On July 27Among the one hundred and twenty Chinese students, there were five pairs of brothers. Huang Zhongliang and Huang Jiliang were from the first and third batch of Chinese students. When they came back to China, Huang Zhongliang went to the Tianjin Eastern Arsenal as a translator and a teacher. His younger brother Huang Jiliang was assigned to the Foochow Shipbuilding College.

Huang Jiliang wrote to his father at a critical moment. The French fleet was approaching the Mawei Port and one could smell war in the air. This conflict had resulted from the French attempt at the occupation of Vietnam, a country affiliated to Qing. This attempt , was thwarted by China. Pursued by Qing troops, the French went north to Mawei Port, intending to hold for large ransom this city known as the cradle of China's shipbuilding industry.

Eleven Chinese wooden warships and eight French ironclads confronted each other at a bend less than 1km wide in the Minjiang River. Although the Chinese fleet was weaker than its French counterpart, quick action was a key factor for success.

This was a cause of shame for the Chinese that invaders were allowed to openly anchor in the Qing naval base. The official in charge was waiting for peace talks or was holding superstitious rituals to shun the misfortune of war. Moreover, on these wooden warships were graduates from shipbuilding schools and the boy students who had never experienced warfare.

One week later, the French warships anchored at Mawei Port suddenly opened fire.

The war lasted for only half an hour and the Fujian Navy was completely destroyed. The Foochow Shipbuilding College and the Mawei Shipyard were cannoned to ruins. Over 800 Chinese officers and soldiers were killed, among whom were 4 of the returned boy students.

They were Kuang Yongzhong from the Oriental Baseball Team, Yang Zhaonan and Xue Youfu from MIT, and Huang Jiliang who had bid farewell with his self-portrait to his family.

Yang Zhaonan and Xue Youfu, both students of the Class of 1884 at MIT, are named in the school yearbook as casualties of the Sino-French War. This year should have been their graduation year.

Four Chinese Students lost their lives in Sino-French War in 1884. Not long before their deaths, two of their friends, Rong Kui and Tan Yaoxun, graduated from Yale University. According to the agreement between him and Rong Hong that he must serve China upon graduation, Rong Kui joined the Chinese Legation in the US while Tan Yaoyu planned to go to the Chinese Consulate General in New York. However, Tan was struck down by tuberculosis. He died at Mrs. Carrington's house in Colebrook where he had lived for twelve years.

Tan Yaoxun has lain quietly in the Carrington family graveyard for over 120 years. As one of the first batch of Chinese students to the US, he came from Xiangshan in Guangdong Province. He came to the US at the age of 11. We know little about his family. They never expected when they sent him to the U.S. that they would never see him again.

On December 12th 1884 when the Sino-French war ended, the American envoy John Young sent a letter to the Secretary of State saying that 'Judging from their behavior during the fight ,it is manifestly evident that these young men have done great service to China, and that their education in the US has not proved fruitless.' The US proposed to Li Hongzhang to resume sending Chinese students to the US.

Li Hongzhang was facing tasks far more urgent than that. Reforms on national defense were combined with worsening external circumstances. Simultaneous with the Sino-French war in Fuzhou, a crisis arose in North Korea, another conflict between Japan and China since the Ryukyu incident 10 years earlier.

When dealing with this crisis, Li Hongzhang met Ito Hirobumi in Tianjin. This 44 year-old Japanese official, who had studied in Britain in his early years, made a deep impression on Li Hongzhang. Li told the Central Foreign Office that Ito Hirobumi had toured around America and Europe for years, intending to imitate them in terms of international trade and military construction. In ten years' time, Japan would prosper.

While we were searching for records of Chinese boy students in the Monson Academy, Ms. Gray was eager to offer us some pictures she found of Asian-looking children. But we came to know through the signatures at the back of the photos they were Japanese children who studied at the same period there.

Eight months before the Chinese boy students left China for America, a Japanese inspection team headed by Iwakura, had set off from Yokohama, Japan. This team, consisting of one third of the cabinet members of the Meiji Government, {intended} to learn about the legal systems of western countries and anything that might be beneficial to Japan. Five girl students stood out among the 58 students in the team. The youngest was Tsuda Umeko, aged 8. Another girl student, Yamakawa Sutematsu who had studied at the Hillhouse High School in New Haven, was a classmate of Zhan Tianyou.

1884, Huang Jiliang, who was on probation on the Yangwu ship at Mawei, wrote a letter to his father enclosing a self-portrait.

After these investigations, Japan realized that education was fundamental. An educational system modeled on that of Europe was set up by the state fund. In 1886, the schooling rate of Japanese children was 46% and in ten years it reached 95%. Japan soon rose to a nation with the highest literacy rate in the world. In the following decades, well-educated Japanese continuously joined the army, factories, companies and government bodies. Japan was on a rapid rising course.

At that time, the Sino-French war and the Sino-Japanese crisis in Korea forced the Qing Dynasty to accelerate its reforms in naval defense.

The Beiyang Navy officially came into being in 1888. This was the first fleet equipped with western armament and staffed by returnees from America. A group of students back from Europe became captains of the Beiyang Navy 's main warships. Numerous boy students took key posts including first mates and artillery officers. According to Young J. Allen's statistics: in 1888, China's navy ranked number 8th in the world, while Japan's only ranked 16th.

The founding of the Beiyang Navy and the rapid increase in naval defense development raised the demand for fuel and transportation, which spurred the mining and railway industry. Once rejected, now these industries were going on swiftly. Every bit of progress made by the Westernization School would push the Chinese boy students to the very front of reform.

In 1887, Zhan Tianyou went up to Tianjin. After graduating from Yale's civil engineering department}, he learned how to sail at Foochow Shipbuilding College. Now he would join the construction of railway from Tianjin to Shanhaiguan. He was the first fully qualified railway engineer in China. While Kuang Rongguang, Liang Puzhao, Chen Ronggui and Wu Yangzeng and other boy students went into China's early mining industry and served there for their lifetimes.

In 1886, Wu Yangzeng was assigned to the Kaiping Mining School and was sent by Li Hongzhang to further his studies at the Royal School of Mines in London. While he was in the US, he had studied mining at Columbia University.

Eight years had passed since their return home. They had changed a lot in appearance. Their special experience abroad brought them together to celebrate certain western holidays. They preferred to write to one another in English and call each other by the nicknames they used in the US.

Several years after the boy students came back to China, they reappeared in different parts of the world. Ou Yanggeng, who had graduated from Yale, became Consul General in San Francisco in 1884. Tang Shaoyi, Liang Ruhao, Cai Shaoji and others were appointed to Korea and then became the Staff of Yuan Shikai. Later they were promoted with Yuan Shikai to high positions in the Qing Government.

Liang Cheng, the baseball pitcher of Andover College, went to the US with envoy Zhang Yinhuan in 1887. Fifteen years later, he became an envoy himself in the US.

Some boy students gained aid after they came back to China which enabled them to return to US. Li Enfu was one of them. He went back to Yale. His amazing talent in the English Language was soon discovered. He won the first prize in an English composition contest as a Yale sophomore. Later he showed his linguistic flair in many speech and debate contests. In 1887 He graduated with honors from Yale at the age of 26, and Lothrop Publishing Co., Boston published his book When I was a Boy in China, the first book by an Asian author published in the U.S..

However, Li Enfu chose a life that set him on a troubled course at that time in America. With the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in the US, the country of which he had been so fond now turned into a land of hostility for his country men. Li Enfu decided to use his pen to fight on behalf of the Chinese.

His most well-known article Chinese must stay was directed at an anti-Chinese slogan—'Chinese must go'. He questioned the authenticity of the much flaunted American democracy and pointed out that Chinese workers suffered from unequal treatment, which was against the founding spirit of the country. At the end of the 19th century, Li Enfu exhausted the best part of his life in striving for equal treatment for Chinese in the US. He had lost his marriage and children. In fact, without the support of his motherland, his lonely voice was barely heard. But China was in a perilous situation at the end of 19th century.

In 1886, when the newly-bought ironclads, The Dingyuan and The Zhenyuan, visited Japan, an ironclad phobia pervaded in Japan. Even children played games of catching The Dingyuan and The Zhenyuan. From that point, Japan plotted a grand plan to build up its navy.

In 1893, the mikado decided to appropriate 300,000 Yen to the navy each year.