A Librarian's Journey - Part 2

New York State Library Reading Room
(New York State Library School Circular of Information, 1909-1910)

 

When he arrived in 1919 at the New York State Library School, Hung Yu-Feng became its sole Chinese student. However, he was not new to the world of library science.

Born in 1892 in Anhui Province in eastern China, Hung probably grew up in a straw hut. Although Anhui produced vast crops of rice and tea, floods and famine tormented its population. Partly traversed by a railway that would take 80 years to complete, Anhui drew plenty of missionaries. 

Very likely, the American Methodist missionary Arthur J. Bowen plucked Hung from his village and placed him in a religious academy when he was a boy. In 1912, urged onward, Hung enrolled at the University of Nanking.

Arthur J. Bowen

Established just two years earlier, the University of Nanking merged three American-sponsored Chinese Christian colleges. Subsequently, the New York State Board of Regents granted it accreditation.

At Nanking, Hung worked with Professor Harry Clemons, formerly a reference librarian at Princeton who arrived in China in 1913 to organize the new university’s library school. Intelligent and generous, Clemons effectively straddled library studies and Bible studies. As an employee of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., he and other Americans in China could pursue twin commitments in this way.

W. H. Clemons

New York State Library School Junior Lecture Room, 1920
(American Library Association Archives)

In Albany, all of Hung’s 17 peers in the Class of 1921 were college graduates with some library experience. As a fluent English speaker who had served under Clemons as assistant librarian at Nanking, Hung was competitive. The rigorous three-year curriculum would not have fazed him, already well-versed in bibliography, classification, cataloguing, indexing, subject headings, and book selection.

The school also required fieldwork. One summer, Hung worked as a cataloguer in the Library of Congress’s Chinese Collection, which originated in 1869 with a gift from Tongzhi, the sickly boy emperor of the Qing Dynasty. By 1919, the Chinese Collection of maps, manuscripts, and books was substantial.   

On April Fool’s Day, 1920, Hung and his schoolmates visited libraries in Hartford and Providence. Well-hatted, they posed for a picture on the steps outside the Connecticut State Library.  

Some look happy; others impassive. Either way, they would make their mark in a nation with 93.5% literacy (the percentage is still debated). With the professionalization of librarianship, jobs proliferated at public schools, university reference departments, and trade and public libraries.

In 1921, Hung Yu-feng returned to Nanking, where the newly incorporated Southeast University hired him as director of its Meng Fang Library. He oversaw its construction, organized a national library association, married and fathered at least one son.

After the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, the Republic of China was led by Sun Yat-sen and his Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party. But warlords wracked the mainland, and civil war became inevitable—especially after Chinese Communist Party members aligned with the Kuomintang’s left wing during the early 1920s. In March 1927, the Kuomintang officially split left and right.

Now the right wing of the army, led by Chiang Kai-Shek, swept through Nanking, executing foreigners and Communists, terrorizing professors, students, and diplomats, leaving death and destruction.

In September 1927, Albany’s Library School News Letter reported:

 

Hung Yu-Feng, ’21, librarian of Southeastern [sic] University, Nanking, China, has been relieved of that post, due to the reorganization of the university and the library, the outcome of political events.

 

After the Nanking Massacre and the Nationalist takeover, Hung continued in the library field and published a book about library management in 1935. The school newsletter announced his death in 1963.

Reflecting on Hung, I have concluded that he was a master administrator. During the 1920s, the call for credentials and expertise in the professions ushered in greater emphasis on efficiency. 

Thus, librarians trained in the U.S. focused on design, organization, and systems. From Albany to Nanking, this type of management enabled libraries to flourish during an important time of growth. 

And the expanse of Hung's life: immeasurably astonishing.  

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