Zhong Wenyao was quite famous in Yale’s boating history not only for his light weight. The boating contest between Harvard and Yale had started in 1852. Yale lost the races most of the time.

But this small Chinese guy deeply impressed Yale by his unusual performance as a coxswain.

Zhong Wenyao looked very gentle sitting in the middle of the team. How did he boost the morale of the members?

William Phelps was not only the schoolmate of the Chinese students at Hartford but also at Yale.

The fact was that the Yale rowing team beat Hartford in 1880 and 1881, when Zhong Yaowen was the coxswain.

According to incomplete statistics, about 50 Chinese boy students attended American universities by 1880, 22 of them went to Yale, 8 to the MIT, one to Harvard and three to Columbia University in New York.

Other universities that they attended are Lafayette College, Amherst College, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Brown University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Lehigh University, Johns Hopkins University, and Rensellaer Polytechnic institute.

The boy with Zhan Tianyou in the picture was Pan Mingzhong. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at 15. This genius boy, as he was later called, died from hard work a year later.

This is Pan’s tomb at Hartford Cemetery. For 120 years, none of his relatives had ever been here.

Rong Hong returned to Monson, his home in the US in June, 1880 to attend the funeral of Reverend Brown who had brought him to America.

30 years before, Reverend Brown had taken Rong and other two Chinese students to America. And now Rong himself brought 120 Chinese students here.

The Chinese Educational mission existed for eight harsh years now. Rong Hong knew it too well.

On February 24, 1875 Rong Hong married Mary Louise. Kellogue from Connecticut.. His colleagues were alarmed. They thought Rong was setting a very bad example for the Chinese students.

From the day the Chinese Educational Mission was established, Chen Lanbin and Rong Hong, the two commissioners were in constant conflict.

Chen Lanbin returned to China in 1880 when the fourth group of Chinese boys arrived in America. Rong Hong had a foreboding that the 8th year of Chinese Educational Mission could be disastrous.

A new supervisor Wu Zideng assumed office at CEM in 1880. The new supervisor made himself known to the Chinese boy students and the citizens of Hartford in a surprising way. He published an English letter in the Hartford Newspaper. The letter read: “As is known to all, the Qing Government spent a huge amount of money supporting your education. After graduation, you are expected to serve your motherland, and honor your family and ancestors. There are millions of other Chinese young men at home who hadn’t had the opportunity to study abroad. The purpose is for you to learn western technology and skills, not to forgo Chinese conventions. You should work hard to gain knowledge. But the conventions should not be altered.”