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    • A Granddaughter's Preamble
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  • HAN LIANG
    • A Widow & Her Sons
    • Treaty Port City
    • First Lessons
    • Provincial Capital
    • Imperial City
    • Cream of the Crop
    • Last Stop Shanghai
  • US STUDIES
    • A Midwestern Start
    • This Land Belongs to You & Me
    • In Wilson's Footsteps
    • Not to Be Ministered Unto
    • War & Reunion
    • PhD Years
    • Dr. Huang & Mrs. Hyde
    • Professional Practice & Alliance
  • RAPID STRIDES
    • Return to the East
    • Networking
    • Career Moves
    • Ho Hong Bank
    • Marriage to Mo-li How
    • The How Empire
    • Setting Up House
    • Extended Family
    • Han Ho & Family in Amoy
  • BOILING POINT
    • Under One Roof
    • Brief Service
    • The Clamor of the Financiers
    • Merger & Dissolution
    • Laid to Rest
  • ZING WEI
    • New Silk Town
    • Tsunghua Girls' School
    • Room & Board
    • St. Elizabeth's Hospital
    • She Married Him
  • WAR YEARS
    • Children At Last
    • Back to Business
    • Fleeing the Japanese
    • Hong Kong Roots
    • Return to Shanghai
    • Escape to Hong Kong
  • TO THE US & CODAS
    • The Children's Schooling
    • A Circle of Friends
    • Family Milestones
    • Han Ho & His Family
    • Cousins & Their Families
    • Mo-li & Her Family
  • EXTRAS
    • Love-Love: Tennis Anyone?
    • Who's Who
    • Family Tree
    • Huang Genealogy & Xiamen
    • Tang Genealogy & Wuxi
    • Timeline
    • Inspiration & Acknowledgments
    • Further Quests & Questions
    • Site Map

上海再見

Last Stop Shanghai

August 1911

        Han Liang and his classmates were making scholarship history as members of the third Indemnity cohort and as Tsinghua's first class. But at this moment, though respected, these credentials were still unproven. They would only become real badges of honor in the years ahead as Tsinghua developed a reputation not just for preparing Boxer Indemnity students but as a university in its own right, and as the scholars' own achievements multiplied. In the late 1920s Tsinghua would become a purely Chinese-run university, but for its first decade or so, it offered itself up as an American school on Chinese soil with mainly American teachers, textbooks, and even buildings constructed at considerable expense with American materials.

        Han Liang and his sixty-two classmates were among an eventual 1,800 students sent through the Indemnity program between the years of 1909 and 1940. Tsinghua exists to this day and is still considered China's top university. But at the time, it was just another educational experiment made possible by the times. They were the promise of their fractured nation, but not yet its pillars.


        At some point, late in the summer, their group headed from Peking to Shanghai, presumably with chaperones. We guess that they may have traveled by train from Tientsin (天津 Tianjin). Whether visiting Shanghai for the first or time not, there must have been palpable excitement as they drew close to this exciting city and began to think about their goodbyes – either to family and friends who would be seeing them off if they lived nearby, or to the unfamiliar cityscape which would have to stand in for "home" for those like Han Liang far from it.

        There would have been passage to book, wardrobes to procure, and perhaps personal grooming to attend to: family anecdote relates that Han Liang arrived in the US still coiffed with a queue, the Qing-mandated pigtail. Most sources suggest that Tsinghua students had their hair cut and Western suits made before they left China. That way they would arrive in the US looking like the international figures they were meant to be. Cutting their queues was now officially sanctioned, not an act of defiance. Whenever the transition took place, there must have been some awkward weeks as the young men's hair grew in across their foreheads for the first time and they adjusted to more form-fitting garments.
        Han Liang noted that they stayed at the YMCA building on Sichuan Road, a north-south street running parallel to the Bund, the Shanghai waterfront, from where they would set sail to the US. Many aspects of the building expressed the muscular, activist creed that must have seemed like the secret to the physical might and global prowess of their destination country.

        Completed four years earlier, the brick building was notable as the second purpose-built YMCA in China and allegedly China's first building of any type to house a gymnasium. The building is now the Pu Guang High School (浦光中學). On the facade – still visible today, though much worn – are two inverted triangles, the YMCA symbol representing its trinity of mind-body-spirit. Han Liang would later recall that the verse “Not to be ministered unto, but to minister” was
prominently inscribed on its facade.
Picture
Picture
YMCA building where Han Liang stayed before sailing for the US (now a high school). It housed China's first purpose-built gymnasium. The YMCA's inverted triangle logo may be seen above the pediment.
Picture

        On August 10, Han Liang and his classmates boarded the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's SS Persia. On passenger lists, Han Liang was listed under the “Kuo Tong” alias which he had used on the exams (#17  on first image below, and #47 on second image). 
Picture
Picture
        His age was given as nineteen years and two months, although he is believed to have been closer to twenty. The sailing to San Francisco would take about two weeks, with a stop in Honolulu and possibly stops in Manila and Yokohama. Their onward travel would have been by train. On the ship’s manifest, the students’ final stop was noted as Boston, but we do not know if Han Liang truly traveled that far east, for at some point he selected or was assigned a spot in the midwest at the University of Michigan.

SOURCES
      For old photos of the YMCA and construction information:
  • ​"A Study on the First Public Gymnasium in China – Shanghai YMCA Sichuan Rd Club" in International Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 2015 by Liu Pinghao and Zhu Wenyi
      For mention of the YMCA stop and inscription, see:
  • Not to Be Ministered Unto page notes.
​
​      Passenger lists provided by Philip.

A Midwestern Start
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  • Home/Prefaces
    • A Granddaughter's Preamble
    • Eulogy for a Grandmother
    • In Her Own Words
    • His Official Biographies
    • New on This Site
  • HAN LIANG
    • A Widow & Her Sons
    • Treaty Port City
    • First Lessons
    • Provincial Capital
    • Imperial City
    • Cream of the Crop
    • Last Stop Shanghai
  • US STUDIES
    • A Midwestern Start
    • This Land Belongs to You & Me
    • In Wilson's Footsteps
    • Not to Be Ministered Unto
    • War & Reunion
    • PhD Years
    • Dr. Huang & Mrs. Hyde
    • Professional Practice & Alliance
  • RAPID STRIDES
    • Return to the East
    • Networking
    • Career Moves
    • Ho Hong Bank
    • Marriage to Mo-li How
    • The How Empire
    • Setting Up House
    • Extended Family
    • Han Ho & Family in Amoy
  • BOILING POINT
    • Under One Roof
    • Brief Service
    • The Clamor of the Financiers
    • Merger & Dissolution
    • Laid to Rest
  • ZING WEI
    • New Silk Town
    • Tsunghua Girls' School
    • Room & Board
    • St. Elizabeth's Hospital
    • She Married Him
  • WAR YEARS
    • Children At Last
    • Back to Business
    • Fleeing the Japanese
    • Hong Kong Roots
    • Return to Shanghai
    • Escape to Hong Kong
  • TO THE US & CODAS
    • The Children's Schooling
    • A Circle of Friends
    • Family Milestones
    • Han Ho & His Family
    • Cousins & Their Families
    • Mo-li & Her Family
  • EXTRAS
    • Love-Love: Tennis Anyone?
    • Who's Who
    • Family Tree
    • Huang Genealogy & Xiamen
    • Tang Genealogy & Wuxi
    • Timeline
    • Inspiration & Acknowledgments
    • Further Quests & Questions
    • Site Map