My Life in China and America quotes

It was through him that my parents heard about Mrs. Gutzlaff’s school and it was doubtless through his influence and means that my father got me admitted into the school.

It has always been a mystery to me why my parents should take it into their heads to put me into a foreign school, instead of a regular orthodox Confucian school, where my brother much older than myself was placed.

Most assuredly such a step would have been more in play with Chinese public sentiment, taste, and the wants of the country at large, than to allow me to attend an English school;

Thus I came home loaded with joy and sheaves of golden rice to my mother, little dreaming that my smattering knowledge of English would serve me such a turn so early in my career. I was then about twelve years old.

Even Ruth with her six measures of corn did not fare any better than I did.

Soon after the gleaning days, all too few, were over, a neighbor of mine who was a printer in the printing office of a Roman Catholic priest happened to be home from Macao on a vacation.

I was engaged in hawking candy for about five months, and when winter was over, when no candy was made, I changed my occupation and went into the rice fields to glean rice after the reapers. My sister usually accompanied me in such excursions.

But unlike Ruth of old, I had no Boaz to help me out when I was short in my gleaning.

But my knowledge of English came to my rescue. My sister told the head reaper that I could speak, read and write English. This awakened the curiosity of the reaper.

Both Brown and Hammond afterwards agreed that I took the right view on the subject and sustained me in my position.

To be sure, I was poor, but I would not allow my poverty to gain the upper hand and compel me to barter away my inward convictions of duty for a temporary mess of pottage.

During the summer of 1850, it seems that Brown who had been making a visit in the South to see his sister, while there had occasion to call on some of the members of “The Ladies’ Association” in Savannah, GA, to whom he mentioned my …

I was awarded the first prize in the second term, and the first prize in the third term of the year. These prizes gave me quite an éclat in the college as well as in the outside world, but

I was not at all elated over them on account of my poor scholarship which I felt keenly through the whole college course.

Before the close of my second year, I succeeded in securing the stewardship of a boarding club consisting of sophomores and juniors. There were altogether twenty members. I did all the marketing and served at the table.

… never been educated, as education had unmistakably enlarged my mental and moral horizon, and revealed to me responsibilities which the sealed eye of ignorance can never see, and sufferings and wrongs of humanity to which an uncultivated and callous nature can never be made sensitive.

The more one knows, the more he suffers and is consequently less happy; the less one knows, the less he suffers, and hence is more happy.

But this is a low view of life, a cowardly feeling and unworthy of a being bearing the impress of divinity. I had started out to get an education.

It was in such a fashion that she reeled her way from Sandy Hook to Hong Kong—a distance of nearly 13,000 nautical miles, which took her 154 days to accomplish.

It was decidedly the most uninteresting and wearisome voyage I ever took in my life.

The skipper was a Philadelphian. He had the unfortunate habit of stuttering badly, which tended to irritate a temper naturally quick and fiery. He was certainly a ludicrous object to look at.

I myself began to think I was too mercurial to accomplish anything substantial, or that I was too dreamy to be practical or too proud to succeed in life.

But in a strenuous life one needs to be a dreamer in order to accomplish possibilities.

We are not called into being simply to drudge for an animal existence.

All of a sudden, he thrust his fist against my mouth, without drawing any blood, however. Although he stood head and shoulders above me in height, yet

I was not at all abashed or intimidated by his burly and contemptuous appearance.

My dander was up and oblivious to all thoughts of our comparative size and strength, I struck him back in the identical place where he punched me, but my blow was a stinger and it went with lightning rapidity to the spot, without giving him …

I said, “No, I was only defending myself. Your friend insulted me and added injury to insult.

I took him for a gentleman, but he has proved himself a blackguard.

”

… Tsang Kee Foo who introduced me to the celebrated Chinese mathematician, Li Jen Shu, who years afterwards brought me to the notice of Viceroy Tsang Kwoh Fan—the distinguished general and statesman, who, as will be seen hereafter, took up and promoted the Chinese Education Scheme.

In the great web of human affairs, it is almost impossible to know who among our friends and acquaintances may prove to be the right clue to unravel the skein of our destiny.

Tsang Kee Foo introduced me to Li Jen Shu, the latter introduced me to Tsang Kwoh Fan, who finally through the Chinese Education Scheme grafted Western education to the Oriental culture, a union destined to weld together the different races of the world into one …

I then retired and left the manager and my friend to talk over the result. Tsang afterwards told me that Webb said,

“Yung Wing is poor but proud. Poverty and pride usually go together, hand in hand.”

A few days afterwards Tsang informed me that Webb had decided to send me to the tea districts to see and learn the business of packing tea.

But with the exception of the Feudatory period, revolutions in China (since the consolidation of the three Kingdoms into one Empire under the Emperor Chin) meant only a change of hands in the government, without a change either of its form, or principles.

Hence the history of China for at least two thousand years, like her civilization, bears the national impress of a monotonous dead level

—jejune in character, wanting in versatility of genius, and almost devoid of historic inspiration.

In their conflicts with the imperial forces, they had neither guns nor ammunition, but fought with broomsticks, flails and pitchforks.

With these rustic and farming implements they drove the imperialist hordes before them as chaff and stubble before a hurricane.

Such was their pent-up religious enthusiasm and burning ardor.

Unlike Li Hung Chang, his protégé and successor, who bequeathed Tls. 40,000,000 to his descendants after his death, Tsang died comparatively poor, and kept the escutcheon of his official career untarnished and left a name and character honored and revered for probity, patriotism and purity.

He had great talents, but he was modest. He had a liberal mind, but he was conservative.

He was a perfect gentleman and a nobleman of the highest type. It was such a man that I had the great fortune to come in contact with in the fall of 1863.

He did a great and glorious work for China and posterity, and those who were privileged to reap the benefit of his labor will find ample reason to bless him as China’s great benefactor.

Tsang, as a statesman, a patriot, and as a man, towered above his contemporaries even as Mount Everest rises above the surrounding heights of the Himalaya range, forever resting in undisturbed calmness and crowned with the purity of everlasting snow.

Before he breathed his last, I was told that it was his wish that his successor and protégé, Li Hung Chang, be requested to take up his mantle and carry on the work of the Chinese Educational Commission.

The motive which led me to build permanent headquarters of our own was to have the educational mission as deeply rooted in the United States as possible, so as not to give the Chinese government any chance of retrograding in this movement.

Such was my proposal, but that was not God’s disposal as subsequent events plainly proved.

It was the stepping stone by which he climbed to political prominence.

He should not have kicked away the ladder under him after he had reached his dizzy elevation.

He did all he could to break up the educational scheme by recommending Woo Tsze Tung to be the Commissioner of Education, than whom he could not have had a more pliant and subservient tool for his purpose, as may be seen hereinafter.

They were slow coaches, and with the Peking roads all cut up and seldom repaired, you can imagine what traveling in those days meant. The dust and smell of the roads were something fearful.

The dust was nothing but pulverized manure almost as black as ink.

It was ground so fine by the millions of mule carts that this black stuff would fill one’s eyes and ears and penetrate deep into the pores of one’s skin, making it impossible to cleanse oneself with one washing.

Such was the sum and substance of my talk in the first and only interview with which Chang Chi Tung favored me. During the whole of it, he did not express his opinion at all on any of the topics touched upon.

He was as reticent and absorbent as a dry sponge.

The interview differed from that accorded me by Tsang Kwoh Fan in 1863, in that Tsang had already made up his mind what he wanted to do for China, and I was pointed out to him to execute it.

in other words, with money one could get anything done in China.

Everything was for barter; the highest bid got the prize.

The two wars—the one with Japan in 1894–5 and the other, the Japan and Russian War in 1904–5—have in some measure purified the Eastern atmosphere, and the Chinese have finally awakened to their senses and have come to some sane consciousness of their actual condition.

I was not disturbed by this unexpected news, nor was I at all excited. I met it calmly and squarely, and said in reply that I was entirely in his power, that he could deliver me over to my enemies whenever he wished;

I was ready to die for China at any time, provided that the death was an honorable one.

“Well, Mr. Yung,” said he, “I am not going to play the part of a constable for China, so you may rest at ease on this point. I shall not deliver you over to China. But I have another matter to call to your attention.”

Not only so, but considering where he had been and what he had become, and the purpose he had in view, he could not fail to encounter, among his own people, prejudice, suspicion, hostility. A cheerless, forbidding prospect lay before him in that direction.

The thought of going back was the thought of exile.

He wanted immensely to stay. But there was one text of Holy Scripture that, all this while, he says, haunted him and followed him like the voice of God. It was this:

It was now 1860.

Five years and nothing accomplished!

To one only looking on the outside Yung Wing would appear to have thus far pursued an uncertain and rather thriftless course; but not if he penetrated his real policy and the purpose that lay ever nearest his heart;