Yung Wing

Yung Wing (1828-1912) was born in 1828 and attended Yale University 1850. Wing created history by being the first Chinese student to graduate from a North American university. After graduating from Yale University in 1854, Yung was consumed by the issues of China’s political, economic, and social stagnation. Inspired by his self taught education, Yung convinced the Qing Dynasty government that western education in science and military technique could greatly advance China. In 1872, Yung organized the Chinese Education Mission and sent 120 young students to study in New England for a period of 8 years. Four years later, he married Mary Kellogg and they had two children. However, his mission suffered in regards to creating tension on both ends. American sponsors rejected the mission’s applications to Military and Naval Academies on the basis of race, and his Chinese overseers, who were already suspicious of Westernization, pulled the plug on the program after Yung's promise of military education failed. Yung strongly supported reform in China, which put him in great political peril. After fleeing to Hong Kong, he attempted to return to the United States, but in 1902, was told his U.S. citizenship had been revoked under the Naturalization Act of 1870. Yung was able to sneak into the U.S. in time to see his youngest son graduate from Yale, where he remained active in high-level Chinese revolutionary politics and was even requested by Sun Yat Sen to help build the new Republic of China in 1911. While Yung was unable to complete his mission of bringing Western education to China, he left his mark on yale and donated 12,000 volumes of books from his own collection, which would later be known as the foundation of Yale's world-renowned East Asian Library.