Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 1.pdf/415

Rh of Macao. He was the third in a family of four children. Despite their humble circumstances, his parents took the opportunity to enter him (1835), when he was barely seven, in a school at Macao conducted by the wife of Karl F. Gützlaff (see under ). The school disbanded two years later and he returned to his Chinese studies for a time, but after his father's death in 1840 he assisted his mother in the support of the family. In 1841 he entered the school of the Morrison Educational Society which was first conducted at Macao and in 1842 was moved to Hong Kong. The school was founded in memory of Robert Morrison 馬禮遜 (1782–1834), the first Protestant missionary to China. Jung Hung was in this school until 1847, receiving there the equivalent of an American grammar school education. On January 4 of that year he and two classmates, Huang Shêng (Wong Shing, see under ) and Huang K'uan (Wong Foon 黃寬, d. 1878), set sail for America in the company of the retiring principal of the school, Samuel Robbins Brown (1810–1880). Aided by subscriptions raised by foreign merchants and residents of Hong Kong and Canton, the three boys entered Monson Academy at Monson, Massachusetts—a school which their sponsor, Mr. Brown, once attended. In 1850 Jung Hung graduated from the Academy and, though he could not expect further help from his sponsors in China, he entered Yale University. Except for some financial aid from "The Ladies' Association" of Savannah, Georgia, and the Olyphant brothers, of New York, he supported himself during the four years of his college course by managing a boarding house and acting as librarian for one of the literary societies. In his sophomore year he won, twice in succession, a prize in English composition. Graduating from Yale in 1854, he left the following autumn (November 13) for China where he visited his mother.

After a few months spent in recovering the spoken language, he acted as secretary to Dr. Peter Parker (see under ), the United States Commissioner at Canton. He also was interpreter for the Supreme Court in Hong Kong. In August 1856 he went to Shanghai where he worked first in the translating department of the Imperial Customs, then as a clerk for a tea and silk merchant, and later as an inspector of the tea-growing districts. In the autumn of 1859 he accompanied a party on a visit to the Taiping rebel chiefs at Soochow and Nanking to judge for himself the character of the movement. He suggested several measures of reform to the Taiping chiefs, none of which they accepted. He was offered by them the fourth official rank, which he declined. The Taipings had seized large quantities of tea, boxed for shipment, and these Jung Hung and a few merchants planned to take to Shanghai for export. With the aid of a passport given him by the rebel chiefs, he and his associates brought 65,000 boxes of the tea through territory held by both rebel and government forces. Ill from the dangers and exposure of this work, he relinquished it after six months and established his own business as a tea commissioner in Kiukiang.

The turning point in Jung Hung's career came in 1863 when he received letters from two of his friends who were secretaries of —namely, Chang Ssŭ-kuei 張斯桂 and —inviting him to visit the great statesman. Chang and Li had already discussed with Tsêng the need for mechanical equipment and they urged Jung Hung to present to the Viceroy a plan for the introduction of Western machinery into China. Jung was commissioned by Tsêng to go to America to purchase the machinery for what subsequently became the Kiangnan Arsenal. Leaving China early in 1864, he traveled by way of Europe and Great Britain to New England where he fulfilled his commission and returned to China in the following year. When Tsêng Kuo-fan inspected the machinery in 1867 Jung persuaded him to establish a school for the training of mechanics. At this time Jung was made an official of the fifth rank. A few months later he was decorated with the peacock feather and was also raised to an official of the fourth rank—meanwhile acting as interpreter and translator for the government.

For many years Jung Hung had cherished a plan for the education of Chinese in America. His Western education had induced him to consider ways in which the technological information of the West could best be introduced into China. He believed that this should be done, not by the employment of foreign specialists, nor by the purchase of machinery, but by sending Chinese youths to Western countries to be trained in the technological professions. At the same time Tsêng Kuo-fan was working towards a similar solution. was acquainted with the desire of Jung Hung to start such a project, and also with the desire of Tsêng Kuo-fan to remedy the technical backwardness of China. In 1870 both of these officials were at Tientsin in connection with the settlement of the Tientsin massacre. A plan for sending students abroad was proposed in general terms in a me- 403