There are twelve modern universities available for the education of the four hundred millions of people in China, located respectively at Hongkong, Shanghai, Nanking, Changsha, Wei Hsien (Shangtung province), Tientsin, Suchow, Tai Yuan, Peking, Hangchow, Wuchang and Canton. One of these is British, nine Mission, one Chinese, and one American Collegiate.

Hongkong University counts among its former law students Wu Ting Fang, foreign minister of the Nanking republicans; among its medical students Doctor Sun Yat Sen, president of the Nanking republican government; and Kang Yu Wei, the original reformer of China, who inspired the imperial reform edicts of 1898. The university is a growth of Queen’s College, Anglican (London Mission), and other foundations. Part of the land was given by a generous Parsee, Mr. Mody, and part of the endowment by Sir Paul Chater, both residents of the colony. One gift of $1,000 came from Chang Ming Chi, at the time viceroy of Canton (Kwangtung province). The Hongkong and Cantonese Chinese are generous contributors. The colonial government and other private founders intend to put the university on a broad basis worthy of the great colony, and equipped for the vast opportunity offered to influence China in the ways of permanent progress. The Cantonese are, and have always been, leaders of republicanism and modernity, and most of their advanced students will avail of the superior advantages offered by the new Hongkong University. There are nearly half a million Chinese in the crown colony itself. Chinese pupils of the London Mission Girls’ School on Bonham Road, Hongkong, have recently won high honors in the art examinations of the Royal Drawing Society, London.

The splendidly housed and equipped St John’s University at Shanghai is American Episcopal. The tourist should take a rickshaw out to Jessfield suburb, five miles from the River Bund, and see its modern buildings, with adapted Chinese roofs. Its leading spirit has for years been a New Yorker by birth, Doctor Francis Pott, son of the noted publisher. Its theological school is, of course, Episcopalian. Most important is its famous medical school, headed by Doctors Boone, Lincoln, Jefferys, Tucker, Myers, and Fullerton, whom all Central China loves. Chinese doctors, such as Tyau, Waung and Koo, assist. The school of arts is equally famous and brilliant, though perhaps not so imperative. I hope the day will soon come when this model university will have a larger science school, not of mediocre equipment, but endowed by some American at least half as richly as a standard American college would be endowed in science. The library, museum, dormitories and teachers’ school all need endowments. The university has a full-fledged modern athletic department, and it is thrilling to see the Chinese boys “play up, play up, and play the game” of American football, baseball, etc. The football team has mowed down the Municipal Police team on many occasions. Track teams and rowing teams from St. John’s are yet going to make China famous at Olympics and Henleys. Military drill is exceedingly popular, and many of the four hundred boys, who represent every province, jumped into the front rank in winning China’s republican revolution, though St. John’s has not yet taught politics. It should and will perhaps add a strong branch in political economy. The debating society is popular, as one could expect in the New China, and the dramatic society is successful, for the Chinese are born actors. The students also have a modern orchestra. The university is not a “griffin”, for it dates back to 1879. Five large buildings stand on the twenty acres of campus.

The Chinese pay in fees $20,000 a year, which is the record for “self help” in China. The college does a work free that it should not be compelled to do, and that is to instruct the families of missionaries. Soon schools for this purpose will be opened at Shanghai, Kowkiang (Kuling mount), and elsewhere in the Far East. Even the poor of foreign families are instructed free at St. John’s whose bowels of compassion so move for the whole East that verily she would exhaust herself in her altruistic zeal. One hundred dollars a year keeps a medical, science, art, political, pedagogical or theological student at St. John’s. St. John’s asks what added American tourists and others will take a “share”, as they call it a Jessfield. The answer is that thousands will. Six hundred dollars keeps one of the best students in America a year to finish. St. John’s asks who will thus enable America to teach the leaders of China, and forever sit closest to their hearts, as they rule the widest political and economical opportunity on earth. America and England should remember that if good does not sit on the bench in the New China, evil will. Japan coerced China out of that immense 1895 indemnity. She should morally pay part of it back, and part should go to the famous St. John’s University of Shanghai, where America has stood so long as a lighthouse amidst the dark waters of remote places.

The University of Nanking (New York State charter) is a union work of the American Methodists, the American Presbyterians, and the Disciples of Christ. Its strategic situation at the cultured capital of the imperial Mings, the high-water mark of the Taiping rebellion, and the capital of southern republicanism, is at once apparent. The leaders of the University took a dramatic part in bringing about the bloodless surrender of Nanking to the victorious republicans, who might have avenged the imperialist Chang’s atrocities. Doctor A.J. Bowen is president, and the following noted educational and medical leaders assist: J.E. Williams, J.W. Drummond, E.C. Lobenstine, Doctor Garritt, Alexander Paul, Frank Garrett, C.S. Settlemyer, Doctor E. Osgood, the noted Doctor J.C. Ferguson, Doctor Henke, Mr. Martin, Mr. Millward, Mr. Bailie, Doctor R. Beebe, and W.F. Wilson. This university does its immense work with only $44,000 a year, because every one works for a pittance, the salary of the president being only $1,500 in a land where life for the foreigner is expensive. That is to say, the president of the University of Nanking altruistically accepts in salary less than would the shorthand writer in the railway office at Nanking, both of whom come from America; the one a cultured gentleman of power, the other probably only a machine mind. The five hundred Chinese students themselves contribute the remarkably large sum of $13,000 a year in fees. The departments include science, arts, theology, pedagogy, athletics, and practically the all-important medical department, because the East China Medical Association (dean, Doctor Shields) works in connection with the University. Nanking will always be a political, naval, military, scientific and cultured center, and therefore the university will have a great influence in teaching the coming leaders of the New China. There is nothing narrow-minded about the college, for it teaches the Chinese language, literature and philosophy. The extensive grounds cover in the aggregate forty-three acres. There are several dormitories, chapels, residences for staff, and a Y.M.C.A. The best building is the large science hall. The university, surely run economically, needs larger funds for an endowment from America, because it has not the heart to turn away many promising but poor students who must be accommodated practically free. Thirty dollars boards a worthy student for a year, and the college is always glad to hear from those who will support scholarships, increase the buildings and equipment, or add to the library and endowment. Athletes of the university are making their mark, and may extend their triumphs to the Olympic games. Football and track athletics are popular. There is a library, museum, students’ magazine, press, and of course a debating society. The college band, the largest in China, numbers seventy pieces. The boys showed their mettle in benevolent activities when they contributed five hundred dollars for the famine and flood victims, and besides volunteered for work in the stricken districts of Nganhwei province. Model farm colonies in the distressed sections have been undertaken by the university. The university now makes a special appeal for a larger library and reading room building, or institute, to throw open to the great metropolis, and in Chinese fashion, they propose to have a self-supporting tea-room which will be a college club and city institute; a people’s institute in other words. This would be a very popular move in a city which politically will remain either as the first or second city in China. The Chinese themselves prefer it for the capital; the foreigners in North China are using their influence to have Peking retained as the national capital. While hot Nanking is not so healthy as Peking, the writer believes that the foreigners should bow to the wish of the Chinese, and have Nanking named as capital. The higher classes of Chinese are timid as yet of the religious hall, but they are enthusiastic attendants at lecture halls, libraries and clubs. Nanking University intelligently proposes to miss no opportunity.

Yale University (Missionary Society) has its collegiate school and splendid medical school and hospital at Changsha, the capital of conservative inland Hunan province, the former center of “Darkest China.” The staff, in addition to the Chinese members, are Dean Brownell, W.J. Hail, D.H. Leavens, K.S. Latourette, Doctor E.H. Hume, Nurse Nina Gage, and the wives of the staff. All the men are from Yale University, New Haven. As might be expected, wherever a Yale man goes, there is to be found the manly athletic temperament, and Yale at Changsha has its champion football team which is repeating the Camp round-the-end runs, the Heffelfinger plunges, etc.! Yale in China agrees with the Nanking plan of including Chinese in the curriculum. While Yale College mainly supports the work, help for the hospital has come from such churches as the Broadway Tabernacle, of New York, and private donors. Chinese physicians, fully equipped from a western standpoint, like Doctors Yen and Hou, assist. This is the intelligent educational, medical and mission plan throughout all China: “Help the Chinese to help themselves.” Yale College took a leading part in curing opium habituÉs, and in this astonishing reform in China Yale has been prominent. That the Chinese are not parsimonious or unappreciative is proved by the following facts. Among many others, the governor of Hunan province sent his check for seven hundred dollars, covering his own and the subscriptions of the officials under him, though he felt free to criticize foreign intervention in financial and railway matters in his province. The governor of Chekiang province subscribed one hundred dollars, Ex-grand Councilor Chu gave one hundred dollars, Colonel Niu gave two hundred dollars.

The University of Pennsylvania has a similarly popular medical department at Canton, and Harvard University plans shortly to have a medical branch at Shanghai. Their choice of effort is perfect in wisdom.

The Shangtung Union University, now located at Wei, will probably be moved to Tsinan, the capital of the province in which Confucius and Mencius were born. It is a union of the American Presbyterian and the British Baptists, and later the Anglicans, the American Baptists, Congregationalists and Methodists will join. The total endowment of this effective university is only $35,000. There are five hundred students. There are collegiate, science, pedagogical, medical, Chinese, athletic and women’s departments. There is an attractive, towered, large main building, science hall, dormitories, museum and a unique observatory. The chief members of the faculty are the well-known Messrs. Bergen, Hayes, Bruce, Burt, Luce and Whitcher, and the college is able to draw upon the many foreign notables at Peking and Tientsin for popular lectures. China urgently needed advanced education. The individual missions, brilliant in parts, were in general endowed so poorly that they could not furnish it. Therefore they united all over China, and better results are being obtained in specialization by this intelligent method, which has established an example for the western world to follow. Subscriptions should as usual be sent to the mission favored by one’s early training or allegiance, and when they reach China they are applied in some needy department of the union work. In union, there is no lapping over or duplication, and the result is efficiency. When any member of the union lags, a united appeal is addressed to the home board. The high aim of this extensive University of Shangtung is to have an income of $150,000 a year. In all these universities the preparatory and pedagogical departments are not neglected. The need is urged of a large assembly hall, library, science hall, dormitories, scientific equipment, Y.M.C.A., etc., at Tsinan for this university, which stands where four great roads of influence meet and its opportunity is therefore inspiring. China, Britain, Germany and Japan come together closely in Shangtung province, and the university’s sphere is so wide a one that the present constricted income is insufficient. The students contribute nearly $2,000 in fees, though many students must necessarily be taught free. Shangtung University has always stood high for its special work in translating and printing important books into Mandarin Chinese. It is interesting that the students have developed choral work perhaps more than most of the colleges. China has neglected music in the recent centuries, but St. John’s, Nanking and Shangtung Universities are teaching it to her again.

The Pei Yang University, of Tientsin, is the leading engineering and technical institute of China. Its teachers are Americans, British and Germans. English is taught. It aims to be the Stevens Institute, or Boston Tech. of China. The Chinese board has been sometimes obstructive, depending on the intelligence of the directors. However, the school does wonderful and will do better work when affairs become settled in China. Its hope, as in every other institute, is in its graduates even more than in its professors, and certainly more than its native directors of the old type! It will soon have the fine German technical schools of Tsingtau to emulate. The Pei Yang University has sent out many notable graduates who have at once advanced to leadership in China. One is now vice-president of China.

The Shansi University at Tai Yuan, the provincial capital, was established in 1901 by the English Baptists with “Boxer” indemnity funds restored to China at the request of Doctor Timothy Richard, the promoter of the Red Cross in China, and president of the university for ten years. It is English and Chinese in personnel, and has passed through bloody waters in the many disturbances which have surged around it.

Peking University is also a union in educational work of the American Congregationalists, American Presbyterians and London Mission, and in medical work, of the Methodists and Anglicans in addition. This is decidedly the leading medical college in China, and includes a women’s medical college, nurses’ training school, hospital and dispensaries. World famous names in connection with the university are Doctor W.A.P. Martin, Doctor J.W. Lowrie, Doctor Smith, Doctor Wherry, Doctor Fenn, Doctor Leonard, Doctor Hall, Doctor Mackey, Doctor Young, and Doctor Lewis. The medical school led in the heroic efforts to stamp out the virulent pneumonic plague in Manchuria in 1911.

At beautiful Hangchow, the “bore city,” the American Presbyterians are erecting a full college equipment on a lovely site outside the city wall, on a hill near the water. The students run the grounds, gardens, roads, etc., on a “self-help” plan. The famous mission press, which is doing wonderful work in translating and publishing, is retained, however, at cultured Soochow for the present. At Soochow the American Methodists have established a large university. It has a prominent clock tower, an unusual feature, which is highly appreciated by the modernized Chinese. At Wuchang, where the republican revolution broke out in October, 1911, the American Episcopals have Boone University, and Oxford and Cambridge will establish here the extensive university on which Lord Salisbury’s son, Lord Cecil, after his visit to China, wrote a charming book in 1910. At Canton is the Canton Christian College.

These are the leading universities. The Chinese themselves intended to establish government universities, high and preparatory schools, at all the twenty-one provincial capitals, but to date only those at Peking, Paoting, Tsinan, Tai Yuen, Nanking, Shanghai, Chingtu, Yunnan, Tientsin, Hangchow, Fuchau and Canton have been established, and they have drawn mainly on the mission universities and foreign-trained students for professors. The new education was naturally organized by the government first in the metropolitan province of Pechili. It included a university at Tientsin, a provincial college at Paoting, seventeen industrial schools, three high, forty-nine elementary normal, two medical, three foreign language, eight commercial, five agricultural, thirty middle, one hundred and seventy-four upper, one hundred and one mixed, eight thousand six hundred primary, one hundred and thirty-one girls’ schools and one hundred and seventy-four night schools in the industrial cities. Is this not an inspiringly comprehensive program? Both the Board of Education and Yuan Shih Kai deserve credit for largely taking the suggestions of the foreigners at Peking and Tientsin in establishing in Pechili province this system of modern education, which stands as a model for the other twenty provinces and territories. Many modern buildings have been erected, but where sufficient money was not available, the fine old temples and barracks have been impressed, and the surprised sad gods overthrown. In many cases the gentry and guilds have donated buildings. The government finds its greatest difficulty in securing teachers, and they are exhausting the supply that the mission universities are able to certificate. This new proof of the friendliness of missions had much to do with the disinclination of the republicans and imperialists to take the lives of foreigners during the recent revolution. In preparing pupils to go abroad for further training, the government has maintained at Peking a special school. At Chingtu, the capital of Szechuen province, the provincial government established railway, medical, normal, mining, engineering, agricultural, foreign language and military schools, and owing to its success Szechuen led in the agitation for provincialism versus nationalization in railway and other matters, and this really opened the revolution in September, 1911, a month before the outbreak in Hupeh province. The students in the universities at the provincial capitals are clothed and boarded at government expense, the student signing for three years and promising to answer a draft for government service.

Japan has lost her grip to a degree, and America particularly and Britain have taken her place in educating China. The Chinese complain of the “enormous” cost of a foreign teacher, but have him or her they will! The American educational advance has been astonishingly brilliant. What America is doing for Chinese education can be judged by the statement that the American Presbyterian Church alone has three hundred and fifty-nine institutions of learning in China, and I believe the Methodist denomination has even more, for that church leads in world missions, as is well known. America does not pay for all of this, for no race surpasses the Chinese in generosity and “self-help.” The Hackett Presbyterian Women’s Medical College of Canton, under the charge of the celebrated Doctor Mary Fulton, aims “to supply each city with two modern physicians.” What a brave contract! Charities and orphanages are the special field of the Roman church; there is no work that can equal theirs in China in this regard. The Protestants and Chinese prefer to train the more advanced mind. The American Presbyterians have a beautiful high school at Fati, Canton; an academy at Ningpo, a high school at the south gate of Shanghai, and an academy at Peking. The list is too long to enumerate. The annual reports of the various Foreign Mission Boards make illuminating reading and give the names of the heroic educational pioneers. The brilliant work of the presses, like those at Shanghai, Peking, Wei Hsien (Shangtung) and Soochow, the ten thousand little rills of income, the contributions of the broad-minded Chinese officials and students, are all surprising. How much they are doing with so little money! How much they could do for American and British educational influence in China with only a little more money! It is “up to” the American and British business man, if he decides to be both kind and “wise in his generation.”

The women of America and Britain are doing their share, especially in hospitals and nurses’ and girls’ schools. The American Presbyterian women have at Canton and elsewhere model institutions, similar to many throughout the crowded land, which land is going to heal itself, with foreign help, of all its diseases: bodily, mental, economical and international. I have known several people of late who have inherited legacies, and happening to read a China book, they were curious to see what a little money, that came so easily, altruistically “invested” there, would do. They have erected a few hospitals and schools, and their joy has not ceased when they saw the wonderful results in the able hands to which the philanthropy was committed. The impetus they thus gave to the progress of the world was greater than the same amount would have caused anywhere else.

For the girls and women of China, St. Hilda’s School, at Wuchang, where the revolution broke out on October 10, 1911, does a great work under the auspices of the American Episcopal women of Philadelphia, a few of whom bought land outside the east gate of that old capital, where the famous Chang Chih Tung was for many years viceroy. The girls’ college sprang up under the watchful eye of Bishop Roots, who has made a noble name among the Chinese. The opportunity of this school is to be yet the Barnard College or the Girton College of China, and of the need of it, by women for women, all this volume could not say enough. No land is sure of its progressive condition until the women are freed, educated and progressive. The enjoyment of continued progress by the men is not certain until the girls and women are swinging alongside of them on the great road of life at the same pace, and with equal opportunity. There can not be real companionship between inferior and superior; women and men must be equal. Therefore the eyes of all China and America and Britain are on such institutions as St. Hilda’s. It, too, is run on the share principle, fifty dollars per girl per year, to put a modern woman as a lighthouse in China to advance the world cause of womanhood.

The Yangtze valley, in particular, is the sphere of America’s influence, and where the high tide of rebellion swept, America’s educational influence will now follow, since fate has launched her there in the colleges mentioned, and others not mentioned for want of space. Lord Cecil plans to have the vast English foundation of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges at Wuchang (see his enthusiastic book), and if America has its equal at the other end of the brimming Yangtze at Shanghai, honors will be equal. Germany is not going to neglect the opportunity, as she has plans for Nanking and Hankau. Much luck to her. Contentia in bona! America and England have won a vast advantage, however, over Germany and France, in that China, on recommendation of the Board of Education, has adopted English as the official language for the study of science, geography, travel and international politics in all Chinese universities, technical colleges and high schools. This victory was brought about through the influence of the Chinese students who had studied in Britain and America, and a comparison of the technical and educational books issued by the different countries, the report being that the English language had three to one in its favor. When the nations wish to study about China or any foreign country, they have to take up or translate books written in English, for the American and Briton are the most curious concerning the world’s countries and naturally the authorities on comparative ethnology and international economics.

The Y.M.C.A. has come to China, and at Tientsin maintains a school as an adjunct pf the religious, literary and athletic work. Industrial schools have been opened, and they will do a vast work in recovering China’s lost arts and extending her commerce. There is a government industrial school at Peking for the production of the famous and almost lost cloisonnÉ, rugs, furniture, etc. The patterns for rugs are memorized. At Tientsin the pattern is hung over the worker’s head. The schoolboys of old China were most familiar with the first two lines of the Trimetrical Classic: “Man in the beginning was essentially holy.” In Mandarin this is pronounced: “Jin chi tsu, sing pun shen.” The pronunciation of the province of Szechuen is a little heavier, viz: “Jen dze tsou, sin pen chan.” Now the boys of New China are concluding that “Man in the beginning was essentially misinformed!”

That the Chinese can become linguists has seldom been more uniquely illustrated than in the following experience related by Prince Henri d’Orleans. He was about to travel through the territories of the aboriginal Lolo tribes of Yunnan province. The difficulty was to find an interpreter. The general interpreter who only knew the Mandarin pronunciation of the north, or the Cantonese pronunciation of the south, would not do. The prince found at the Mission d’Etrangeres at Tali, in remote Yunnan, an interpreter who knew the Lolo dialects, and though he could not converse with the prince in French or English, he could converse fairly well in Latin, and they got along splendidly. It appears that the Catholic fathers had taught the convert from the Latin Fathers, Jerome, Chrysostom, etc!

Eager as the Chinese are to learn from text-books, they more eagerly cry for exhibits which appeal to the eye, and the establishment of museums, heretofore neglected, except in the few universities already mentioned, should be undertaken. Take one week’s records at the Hongkong Museum, for instance. Four hundred and sixteen non-Chinese and 163 Chinese used the library, but 193 non-Chinese and 3,100 Chinese studied in the museum. The resourceful Canadian government sent a traveling exhibit through China. It is what the Chinese call for. We shall yet see floating and wheeled museums, in parvo, throughout the empire, as educational bodies and merchants appreciate this as the quickest way to approach the Chinese mind.

When the revolution of 1911 had developed strength, the Chinese government found itself unable to remit to the thousands of students who were studying in foreign countries. The American and British universities, without exception, nobly offered to aid any needy Chinese student. The move was brilliant and humane, and will be bread scattered upon returning waters of appreciation some day.

The new representative assemblies have necessitated the introduction of shorthand in China. The Tsze Chen Yuan (National Assembly) in session at Peking as early as August, 1911, ordered night classes to be opened for learning the art, so that the civil service clerks might attend. I know that missionaries, helpless in committing to paper accurately the sounds of the scores of Lolo, Miaotsze, and other dialects in Yunnan, Szechuen and Kweichou provinces (where aborigines abound) have had recourse effectually to phonography. If the brilliant Dickens, John Hay, the American secretary of state, who founded the policy of “non-partition of China,” and many others, were phonographers, why might a missionary not be one also!

Some of the educational proverbs of the Chinese are the following:

“A lion breeds lions, and a brave father has brave sons.”

“Learn easy, forget easy; learn hard, forget hard.”

“Life is a river; if you are not going forward on it, you are falling behind.”

“Youth jumps and slips; age picks its steps and crosses safely.”

“Measure words by the height of the brain, not the height of the body.”

“A loose rein for a good head; a tight rein for a loose heart.”

“Faces are alike, but minds are myriad.”

“It takes longer to determine than to do.”

“Fate doesn’t plan the lot of a fool.”

“The mind chisels the face.” “It isn’t far at the turn of two roads, but they end far apart.”

“With weeds, and with learning, get at the root.”

“Nothing that is human is alien to a good man’s interest.”

“He who has no ambition is like an ax without edge.”

“Moments are more precious than jewels, for the first can not be recovered if lost; the second may be found.”

“A right beginning makes a proper ending.”

“A tight mouth keeps back much mischief.”

“Heaven never put a bar against resource.”

“When you know yourself thoroughly, you know everyone else.”

“Prejudice is the thief of persuasion.”

“Two things strangle, the tongue and the cord.”

“Be as cross to yourself as you are to others; be as sweet to others as you are to yourself.”

“Never too great to learn.”

“The last step must be as steady as the first in climbing a hill.”

“The downy chin goes over it; the bristly chin goes round it; or, the young head for the long jump, and the old head for the long thought.”

“Good gives the tangible, evil but the shadows.”

“If you insist on every one being like you, look nowhere but in your mirror.”