On March 12, 1872, Zeng Guofan, the most famous minister in the history of the late Qing Dynasty, died at the Liangjiang Governor's Palace in Nanjing. Five months later, on August 11, the first batch of 30 young children in the United States, who was personally promoted by him, set off from Shanghai to the United States to start their lifelong study journey. These children were the first young children to stay in the United States in the late Qing Dynasty.
Sending young children from the Qing Dynasty to study in the United States and returning to China to serve the Qing Dynasty after completing their studies was a talent training program proposed by Rong Hong, a famous educator and social activist in the late Qing Dynasty, jointly played by Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, and approved by the Qing government. This plan, which was promoted by Zeng Guofan, was undoubtedly a pity that he could not see the implementation of this plan with his own eyes. He probably did not expect that these young children would play a huge role in all walks of life in the future, and have a huge impact on promoting china's social progress.
In August 1871, the Qing government established the "Young Children's Foreign Leaves Industry Bureau", with Chen Lanbin, the first minister of the Qing Dynasty in the United States, as a member of the Foreign Affairs Bureau and Rong Hong as a vice member. Chen Lanbin is responsible for the Chinese of students studying in the United States, and Rong Hong is responsible for the children's education in the United States. According to the plan, 30 students around the age of 12 are selected to study in the United States every year, with a total of 120 students in four years. The school system is 15 years, and all the costs of young children going abroad are borne by the Qing government.
The Qing government also stipulated that after completing their studies, these young children must return to China to serve the Qing Dynasty. Young children staying in the United States need to sign a letter of commitment, promising that the child will voluntarily go to the United States to study, return from school to obey the "Qing Dynasty's dispatch", and must not stay in a foreign country, if he dies of illness or dies in a foreign country, it is providence, the imperial court does not care, and he thinks that he is unlucky.
With such conditions, Rong Hong went to Guangdong to find suitable young children. He thought there would be a lot of people signing up, but the reality was more severe than he thought.
Unlike today, the people who study abroad now are the children of rich families. At that time, the people of the rich family were reluctant to give their children away.
At that time, Rong Hong visited one household at a time. He first came to a family of scholars to recruit students, and got the answer: "The four books and five classics of Shengming are not learned, but they travel across the ocean to learn the strange tricks of the barbarians, ridiculous, ridiculous!" ”
Rong Hong went to another scholar, and the literati said, "The United States is a very barbaric and uncivilized place, and it will peel off the skin of Chinese." ”
Rong Hong came to a rich man's house again, and the answer he got was even more infuriating: "My son eats delicious and drinks spicy, give me a good inheritance, in the future I am still waiting to hold my grandson, why bother to suffer from the green-eyed long-haired one." ”
In this way, after hitting the wall several times, Rong Hong had to set his sights on the poor home. The children of these families do not have enough to eat, do not have warm clothes, and will not have a better future at home. Their parents prefer to let them go abroad so that at least they don't have to starve and freeze.
Rong Hong visited some poor families, and as expected, most of them agreed to let their children go out, and their thoughts were: "Go, at home is hungry, go out and run around. ”
In this way, through 8 months of arduous trekking, Rong Hong found 30 young children who were willing to go to the United States with him. Most of these children are from Guangdong, and the most are from the Zhuhai and Zhongshan generations.
On the day of departure, these children were all wearing long shirts, and their young faces were hopes and fears for a slim future. After a month of sailing, the children arrived in San Francisco on September 12, 1872. These young children received great attention from the American people. In the eyes of americans, this group of children with long pigtails, wearing long shirts, unable to distinguish gender, like aliens.
After the first batch arrived safely in the United States, according to the plan, Rong Hong recruited 3 batches of young children, a total of 120 people. More than 70% of these young children are from Guangdong, and most of them are from Xiangshan, Guangdong, which is today's Zhuhai and Zhongshan generations.
When the children arrived in the United States, they were sent to New England in the eastern United States, where they were then housed in more than 40 American homes.
When the young children arrived in the United States, they quickly broke through the language barrier and were able to communicate with the local children in English in a very short time. When they entered the school, they became the best students in the school. When they grew up, most of them entered the university with excellent grades.
However, because Empress Dowager Cixi and the imperial court were worried that these students studying in the United States would be Westernized and endanger the rule of the Qing Dynasty, in the seventh year of Guangxu (1881), they all ordered their withdrawal in advance. According to incomplete statistics, by 1880, more than 50 young Chinese children had entered American universities, of which 22 were admitted to Yale University, 8 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, 1 to Harvard University, and 3 to Columbia University in New York.
However, even if they returned to China in advance, through these 6 to 9 years of study, they still cultivated a group of new talents in diplomacy, navy, shipping, telegraph, road and mining, education and other aspects in the early modern period of China, and had a positive impact on the future dispatch of Chinese students.
Among these children were Zhan Tianyou, chief engineer of the Beijing-Zhang Railway, Liang Dunyan, foreign minister, Cai Shaoji, president of Beiyang University, Rong Shangqian, captain of the cruiser Huantai, who participated in the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War in 1894, and Zhong Wenyao, a well-known diplomat. In today's Zhuhai, in a place called Tangjiawan, seven young children who stayed in the United States went abroad. Among these seven people, Tang Shaoyi, the first premier of the Republic of China, and Tang Guoan, the first president of Tsinghua University, walked out.