Benching college J Peh/ng China Founded I SOS A corner of the Library at Yenching where books and newspapers in both Chinese and English are to be found on the shelves and in the hands of the eager students This booklet is one of a series of seven describing the Women’s Union Christian Colleges in the Orient and published by the Joint Committee on these colleges. The ten cooperating Women’s Boards of For- eign Missions in America provide the main- tenance but are unable to secure land and buildings which rapid growth has made necessary. All are in temporary crowded quarters. The Trustees of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund have promised approximately a million dollars toward the three millions required. This conditional pledge must be met before January 1, 1923. If the story of this adventure in Interna- tional Friendship and the appeal for aid seem important to you will you not send your check or pledge to the Assistant Treas- urer of the Joint Committee, Miss Hilda L. Olson, 300 Ford Building, Boston, Mass., or to the Treasurer of your own Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions, designating a special college or building if you desire. Joint Committee on Women’s Union Christian Colleges the Orient — 1921 Yenching College 1905 — (“Just Sixteen”) — 1921 This Yenching Girl is Saying— “Won’t you come for a walk through our old Moon Gate?” The Doorway at Yenching. □□□□□□□□□□□□□a □□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□©□□□□□□□□ □□□□□□□□□□□a □□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□ The bitter question was flung at a Yenching College girl by one of the wet-eyed, scarlet-cheeked women who were crowded into a Peking courtyard, listening, stirred and amazed, to the college girl’s burning plea that the women citizens, a full half of the great Chinese republic, arouse themselves to the national crisis, shake loose from the nar- row ignorance that bound them, and work together to save the nation. It was the challenge of the New China to the Old, the challenge voiced by the Student Movement of 1919, when in all the educational centers the youth of China threw itself wholly into the task of arousing public opinion. The college girl, with her very heart in her words, had been pic- turing China, with her enormous mass of four hundred mil- lion souls, as just swinging out upon the world’s highway, full of dim new hopes, only to meet foul play that had sent her staggering. “And do you know why?” the girl had said, leaning for- ward to catch the eye of every grandmother with her tiny, long-stemmed pipe, each mother with her baby in her arms, each round-eyed little maid: “China has many enemies, but the most dangerous ones are within, not without. It is be- cause we are all so ignorant, so asleep. Now we who are awake, at last, must rouse the rest. The men cannot do it alone, — China needs us. And we must do our share, — you It was then that the woman’s indignant cry rang out, an un- conscious accusation of all China’s teachers and philosophers, from Confucius on. For thousands of years they had glori- □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ a □ YENCHING’S ANSWER CHINA’S NEEDS □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ CHINA NEEDS HER WOMEN “But why did no one ever tell us before that it makes any difference to China what the women do ?” and I!” 3 tied learning, — but only for the men. Eloquently they had written of man’s supreme duty to the state, but little of wom- an’s. What difference could the women make? Christianity came to China. It dared to say that the wom- en in China mattered as much as the men, and opened schools for girls, to prove it. It proved it so well that the government proceeded to start girls’ schools, too, so that in the larger cities, at least, doors from kindergarten to high and normal schools swung open to them. CHINA’S WOMEN But taken all together, these schools were NEED not nearly enough. Enough? Only one EDUCATION woman in a thousand could even read! True, ladies in jewels and exquisite satins, with towering, be- flowered head-dresses might chatter, behind fairy fans, of the strange new foreign inventions they were using, such as tel- ephones and electric lights, as they rolled down the pictur- esque streets of Peking in a glittering limousine. Bronzed village women might forget to turn the grindstone over their supper millet as they listened, agape, to a passer-by’s tale of an aeroplane that flew from the blue-roofed Temple of Heaven to the Temple of the Sun. Duchess or peasant, familiar or not with the magic of Western science and civilization, neith- er of them could read or write. Who cared? A few did care, — and none more intensely than the Chinese school-girl who was studying and thinking her way into meeting China’s problems. There must be more schools for girls; slug- gish community and national sentiment must be stirred till schools and lectures, newspapers and books, were as much an every-day matter to Mrs. Wang of Tungchow as to Mrs. Smith of Chicago. It might be a long crusade, needing many leaders, but leaders must come, and from among her own people. A foreigner, however sympathetic and gifted, could count for little in the beckoning task compared with a Chi- nese woman of equal gifts and equal training. Rare qualities and undeveloped talents the school-girl recognized among her mates; but equal training? Where? In all China’s in- tricate city and country life, the evolution of four thousand years of civilization, there were no modern libraries or lecture courses, no clubs, art-galleries, Chautauqua study courses, — no place could be found where a girl might add to her rich racial inheritance the mental and spiritual discipline chat 4 might develop her initiative, her courage, her knowledge, a scientific spirit or the spirit of service. Even high schools were few. Certain favored students might indeed find their way across the seas to universities in England or America, but how few! Some, too, returned from the long absence alien in spirit to China’s most intimate and fundamental prob- lems. There must be a better way than that. And so Yenching, the first woman’s college in China, was founded. HOW YENCHING WAS STARTED It was in 1905* that the members of the first college class matriculated in Peking. They were merely a handful of girls, tem- porarily using for college quarters some buildings of Bridg- man Academy, belonging to the Woman’s Board of the In- terior (Congregational), which indeed bore the entire financial burden of the little Union College for almost ten years, — but they had the backing of three other mission boards,! and the rather awed approval of a few advanced souls among the Christians and government-trained educators. It was not quite according to Confucius! Outwardly, too, there was little to impress a chance visi- tor with the fact that here was a woman’s college — in China! None the less, in spite of cramped buildings, of meager ap- paratus and library, the college was a success, because it had the spirit of a college. The eagerness to gain of that first daring Freshman class and their successors was matched only by the desire of their teachers to give, and gradually the working necessities of a college were acquired. Microscopes and reference books could be ordered from abroad, but the ap- propriate curriculum for a Chinese college was a matter of thought and study. Though its courses of study have al- ways been the equivalent of those in the best women’s col- leges in America, they have needed adaptation to the Orient, to equip the young women of China the more perfectly to ap- preciate their own civilization and to minister to the needs of their own people. So it is on a strong foundation of scholar- ly knowledge of Oriental history and economics, art and lit- erature, that they acquire the educational inheritance of the West. Blending the best that the East and the West can give, *Cf. page 15, Historical Statement. fCf. page 17. 5 Yenching is most of all deeply Christian; it has never clouded that issue. Only genuinely Christian education could help China at her sorest need. So not merely in the Bible courses in the curriculum, in the impressive chapel or Sunday serv- ices, or even in the students’ Y. W. C. A. meetings, and the little informal groups for Bible-discussion and prayer, is this spirit expressed, but in the whole college atmosphere. Stu- dents coming even from non-Christian homes and schools have felt it. “We would like to join the Christian Association,” said some of these Freshmen to the Membership Committee. Sur- prised, they asked the reason. “Because you are doing the kind of things for people in the kind of way we would like to,” was the answer. And many of them later pledged allegiance to the Master of the Fellowship. THE GROWING OF YENCHING These are some of the reasons why more and more students have come to Yenching, till now they represent seventeen provinces and Korea. Numerically, they are not many yet, for North China is proverbially conservative; but the last two years, particularly, have seen a marked increase. Peking itself has been the political and intellectual center of China, under Em- pire and Republic, for centuries. In popular Chinese par- lance, all roads in China “go up” to the Capital, and little wonder, for its high old walls guard stately apricot-tiled pal- aces, the carved white marble Altar of Heaven with its blue- tiled Temples, and the venerated Hall of Confucius. Here have started the movements for spreading the use of the new phonetic script, that “first aid” to the millions of illiterates, and for making the spoken language of the people the language of the newspapers and books. Most recently of all, the so-called “Renaissance” movement among educated Chi- nese, for utter freedom of thought and life, sprang from a small but brilliant group of Peking scholars. Peking is an ideal place for an institution which wishes to keep in closest touch with Chinese national life and thought, and when, in 1920, Yenching became affiliated with Peking University (di- rected by four mission boards) as its Women’s College, and changed its original name of “North China Union Women’s College” to “Yenching” (the old classical name of Peking) it 6 changed its course of study also, to conform to the regula- tions of the national Board of Education for colleges and universities. “Now you have proved that what we had heard of Ameri- ca is true; you give precisely the same opportunities for study to women as to men;” this was the comment of a famous gov- ernment educator when he heard of the affiliation. For the courses of study in both men’s and women’s colleges are par- allel, though naturally many of the vocational and profession- al courses are different; and some of the more advanced courses are open to students of both colleges. Five years ago Yenching outgrew its first borrowed quar- ters at Bridgman Academy, and the Woman’s Board of the Interior purchased for the use of the college the only avail- able nearby site, a charming old ducal palace whose bricks were laid before Columbus discovered America. Through its quaint grassy courts the college girls each morning walk from the chapel, once the audience-chamber of an old emper- or, to laboratory and class-room under curved tiled roofs. Fragrance of incense of by-gone centuries still clings about the high carved god-shelf visible in the reading-room of the college library, and some of the faculty occupy the old fam- ily temple, with its scarlet and gold eaves. The past has laid touches of beauty everywhere about the courts, which form the lovely Chinese background for the earnest, attractive, merry girls who seem to enjoy chemistry or tennis with equal zest. The carved old chapel doors open easily for community lectures, student recitals or concerts, or serve as a dusky set- ting for a moonlit pageant in honor of Wellesley, Yenching’s beloved Sister College across the seas, whose faculty and stu- dents are so generous in help and friendship. But already the limited space inside the high brick walls of the little campus is overtaxed by the growing needs of a growing college, and the place for a new larger college home has been secured outside the city walls, adjacent to the new campus of the Men’s College. It will be hard to leave the carved gateways of the old palace, with its intangible atmos- phere of years of splendor; but faculty and students alike are looking forward to laboratories that shall be light and well- appointed, of dormitories that shall not be chilly makeshifts, of a place where the college will dare to grow! Yet during the sixteen years of its life, Yenching has de- 7 veloped most of all in the variety of ways in which it has answered China’s changing needs, whether lying under the shadow of its tall tiled gateway, or as far distant as the prov- ince “South of the Clouds.” PREPARING Yenching students have always been tre- CHRISTIAN mendously loyal to their native land, and PATRIOTS they were among the first to respond to the impulse of the Student Movement in 1919. Most often it had been a patriotic purpose to serve China better, that had led the girls to come to college at all, but in that time of fer- ment their early purpose caught fresh fire from the nation- wide student enthusiasm. They were among the thousands who waited live hours before the President’s palace for an audience, who marched hot miles of the city’s dusty streets to arouse public opinion. They counseled with other stu- dent representatives about strategic pressure which might be brought to bear on corrupt officials, or about ways of better informing the ignorant countryside. After these meet- ings, non-Christian students were heard to wonder openly why the Christian students often seemed more practical and constructive in their suggestions than themselves. YENCHING’S The whole student body takes it for grant- SOC1AL ed, each fall, that the new girls, whether SERVICE from Mukden, Canton, or Chengtu, Chris- tian or non-Christian, will take an eager interest and share in managing and teaching their Half-Day School of some nine- ty poor children. And the new girls do ! Three years ago, when a flood set tens of thousands of hun- gry, homeless people wandering, the college girls asked to care for thirty starving waifs in some unused buildings near- by. There they fed and mothered them so thoroughly that when a few gaunt relatives appeared at the wheat-harvest to claim them, some actually did not recognize as their own chil- dren, the rosy, happy little maidens. This past winter, with North China in the strangle-hold of the most terrible famine even in age-long Chinese memory, the Yenching students, not content with giving the fifteen hundred dollars they raised by presenting Maeterlinck’s “The Bluebird” in Chinese, sent a scouting-party to the nearest famine region. In the town of Wang Tu an official gladly of- fered them the use of two adjoining temples for the haven t they longed to found, themselves, for such little girls as would die else, or be sold to vulture-like men by desperate parents. The entire student body rallied as one girl to support the project. “We can easily get more money if we give ourselves,” they said. So two of the more mature students temporarily laid down their college work in the emergency, to act as resident workers, the other girls securing gifts of money and clothing as well as contributing two weeks time each, to care for the two hundred and one famine victims in their refuge, and re- porting to the whole college at chapel on their return. They have tales to relate of bathing and feeding, of watching the smooth little black heads bowed, chopsticks poised over full porridge-bowls, while childish voices sing an unwonted grace before meat. Then come the school-hours, learning to make hairnets, and later the games that smooth even cruel famine- lines out of the sad faces. In the immediate vicinity of the college the girls conduct trained playground work with groups of street-children, they hold large Sunday-schools for youngsters of various neigh- borhoods, or weekly Bible classes for mature women. They help generously in community schools for ignorant women. After a course in public health and house sanitation, they vol- unteered to do some “friendly visiting” in nearby homes, with the hope of leaving behind a little practical information, in- stead of a formal red card! Their music renders service fre- quently when the Glee Club and students from the large Music Department are invited to assist at all manner of public edu- cational and philanthropic occasions. SERVICE IN TRAINING TEACHERS In the end, the most widely practiced form of social service among Yenching grad- uates is that of teaching. “Teaching” it is called, but it includes not only direct class- room work in mission and government high schools, and in kindergarten training schools, but service as school super- visors, in shaping curricula, assistance in teachers’ institutes, giving lectures to women in temples and guild-halls on the in- vitation of officials, and acting as Leading Lady in communi- ty matters in whatever place one lives. So the college wisely stresses its Department of Education, both in method and practice teaching, and there are important plans for Model 9 The Main Hall of the Women’s College Chorus from the Men’s and Women’s Colleges singing together on the day of celebrating the union The new, but empty, site for the Women’s College; who will erect the first building here? The Recessional from Chapel. Students with seventeen different accents from as many provinces sing and read together and Practice Schools in the new Yenching. The department is under the care of Miss Ruth Cheng, a Yenching gradu- ate before she studied further in English universities. Mrs. Charles R. Crane, wife of the recent Minister from the United States to Peking, became so convinced of the overwhelming necessity for preparing just such teachers as these for un- schooled China, that she generously endowed several scholar- ships in this Department. In this as well as general lines of study, the college needs to have a larger number of scholar- ships available for earnest and ambitious students. WHAT SHALL Old China contentedly read the classics NEW CHINA through its huge horn spectacles for some READ? three thousand years, but those much-ex- pounded volumes do not satisfy Young China. Any day he may be seen, hunting over the book-stalls for books on mod- ern science, history, philosophy, — he is hungry for them all. Who but college-trained scholars and authors can investigate and write for his need? Already some Yenching girls have done good work as editors and translators, and some are even now writing widely read articles in the daily press. Peking University is keenly alive to the importance of equipping its students for such work, and is planning largely for its De- partment of Journalism for both men and women. LEAVENING THE When the West introduced herself forcibly NEW SOCIAL and not wholly graciously to the older, ORDER more conservative Far East, is it strange that intricate social and economic problems have resulted from the interaction of the two civilizations? With the founding of the Republic, even secluded women scented the tang of lib- erty in the air and craved a new freedom, a freedom always fraught with danger to unaccustomed feet. Sometimes stu- dents in government schools try to express their new sense of liberty in hybrid ways that bring disaster. The hundreds of students returning each year from study and social contacts in Europe and America have added their element of unrest; and many wise ones prophesy only evil of many departures from the old folk-ways. Yet underneath the various seeth- ing elements, lasting foundations are being laid by the Chris- tian Church in China. Yenching is glad at heart for all that her graduates are do- 12 ing in administration, in education, medicine, literature, as religious workers, social workers, lecturers, in social reform, as home missionary pioneers in distant, lonely fields, as Y. W. C. A. secretaries. In a hundred ways their patient endeavor is helping their sisters to meet the new social complexities and changes with dignity and intelligence. But none the less constructive is their work as home-makers and mothers. Comrades of their husbands, everywhere they work together, quietly weaving a strong fabric of community life out of the patriarchal family life of the past and the democracy of the present. To leaven the new social order is surely the great- est work of Christian education. All the direct or indirect training Yenching can give her students, whether by courses in Education, Sociology or Home Economics, in society or in class organizations, by debates and plays and pageants, by athletics and music and social service, to develop a spirit of initiative, poise, and considerate co-operation, counts in this. THE NEW YENCHING Leaders in constructive patriotism, in Chris- tian social service, in education, literature, journalism, in molding the new social order, — these, then, are the answer that Yenching tries to give to the clamoring needs of China, the part she tries to play in pre- paring the alert young womanhood of North China to do its share with vision and distinction. With such a splendid task before her in these heartening days of increasing international friendship and understanding, Yenching is sure that her friends everywhere will see to it that the college is no longer hampered by the constant struggle, such as she has endured in past years, with cramped, deficient laboratories, a micro- scopic library and severe limitations in equipment, money and space. Nor is it fair to the good name of Christian higher ed- ucation that Yenching stand forth, thus handicapped, as its representative before the Chinese public. President Pendle- ton of Wellesley, on a recent visit, wondered at the fine type of Yenching graduates whom she met, after she had seen the in- sufficient college equipment with which they had received their training. Girls with a high purpose and gifts like theirs deserve the best Christian education can give, and China her- self is too distracted just now to understand wholly their im- mediate need. For the needs of Yenching are fundamental and urgent. 13 The old palace outgrown means that building on the new campus cannot be delayed, unless the college is to be cruelly stunted in its unequalled opportunity to help China. The new dormitories and faculty houses, recitation hall and labora- tories that have been so carefully planned by faculty and ar- chitect, need generous gifts to transfer them from blueprints to solid earth. Yenching is asking only for essential things. A whole initial equipment may be built in China at the cost of a single palatial laboratory in America. And besides this immediate need for buildings is the ever- present need for new teachers’ salaries, for scholarships, endowment, a library fund, to enable Yenching to do its com- plete work. So Yenching asks her friends — the friends of China and of education everywhere, — to help her meet these fundamental needs, and to meet them now. Close to the mountains beyond the Peking walls the wide new campus lies empty under the brilliant sky, bare of all but gracious old trees, and ruins of brick and stone that mark the crumbling of a prince’s pleasure park. Yenching bought that new campus in faith, — faith in you. She waits for the magic wand to be waved over these fallen walls, that the new Yenching may rise in the midst of this ancient landscape garden, — rise in simple yet stately buildings whose curving Chinese roofs shall shelter all that is needed and fitting for the pioneer woman’s college in this land, with its record and its promise, and its brave young womanhood looking stead- fastly toward the China that is to be. The magic wand is in your hand. You can make their faith come true. Three Educational Leaders of New China, All Trained at Yenching 14 Historical Statement In 1905, at the American Board Mission in Peking, under the aus- pices of four mission boards (see page 17) the North China Union Women’s College was founded under the presidency of Dr. Luella Miner, who has remained its head. Regular students have been ac- cepted only on examination or on certificate from accredited high schools. Until 1920, the standard course was for four years, with spe- cial diplomas granted for two years’ courses specializing in Premedical work (leading to matriculation in the North China Union Women’s Medical College), in Education, in Religious Education, and in Kin- dergarten Normal Training. In 1920, by vote of the Trustees of Pe- king University, which holds a charter under the State of New York, this Union Women’s College became the College of Arts and Sciences for Women of the University, its name being changed to Yenching College. The course of study was thereupon lengthened to six years, to correspond with the requirements of the government Board of Ed- ucation in Peking and to that of the College of Arts and Sciences for Men, so that the college course is now divided into a general Junior College course of two years, and a Senior College course of four years, the latter including many distinctly professional and vocation- al courses. The college outgrew the cramped quarters where it developed in a part of historic Bridgman Academy, so in 1916 an old ducal property called the Tung Fu was secured. This was a beautiful estate, but hardly adapted to any extensive future as a modern college. This also being promptly outgrown, in 1920 a new campus of some thirty acres, adjoining the new campus of Peking University, was bought. It is planned by the University authorities that certain large and expensive buildings for general use, such as chapel and central library, shall serve all the students in common, on occasion; while space and expen- diture will be economized by the utilization of certain large laborato- ries by men and women students in alternation. In addition to her proportionate share in these, Yenching has a definite and immediate plan for buildings for her own use, as follows: — 15 Building Plan FIRST GROUP Land, wall, fates (gold) $ 30,000 Dormitories for 500 105,000 Administration Building, with small working library 50,000 Assembly Hall 60,000 One Faculty House 5,000 One Faculty Club House 7,000 Junior College Recitation Hall 60,000 Kindergarten Training School 25,000 Contingent fund 60,000 Total $402,000 SECOND GROUP Dormitories $105,000 Faculty Club House 7,000 One Faculty House 5,000 Gymnasium and Social Hall 50,000 Building for Fine Arts and Museum 30,000 Science building 50,000 (The two foregoing to be built in Peking University quadrangle) Building for Home Economics and vocational training 20,000 Dormitory for Model High School 25,000 Centers for Community Service 20,000 Contingent fund 55,000 Total $367,000 16 Personnel Co-operating Boards Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America Woman’s Board of Missions of the Interior (Congregational) Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church London Missionary Society (Congregational) Christian Association of Wellesley College, (Affiliated) Yenching College Committee CHAIRMAN Mrs. J. M. Avann, 4949 Indiana Ave., Chicago SECRETARY Mrs. Lucius O. Lee Room 1315, 19 South La Salle St., Chicago TREASURER Louis A. Bowman, Northern Trust Company, Chicago Mrs. G. E. Clark, Evanston Mrs. Charles K. Roys, New York Miss Margaret Mead, Plainfield William P. Schell, D.D., New York Eric M. North, Ph.D., New York Mrs. Franklin Warner, White Plains President Ellen F. Pendleton, Mrs. Oliver R. Williamson, Chicago Wellesley College Bishop Luther B. Wilson, New York This Committee is appointed by the Trustees of Peking University to have full charge of all matters connected with Yenching College. To it are added additional representatives by the mission boards co- operating in the college. The Trustees of Peking University are in- corporated under the laws of the State of New York and hold in trust for Yenching College all property and gifts belonging to the college, and grant degrees. 17 Members of the Yenching Faculty 1921-1922 (The faculty of Yenching College, since it is now the College of Arts and Sciences for Women of Peking University, is considered a part of the entire University staff, and co-operates closely with it, but its mem- bers are appointed primarily with reference to the specific needs of Yenching.) J. Leighton Stuart, D. D., President, Peking University Luella Miner, M. A., Litt.D., Dean of Yenching College, (Oberlin) Mrs. Murray S. Frame, B.A., B.D., (Mount Holyoke, Hartford Theo- logical Seminary) Miss Jessie E. Payne, B.S., M.A., (South Dakota) Miss Anna M. Lane, B.A., B.S., (Nebraska Wesleyan) Miss Ruth Stahl, B.M., (Mount Union Conservatory of Music) Miss Grace M. Boynton, B.A., M.A., (Wellesley, Michigan) Miss Ruth K. Y. Cheng, (Yenching, Birmingham, Cambridge) Miss Jean Dickinson, B. A., M. A., (Smith, Columbia) Miss Marguerite Atterbury, B.A., M.A., (Wellesley, Columbia) Miss Josephine Sailer, B.A., M.A., (Vassar, Columbia) Mrs. Cynthia Zwemer Wang Ting Lang Kuan Huang Ting Kao Yueh Tsai 18 A scene in the Chemistry “Lab." Can’t you almost smell the chlorine gas? Breakfast at the Yenching Famine Refuge, the first known instance of such practical social service managed and supported wholly by Chinese women. 19 Faculty Needs (The needs for additional members of the faculty include one teach- er in each of the following departments:) English Physics Home Economics Arts and Crafts Religion European Languages Vocal Music and Violin Hygiene and Physical Training Mathematics and Astronomy Statistics of Student Body 1920-1921 Number from government schools 41 Number from Presbyterian schools 23 Number from Methodist Episcopal schools 20 Number from Congregational schools 16 Number from other Christian schools 22 Total 122 20 Ruth Cheng, head of the Department of Education at Yenching