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Chapter 10. Recall and Return
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
- Chapter
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10 Recall and Return The Chinese Educational Mission came to an end in the summer of 1881, when all the students were ordered back to China. What were the circumstances for their recall? How did they return home? The beginning of the end for the CEM came about four months after the defection of Tan Yaoxun (#24) and Rong Kui (#46). On 17 December 1880 the Guangxu Emperor issued an edict in response to a memorial from one of his officials, the censor Li Shibin. Li’s memorial, in addition to finding fault with the Fuzhou Navy Yard School, criticized the CEM on two points: First, “many” students had, in defiance of official policy, converted to Christianity; in letters to their families they had declared that they “regretted coming to Christianity so late [in their lives]” and vowed that they would “never to their dying days recant” (was the censor here, perhaps, referring to Rong Kui’s 1878 hurtful letter that had so infuriated his father?). Secondly, Chinese Educational Commission officials had been extraordinarily lax in controlling the students; in particular, Commissioner Ou Eliang smoked opium daily and was so infatuated with his concubine that he seldom showed up for work, and a CEC translator named Huang was himself a Christian and secretly proselytized among the students. Censor Li called on the emperor to issue an edict directing the two superintendents of trade to conduct an investigation. The evil officials should be punished, and the students who have “joined a church” (ru jiao) should be recalled to China.1 Most of the information about the CEM in Li Shibin’s memorial was, by December 1880, either out of date or misleading. Commissioner Ou Eliang, following the death in April 1879 of one of his two wives (perhaps his beloved concubine), had returned to China and been succeeded by Wu Zideng, whose management of the CEM students could hardly be described as lax. Commissioner Wu had expelled several students who had converted to Christianity, including both Tan Yaoxun and Rong Kui, and he had tripled the amount of time the students were required to spend in Hartford on their Chinese studies. And 168 Stepping Forth into the World though the translator named Huang, later identified as Huang Sheng (Wong Shing), had indeed been a practicing Christian since his school days (alongside Yung Wing) at Monson Academy in the late 1840s, his only connection to the CEM was that in 1873 he had escorted the second detachment of students to the United States; since 1878, he had been working not at the CEC but at the legation in Washington, and later at the consulate in San Francisco.2 The emperor, nevertheless, saw fit to endorse Li Shibin’s recommendations. In the edict of 17 December, he ordered Li Hongzhang and Liu Kunyi, the superintendents of trade for the northern and southern ports respectively, together with Chen Lanbin, the minister to the United States and formerly the CEC head, to conduct an investigation of the CEC officials and the CEM students. In the meantime, the emperor ordered the recall of all students “who have secretly adopted the [Christian] religion.”3 The emperor’s edict, however, had no immediate effect because while many CEM students had indeed converted to Christianity, they had all carefully refrained from taking the ultimate step of formally joining a church. Clearly, the Qing court was having second thoughts about the CEM. Indeed, by the end of 1880 there were numerous reasons to question whether China should continue to support the students studying in the United States even though the program had scarcely run half its fifteen-year course. One reason was the students’ apparent neglect of and disdain for their Chinese studies. If not curbed, the students might well turn their back on their ancestral heritage and dynastic obligations, as exemplified by the conversion to Christianity of so many students or the shedding of their queues by a couple. Another reason was the CEM’s cost, which turned out to be considerably higher than first thought. Already in 1877 the Qing government had, on the reluctant recommendation of Li Hongzhang, increased the CEC’s total budget from the original 1.2 million taels by an additional 289,800 taels, a boost of almost twenty-five percent.4 (As previously mentioned, in 1873, the excessive cost of maintaining students in America had similarly forced the Japanese government “to bring home all government-funded students and start the program anew.”)5...