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My Life in China and America
1909 · 286 pages
My Life in China and America
by Yung Wing
About the text. The free text is clean — we find fewer than 1 damaged word in 400. We publish the count so you can judge it for yourself. The full text is public domain and free — linked below.
On this page: a summary of My Life in China and America.
Yung Wing’s memoir of a life lived between two worlds. Educated first in the Chinese classics and then in a mission school, he converted to Christianity and became the first Chinese graduate of an American university, taking his degree from Yale in 1854. His account spans his childhood near Macau, his conversion and education, his return to China, the upheaval of the Taiping Rebellion, and his life’s work founding the Chinese Educational Mission.
The changed life
Formed in the Chinese classics and then a mission school, he was converted to Christianity, graduated from Yale in 1854 as the first Chinese graduate of an American university, and devoted his life to bringing Chinese students west to be educated.
Summary
My Life in China and America (1909) is the autobiography of Yung Wing, written in English near the end of a long and remarkable life. It opens with his boyhood near Macau, his early schooling in the Chinese classics, and his enrollment in a mission school — the encounter with Western education and Christianity that would set the course of everything after.
The book follows him across the Pacific, where he became the first Chinese graduate of an American university, taking his degree at Yale in 1854. He describes his conversion, his years of study, and his return to a China in turmoil, including firsthand impressions of the Taiping Rebellion and the political world of the late Qing period.
Its final concern is his life’s work: the Chinese Educational Mission, the project through which he brought young Chinese students to be educated in the United States. Part conversion narrative, part record of a pioneering life between two civilizations, the memoir is the personal testament of a man who spent himself trying to join the best of both.
Who was Yung Wing?
Yung Wing (1828–1912) was a Chinese-born educator and reformer and a pioneering figure in the meeting of China and the West. Raised near Macau and educated first in the Chinese classics and then in a mission school, he converted to Christianity and traveled to the United States, where in 1854 he became the first Chinese person to graduate from an American university, at Yale.
He devoted much of his career to bridging the two countries, most notably through the Chinese Educational Mission, which sent groups of young Chinese students to study in America. His life ran through the great disruptions of nineteenth-century China, including the Taiping Rebellion, and his memoir stands as one of the earliest first-person accounts in English by a Chinese Christian convert.
Which edition of My Life in China and America is this?
Yung Wing wrote his memoir in English, and our public-domain edition presents his own words in a clean, readable modern format with clear type, with a link to a free source as well.
Common questions
- Was Yung Wing really the first Chinese graduate of an American university?
- Yes — he graduated from Yale in 1854, the first Chinese person to earn a degree from an American university. His memoir tells the story of the education and conversion that brought him there.
- What was the Chinese Educational Mission?
- It was the program Yung Wing founded to send young Chinese students to be educated in the United States. The book recounts how his own path between China and America led him to that lifelong work.
A note on the text. My Life in China and America is in the public domain. The text below is free to read at the source we link. The original text is also available free here.
That free text is already well proofread — we measure about 0.1 errors per 1,000 characters. We publish the measurement so you can judge the free text for yourself.
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