In 1881, a group of young Chinese students had took made an emotional farewell to this place where they had spent almost a decade. In 1903, here came another Chinese young man came here. Liang Qichao exiled himself to America after the failure of Hundred Days of Reform. In Hartford he met with Rong Hong in Hartford, another Chinese outcast then in his seventies.

Rong grew old now. He returned had returned to China in 1881 with the Boy Students. But soon he was back in Hartford as his wife’s health worsened. Rong lost his wife in 1886, and was left alone to care for their two sons.

However, Rong Hong did survive. At the onset of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Rong left his two sons in the care of Reverend Twichell and left for China again. Defeated in the war, China took on a new wave of reforms. Rong proposed to construct railroads and establish the state bank, and even had the banking laws of the U. S. translated by Huang Kaijia. During the Hundred Days of Reform, his residence became a forum for the highly vehement political remarks debates by the Reformers. As a firm supporter of the Reform himself, Rong joined Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao in their exile abroad.

In 1900, Rong Hong was introduced to Sun Yat-Sen by Rong Xingqiao, the only one among the third group of the boy students involved in the revolutions against the Qing administration. Sun admired Rong Hong very much and remarked in 1901 that Rong should take up the leadership of political reforms in China.

In his book, Travels on in a the New Continent, Liang Qichao had gave a vivid account of his first meeting with Rong Hong. He said even at the age of 76, Rong showed incredible vigor as he voiced his concern with over the future of his country and his people. In their two-hour conversation, Rong impressed Liang with his eloquent speech on campaignthe the strategy of Chinese revolutionwhat exactly does this refer to???].

The next day, Rong showed Liang around the Hartford Public High School, which was the base of for the Boy Students in America. During the visit, the headmaster presented Liang with the school records of the Chinese students. Surprisingly, Liang Qichao, a pioneer of reforms in China, had no idea about the aborted studies of these kids children twenty years agobefore. In his diaries, Liang later remarked that he could only sigh over their misfortune.

They also had the chance to visit the former building for of the Chinese Educational {Mission,} which had already been auctioned off to a local high school.

Around the time of Liang Qichao’s rrival in America, Liang Cheng was in Washington DC office as the new Chinese ambassador to the United States). Once a baseball player at Andover College, Liang Cheng was now a highly regarded diplomat staffed with with five attaches who were his fellow boy students. They were Rong Kui from Yale, Ouyang Geng from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, Zhong Wenyao, a coxswain at Yale, Su Ruizhao from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Lu Yongquan, a Yale alumnus.

In During their exile abroad, Liang Qichao and Rong Hong mst have been aware of the reforms initiated by Empress Dowager Cixi across the Pacific. The political climate in China was having an unusual impact on the destinies of Chinese students.

At that time, the Qing administration was had hardly barely surviveding the Boxer Rebellion and the invasion of Eight-Nation Allied Army. The Empress Dowager Cixi start initiated a reforms in order to uphold the Qing monarchy and to meet the pressure of foreign invaders. She once told Emperor Guangxu, “I have always been a supporter of reforms. I took the advice of Zeng Guofan to send kids children to study abroad in expectation of a richer and stronger China. But we must never turn against our ancestors by converting to the Western order.”

From Between 1901 to and 1905, the Qing administration enacted a series of reforms, including fund-raising for military training, the revitalization of commerce and merit-based education, and government restructuring. In addition five ministers were selected from the cabinet to review the political systems of the west. As Even in its dying as it was days, this administration was makingde last-ditch efforts to find a remedy for the troubled dynasty by studying western examples.

In the first five or six years of the 20th century, the former Boy Students went through dramatic changes. Once forgotten, they seemed to be blessed with a sudden ray of sunlight through the gloomy clouds.

Around Near the Drum Tower of the Old Town in of Tianjin, the Guangdong Guildhall has stood firm for nearly a century since it was built in 1907. This is the biggest and best preserved guildhall building of from the Qing Dynasty. With Built in a typical Chaozhou architectural style of Chaozhou, theis building has a big courtyard decorated with black tiles, green-glazed bricks, carved columns, and painted pillars. As the main donators to the building of the hall, Tang Shaoyi, Liang Dunyan and other veteran students were already well-known and highly ranked officials of Yuan Shikai, the presidential hopeful of China.

Li Hongzhang claimed wrote in his will that he knew no one more qualified than Yuan Shikai, and strongly recommended Yuan as his successor, who at theat time was the Governor of Shandong. While preparing to take over the post of Governor of Zhili. Yuan submitted a proposal to recommending Tang Shaoyi, a graduate of Columbia University, as the Circuit Superintendent of the Tianjin Customs. Ten years earlier, Tang had already started to serve Yuan with his exceptional diplomatic competence. With a unique sensitivity to innovations, Yuan recruited many a veteran Boy Studentsfor his ambitious reforms.

Once an amateur hunter at Hartford Public High School, Cao Jiaxiang worked as the Chief Mate of Firearms on the warship Zhenyuan. Appointed as the Circuit Superintendent of Police in Tianjin, he later became one of the founders of the modern police force of in China.