The Museum of Chinese in America has recently relocated and expanded. The New York Times reports on its gradual reopening:
One section of the museum’s permanent exhibition that is already up and running, a multi-media presentation called “core portraits,” focuses on Chinese-Americans who in one way or another “exemplify a particular historical period.” The 10 subjects include a celebrity, the silent film era actress Anna May Wong, but the display also incorporates a restaurateur, a laundryman and the first Chinese graduate of an American university, Yung Wing, who studied at Yale in the mid-19th century
The Hartford Daily Courant published an article last week about Elsie Jane Yung, a granddaughter of Yung Wing, who passed away earlier this year. She was the daughter of Yung Wing's younger son, Bartlett G. Yung. Check out the article here. View a reader response here.
Yung Wing was born on November 17, 1828 in Nanping, Jiangjunshan, China, making today Yung Wing's 180th birthday. Four years ago, Hartford's mayor Eddie A. Perez honored Yung Wing by making November 17, 2004 Yung Wing Day. I am unsure whether Perez intended every November 17 to be Yung Wing Day or just that date in 2004. His letter (from then) reads, "In recognition of Yung Wing's contributions to the City of Hartford and China, as Mayor of the City of Hartford, on behalf of its citizens and government, I am honoured to proclaim November 17, 2004 as 'Yung Wing Day' in the City of Hartford." I searched The Hartford Courant for any birthday coverage of Yung Wing today... nothing. Yale Daily News... also nothing. The only press coverage I found remembering Yung Wing is out of China. Not surprising.
CCTV has put part (if not all?) of their documentary on Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Mission online. View the three installments by following the links below:
A Chinese documentary about Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Mission came out about two years ago. I found a series of articles (in English) about the project on CCTV. I'm posting the links before I've even had the chance to read them, but all eight promise to be good!
A blog emerged a few weeks ago with the wholly supported (by us here at The Yung Wing Project) aim of naming one of the new colleges to be built at Yale after Yung Wing. Check it out!
Harvard Business School's online newsletter published a Q&A today with Tarun Khanna mostly on China and the upcoming Olympic Games. One notable deviation involves Yung Wing:
Q: You recently wrote about the writings of Mandarin Yung Wing, a senior bureaucrat during the time of the Manchu regime and the first Chinese national to graduate from Yale. What did he accomplish, and does his story hold relevance for reformers today? A: Yung Wing, a Yale graduate, lived during tumultuous change—the Taiping Rebellion in China and the Civil War in the United States—yet accomplished an enormous amount during this time of ferment: for example, technology transfer to China, helping Chinese students in the United States, promoting human rights for exploited workers in the Americas, etcetera. The litany is very impressive. Most of all, he seemed to serve as a human bridge.
Q: If reformers wanted to take the Yung Wing example and work for change inside China, what potential routes or alliances are open to them? Who should they be working with? A: We need bridges like Mandarin Yung Wing, trusted by both China and the West to catalyze change.
There are certainly influential Chinese, equally comfortable in the United States and China today, who already serve as such change-agents. That China is receptive to their efforts is clear from the welcome mat laid out for its diaspora in the past quarter century. Supporting the efforts of such individual change-agents is a way forward.
There can be corporate bridges also, to build on these interpersonal ones. Western corporations taking the long view of working in China, not just for their shareholders but also to support productive change in China, can also function as constructive bridges. Seeing China as a short-term cost minimization fix is, in this sense, a lost opportunity. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6007.html
I am now in search of this "you recently wrote about" article the interviewer refers to...
