject. Yung Wing is almost as thoroughly American as though he had been bred in the land of wooden nutmegs, and Chang Lai Sun’s early experience in American schools and in college, before he went back for his twenty years’ residence in the Celestial Empire, made him an ardent admirer of American institutions. It is not doing these gentlemen any injustice to infer that their advocacy of the experiment of sending boys here to be educated was made more zealous by the hope, though unexpressed, that the youths would imbibe principles not found in text-books, and would go back to China prepared to do much toward liberalizing the sentiment that rules in their land. The fact that some of the young men drifted into excesses from which the native Freshmen and Sophomores in American colleges are not free gave the government a pretext for their recall. On the other hand, some of the boys have been most exemplary students. A young son of Chang Lai Sun has written some very graceful verses, which have been printed, and would have done credit to one who had not the great disadvantage of writing in a language so different from his own as the English is different from the Chinese. |
Website and all Content © 1998-1999 HarpWeek, LLC
Please report problems to webmaster@harpweek.com