T. F. Tsiang (蔣廷黻)

I have a famous person to profile today! T. F. Tsiang (蔣廷黻, pinyin Jiǎng Tíngfú) was not only a student during the time of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship program, but he went on to serve the Republic of China’s government and was a delegate to the United Nations. This means that there is a ton of information and newspaper articles available about him, his life, and his work, unlike many of my other Indemnity Scholars. To keep this from being an entire novel, and to avoid retreading the same ground that others have already examined thoroughly, in this post I will concentrate on T. F. Tsiang’s university life and studies, as well as his personal life.

D. G. Tewksbury

You read that title correctly – today I will be profiling Donald George Tewksbury, who was born in Tung Chow (Tongzhou, a district of Beijing), China on 9 April 1894. I found his name in the 1919 Directory of the Chinese Students’ Christian Journal, and at first I thought this may have been an Elizabeth Cornish situation, where this Chinese student had a Western father and a Chinese mother. But D. G. Tewksbury was actually born to two American missionaries, and his story has so much to do with the Boxer Rebellion I thought it would be interesting to profile him here. I do feel a little weird profiling a Westerner here in this blog dedicated to Chinese voices, and I’ll go into that at the end of this post. Hopefully there’s enough of use in D. G. Tewksbury’s life story to make the profile worthwhile.

William Zu Liang Sung (沈嗣良)

Returning tangentially to the Soo Hoo family, I thought I’d dedicate a blog post to Lily Soo Hoo’s husband: William Z. L. Sung (沈嗣良, pinyin Shěn SìLiáng, Cantonese Jyutping Cam4/Sam2 Zi6Loeng4), a Chinese student who studied at Oberlin and Columbia and worked for St. John’s University in Shanghai.

Miss Lily Yet Oi Soo-Hoo (司徒月愛)

Our next Soo-Hoo child is Lily Amabelle Yet Oi Soo-Hoo (Chinese name 司徒月愛, pinyin Sītú Yuèài, Jyutping Cantonese Si1tou4 Jyut6oi3), born on 16 April 1899 in San Francisco (Oberlin Alumni Record Card). She was the sixth-oldest child and fourth-oldest daughter of Nam Art Soo-Hoo and his wife Quan, and the second to be born in California, after her older brother Andrew. We have the most information about her for two reasons – she went to Oberlin, and they keep very good records, and she also wrote the memoirs which I have been using as a source for my other posts on members of the Soo-Hoo family.

H. J. Fei (費興仁)

Building off of my post on his wife, Elizabeth Cornish, today I’ll write a little more in depth about Hsing Jen Fei (費興仁, pinyin Fèi Xìngrén). He was born on 15 November 1886 to father Chi Feng and his wife, surnamed Hsü. He was born in North Tung Chow (today Tongzhou, a district of Beijing) and attended North Tung Chow Union College, which was also known as the North China Union College of Tungchow, a missionary school in Peking (Beijing). When H. J. Fei was at N. C. U. College, it had about 50 students in the university department (American Board of Commissioners, 122), so it was not a large school as compared to the mission universities in Shanghai and Canton.

Elizabeth Tse-Vong Cornish ( 康採蓉)

So, a few months ago, I had the opportunity to poke around in the Oberlin College Archives. They keep extensive records of their alumni, and there are a whole bunch of Boxer Indemnity Scholars who once attended Oberlin. And if the Oberlin College Boxer Indemnity Scholars community can be said to have a “power couple”, Elizabeth Cornish and H. J. Fei would be it. Normally I would address a couple in the same post, as I did with Bertie Chan and G. G. Leong, but each of these students have so much information and documents to get through, I have to break them up.