China; Chinese -- United States -- Education; Education -- China; Yung, Wing, 1828-1912
only standard by which he measured things and men (especially students)
was purely Chinese. The gradual but marked transformation of the
students in their behavior and conduct as they grew in knowledge and
stature under New England influence, culture and environment produced a
contrast to their behavior and conduct when they first set foot in New
England that might well be strange and repugnant to the ideas and senses
of a man like Chin Lan Pin, who all his life had been accustomed to see
the springs of life, energy and independence, candor, ingenuity and
open-heartedness all covered up and concealed, and in a great measure
smothered and never allowed their full play. Now in New England the
heavy weight of repression and suppression was lifted from the minds of
these young students; they exulted in their freedom and leaped for joy.
No wonder they took to athletic sports with alacrity and delight!
Doubtless Chin Lan Pin when he left Hartford for good to go to
Washington carried away with him a very poor idea of the work to which
he was singled out and called upon to perform. He must have felt that
his own immaculate Chinese training had been contaminated by coming in
contact with Occidental schooling, which he looked upon with evident
repugnance. At the same time the very work which he seemed to look upon
with disgust had certainly served him the best turn in his life. It
served to lift him out of his obscurity as a head clerk in the office of
the Board of Punishment for twenty years to become a commissioner of the
Chinese Educational Commission, and from that post to be a minister
plenipotentiary in Washington. It was the stepping stone by which he
climbed to political prominence. He should not have kicked away the
ladder under him after he had reached his dizzy elevation. He did all he
could to break up the educational scheme by recommending Woo Tsze Tung
to be the Commissioner of Education, than whom he could not have had a
more pliant and subservient tool for his purpose, as may be seen
hereinafter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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