On this special day, on August 11, 1872, 30 childish boys dressed in uniform robes and horse coats dragged a braid to the Shanghai Port Wharf. These boys will be the first batch of Chinese students to cross the Pacific Ocean and come to the United States to receive Western education in order to return to serve the country. As the American ocean-going ship honked, an important piece of history began, and no one knew that this journey would be so difficult.
The first batch of international students have set off, what are the untold stories behind this? Let's start with Rong Hong, China's first Chinese student to study in the United States after graduating from Yale University. In 1870, Rong Hong proposed to Zeng Guofan to send a group of students to study in the United States, and Zeng Guofan immediately agreed, asking Rong Hong to handle the matter, and the first point in doing this was to have students. Rong Hong first went to a Shuxiang Mendi to recruit students, and the answer was: "The Four Books and Five Classics of Shengming are not learned, but they have traveled 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 eyes and long hair." ”
Rong Hong had to find people from poor families, and the answer he got was quite satisfactory to Rong Hong: "Go, you are hungry at home, and you may have a big chance of going out and wandering." Rong Hong tossed and turned for 8 months to find 30 children.
The most heinous thing is the Qing government, which forced the parents of every child who agreed to go to the United States to sign and draw a pledge on the guarantee prepared by the Qing government, which read: "The child is willing to go to the United States to study, return from school and listen to the qing dispatch, and must not stay in a foreign country. "After every parent signs and draws a pledge, it is a look of resignation and fate.
After the children took a boat to the United States, they got off the boat and took a train to their destination, Connecticut. On the train, they encountered the robber, who is now the train robber Jesse James that everyone sees in American movies. Li Enfu, a young boy who went to the United States, described the experience in his memoirs this way: "Suddenly
However, the train slid backwards violently for a while, then violently forward a few feet, then encountered obstacles and retreated again. There was chaos and panic in the carriage, and gunshots rang out amid the terrified cries of the passengers. It turned out that the engine of the train had been smashed and the driver had been murdered. Two fierce bandits raised their guns and aimed at us from just 40 feet away. "Fortunately, the robbers did not make a fuss about the young children, snatched the gold bars from the train and ran away.
After the children arrived in the United States, because they had big braids, the American classmates thought they were girls, and it was not until they went to the toilet that they found that they were all little boys. At first, the American hostess kissed them on the cheek out of love and pity, making these young children blush and overwhelmed. Lee Recalls: "She (the hostess) pulled me into her arms and kissed me, which made the other boys laugh, the first kiss I had ever received since I was born. ”
The young children were not accustomed to Western food, and the pickled cucumbers brought by Qing officials were eaten by them within a few days. They also had to learn Chinese in the United States, and every time they learned Chinese, they had to bow to the Qing emperor in the direction of China, and then kowtow to the portrait of Confucius, otherwise they would be beaten. But these children quickly adapted to life in the United States, learned a fluent English, not only language, but also a change in ideology and concepts, some took off their coats and changed into suits, boldly cut off the long braids behind their heads, and left their heads, in them we can see the future of China.
In 1880, many of these children went to university, studying mechanical engineering, hardware manufacturing, coal and iron mining, transportation, shipbuilding, post and telecommunications, and other disciplines that were urgently needed by China's modern chemical industry. Yale University President Bao Te said in a letter to Qing Prime Minister Yamen: "Since the young students sent by your country have come to the United States, everyone has made good use of their time and studied academics, and they have achieved excellent results in all disciplines. ...... Their morality is also beautiful and noble. ...... They are worthy of being the representatives of the people of a great power, enough to win glory for your country. Although they are young, they all know that their words and actions are related to the honor of the motherland, so they are cautious in their words and deeds, and they are too adults. Their good behavior has been well achieved, and the prejudice of a small number of ignorant people in the United States against Chinese is gradually disappearing. The feelings of the American people toward China are becoming more and more harmonious. ”
Just when these Xinxin students were studying hard, sleeping and forgetting to eat, they were reprimanded by the qing court's gang of old antiques: "Cutting off the braids and forgetting the old ancestors is the evil consequence of studying abroad." "Each one is like green eyes and long hair, can it help me to clear the country?" Or hurry up and let them return to China, so as not to have too many dreams in the night. At this time, Zeng Guofan had died, and Li Hongzhang struggled hard with these diehards, resolutely opposing the recall of international students and wanting them to learn more skills, but Li Hongzhang was weak, and the Qing court finally recalled the students in 1881. After returning, these students were detained by the Qing government, and for several months, even the Mid-Autumn Festival was not allowed to go out, and at the appeal of Li Hongzhang, the Qing government finally released these students, and then arranged jobs for them haphazardly, such as Zhan Tianyou, who studied engineering, was arranged to teach English, and later if it were not for the wisdom of the waning kaihui to recommend him to build a railway, Zhan Tianyou would probably only be able to teach ABC for the rest of his life.
This study abroad has created the first batch of scientific and technological talents in modern China, of which 10 people participated in the Beiyang Marine Division (the first batch of international students was 30 people, a total of 3 batches, and more than 100 were sent), most of them played a role in the field of science and technology, the most famous of which was Zhan Tianyou, the "father of China's railways". Let us not forget their existence.