China; Chinese -- United States -- Education; Education -- China; Yung, Wing, 1828-1912
educated; that it gave one greater influence and power among men and if
he built on his college education, he would be more likely to become the
leader of men, especially if he had a well-established character. I told
her my college education was worth more to me than money, and that I was
confident of making plenty of money.
“Knowledge,” I said, “is power, and power is greater than riches. I am
the first Chinese to graduate from Yale College, and that being the
case, you have the honor of being the first and only mother out of the
countless millions of mothers in China at this time, who can claim the
honor of having a son who is the first Chinese graduate of a
first-class American college. Such an honor is a rare thing to possess.”
I also assured her that as long as I lived all her comforts and wants
would be scrupulously and sedulously looked after, and that nothing
would be neglected to make her contented and happy. This interview
seemed to give her great comfort and satisfaction. She seemed very happy
over it. After it was ended, she looked at me with a significant smile
and said, “I see you have already raised your mustaches. You know you
have a brother who is much older than you are; he hasn’t grown his
mustaches yet. You must have yours off.” I promptly obeyed her mandate,
and as I entered the room with a clean face, she smiled with intense
satisfaction, evidently thinking that with all my foreign education, I
had not lost my early training of being obedient to my mother. And if
she could only have read my heart, she would have found how every throb
palpitated with the most tender love for her. During the remaining years
of her life, I had the rare privilege of seeing her often and ministered
to her every comfort that it was in my power to bestow. She passed away
in 1858, at the age of sixty-four, twenty-four years after the death of
my father. I was in Shanghai at the time of her death. I returned to my
native village in time to attend her funeral.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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