In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, as the European powers opened the gates of China with strong ships and cannons, the sleepy Chinese barely opened his eyes to see the world. A number of the most important imperial court ministers in the late Qing Dynasty wrote letters one after another, in order to change the backward appearance of China, no longer being bullied by the great powers, demanding to learn advanced Western technology.
In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion reached its climax in northern China, the Qing Empire simultaneously declared war on the great powers, and after the Eight-Power Alliance occupied the Forbidden City in Beijing, China was forced to sign the Treaty of Xinugu to the great powers in 1901. Compensation of 450 million taels of silver.
Later, the U.S. government, for political reasons, decided to return the silver that the Qing Dynasty had compensated to the United States, and Roosevelt issued a message to Congress saying:
"Our country should be able to help China to carry out education so that this huge number of people can gradually harmonize with the situation of the modern world." The method of assistance should attract students to come to the United States and enter our universities and other institutions of higher learning, so that they can become instruments of cultivation and become great talents. ”
Therefore, on May 25, 1908, the U.S. Minister to China, Rou Keyi, announced to China that half of the Gengzi reparations from the United States would be refunded to the United States for the use of Chinese students studying in the United States. At this time, after the Eight-Nation Alliance, the Qing Dynasty realized its own shortcomings and was vigorously launching a foreign affairs campaign to introduce Western technology.
Li Hongzhang and others took advantage of this opportunity, subsidized by the Qing Dynasty government, to screen 120 talented young children on a rickety small steamer and rushed to San Francisco, an important educational town in the United States, to study and study. Many of their living allowances were provided by the Qing government and Li Hongzhang's private self-help.
These people can return from school and change the backward appearance of China, when these children were only 13 years old and 14 years old, they had already gone to the ocean, carrying the hopes of the country and the nation. In the next two decades, they learned American technology and technology, and achieved great gains.
Later, the Qing government took 100 of them back to China, during which some of them died of illness, and some did not want to come back because they coveted the rich life in the United States, but in any case, many of them returned to China.
Among these children, there was Tang Shaoyi, a famous political activist and diplomat in the late Qing Dynasty, who saved people from the General Office of the Prime Minister of the Qing Government and the president of Shandong University after returning to China.
There is also the first president of Tsinghua University, Tang Guoan, who is also a very outstanding talent, as an educator in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, after graduating from the law department of Yale University, he served as the president of Tsinghua university from October 1912 to August 1913, making important contributions to the improvement of the Tsinghua system.
As for the most famous figure in this group of people, it should be regarded as Zhan Tianyou, who independently established the first railway of his own in Chinese history, broke the monopoly of imperialism, safeguarded China's sovereignty, and can be regarded as an out-and-out hero.