A history few universities in the West can rival.

Yale’s role in China’s modernization

Yung Wing (容閎) was the first Chinese person ever to receive a degree from an American university — and perhaps from any university in the West. Born near Macau in 1828 and schooled at a missionary school, he sailed for America in 1847 at the age of nineteen. After three preparatory years in Massachusetts, he graduated from Yale in 1854.

He devoted his life to China’s modernization. He helped equip the Jiangnan Arsenal, and — in a historic first — convinced the Qing government to establish the Chinese Educational Mission, which from 1872 sent one hundred and twenty boys to live with New England families.

Yale was markedly hospitable to them, and enrolled many of the Mission’s boys. When anti-Chinese sentiment rose, nearly the entire Yale faculty signed a petition, in 1879, to President Hayes opposing Chinese exclusion.

Back in China, the returned students and staff carried the case for modernization into the country’s engineering, sciences, diplomacy and civil service — and argued for much of what they had lived among: universal and technical education, home-grown technology, and equality for women. Among those who enrolled at Yale:

• Zhan Tianyou (詹天佑) — the “father of Chinese railroads”
• Tang Guoan (唐國安) — founding president of Tsinghua College
• Liang Dunyan (梁敦彥) — Minister of Foreign Affairs

In 1877, Yung Wing donated his 1,237-volume Chinese book collection to Yale — the first of its kind in the United States, and the nucleus of what is now one of the finest East Asian collections in the West. He supported China until his death in 1912.

Yale graduates went on playing a part after him. Hong Kong-born Wang Chonghui (王寵惠) took a Doctor of Civil Law at Yale Law School, became a close associate of Sun Yat-sen and served the revolution; he drafted the Republic’s provisional constitution, and was in turn its first foreign minister, its chief justice, its premier, and the founding president of its Judicial Yuan.

The Yale-China Association

Founded in 1901 (as the Yale Foreign Missionary Society, later Yale-in-China, and since 1975 the Yale-China Association), it is a private non-profit that promotes mutual understanding between the peoples of China and the United States through cultural and educational exchange. It keeps a field office in Hong Kong, and holds a simple core belief: that sustained, one-on-one contact between people enriches lives and builds more peaceful relations between nations.

Programs that endure

• Teaching Fellowships — two-year fellowships for recent Yale graduates, teaching at five sites including the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
• American Studies Summer Institute — intensive graduate seminars at Yale for young scholars from East Asia.
• Yale Center Beijing (2014) — a 16,500-square-foot hub in Chaoyang District, operated by the Yale School of Management, serving as a gathering place for alumni across Asia.
• Yale–New Asia Student Exchange (since 1994) — an annual exchange between Yale undergraduates and students of New Asia College, CUHK. The Club helps fund travel and hosts the Yale students during their Hong Kong visit.

Hong Kong at Yale

In New Haven, the Hong Kong Club at Yale gathers undergraduates with ties to — or interest in — Hong Kong. It welcomes incoming freshmen, celebrates traditional festivals, runs a weekly Cantonese Table at Trumbull College, and screens Hong Kong cinema — from Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express to John Woo’s Hard Boiled.

In 1998, Yale, Peking University, and the University of Hong Kong ran an experimental five-week summer program, “Dynamics of Hong Kong Society,” led by Yale faculty Helen Siu and Valerie Hansen — lectures in Chinese paired with small-group fieldwork on banking, film, media, and Hong Kong’s relationship with China.