A Librarian's Journey

 

Postcard of Angel Island, 1915

Hung Yu-Feng arrived at Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay, on a foggy September day in 1919. His unlikely destination: Albany, N.Y., where Hung would study for three years at the New York State Library School.

Although Congress had passed the horrendous Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, exceptions were made routinely, especially for students. In fact, Hung was one of 206 Chinese students traveling on the S.S. Nanking, an American-made ship operated by the China Mail Steamship Company.  

Twenty-seven-year-old Hung held a B.A. from the University of Nanking, where he had worked as an assistant, associate, and acting librarian. Now, his tuition and expenses would be paid largely through a “Boxer Indemnity Scholarship” arranged by his sponsors, A.J. Bowen, a missionary and president of the University of Nanking and Frank K. Walter, a New York State Library School official.

The scholarships were established by Congress in 1908 with the support of President Theodore Roosevelt. They were perhaps the sole positive outcome of the Boxer Rebellion in China, a bloody conflict driven by rage about imperialism, missionaries, and foreigners who denigrated Chinese culture.

University of Nanking, 1920

The Rebellion started in 1899 among Chinese peasants but soon grew into a national movement. By 1901, the U.S., Germany, Russia, Italy, France, Japan, Austria-Hungary, and England had formed an alliance and collectively sent 20,000 soldiers to put down the uprising.

Presumably the goal was to protect foreign delegations; in fact, some of the nations hoped to gain new territory. But no land would be granted through the Boxer Protocol signed in September 1901, about one month after the victorious alliance troops reached the Imperial City.

Instead, the Protocol granted the alliance nations $330 million worth of indemnities, to be paid out in silver by the Qing Dynasty across 39 years, ending in 1940.

Onerous and crippling, the payments devastated China even though eventually some nations forgave part of the debt.

In 1908, the United States waived its claim to its remaining share of Boxer Indemnities. The balance would be applied to the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program. 

Initially, the program focused on math and science students. Before long it encompassed library studies. Modernization of university and public libraries had been a goal of Chinese leaders since 1898. American librarians sailed to China to support the effort. Their work was funded by Christian missions and foundations. 

 

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Typically, Chinese visitors were detained for weeks or months at the Angel Island Immigration Station. They endured tortuous rounds of interviews and invasive, humiliating physical exams. Perhaps Hung was fortunate enough to pass through quickly; then boarded the Southern Pacific Railroad headed to Chicago, where he switched to the New York Central.  

At the end of the four-day trip, Hung stepped out of Union Station into New York’s state capital, population about 112,000. 

Union Station, Albany, N.Y., early 19th century

Albany, which started life as a Dutch trading post in 1614, lay along the west bank of the Hudson River. Its Romanesque capitol rose on a hill in a neighborhood ever busier with politics and higher education.

From a rooming house on High Street, where he lived with eight lodgers, Hung could walk toward the Medical College and over to Washington Avenue where the State Education Building housed the Library School.     

The other lodgers hailed from Czechoslovakia, England, Luxembourg, Ireland, Germany, and Massachusetts. The head of the boarding house, Eugenia Mitchell, is listed in the 1920 census as a missionary whose profession was Bible study.   

Arriving in Albany a few days after classes started, Hung hurried up the long staircase and walked between the marble columns toward the bronze doors, then slipped into the soaring rotunda.

State Education Building, Albany, N.Y., 1915

 

To be continued.

 

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