We believe in global citizens who have experienced daily life and language, friendships, professional cooperation and insights in a very different culture—as a way to discover commonality and respect for people who seem different from ourselves. We believe that developing a community of such global citizens on both sides is crucial to a prosperous, healthy and safe 21st century, in which the U.S.—China relationship is one of the most important engines of cooperation, growth and peace. The Yale-China community has modeled this vision for 120 years.

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A Condensed Yale-China History

Since 1901, the Yale-China community has been devoted to bridging our two countries through respectful service, immersive learning, teaching, training, institution-building, and ambitious collaborations. The 120-year history of the Yale-China Association —called “Yale-in-China” for much of the 20th century—represents a rare, inspirational, and ongoing commitment by hundreds of thousands of American and Chinese people to improve the world together.

Early Yale-China

Founded in 1901 by Yale graduates and faculty in response to the suffering of the Boxer Rebellion, the early goals of Yale-in-China were to bring modern education and medicine to China. Choosing a more remote area unfamiliar with foreigners, Hunan Province, in order to have a deeper impact, Yale representatives arrived in 1903 and rapidly began to build trust and a reputation for practical and modern education and medical care. In a few years, partnering with their Chinese colleagues and local officials, Yale-in-China established a series of remarkable educational institutions. In 1906, they founded the Yali Union Middle School, which became the famous Yali High School. In the same year, they opened central China’s first Western Medicine clinic, which became the “Xiang-Ya” or “Hunan-Yale” Hospital. They founded China’s first Nursing College, followed by Xiangya School of Medicine, and then a full campus of Yale College in Hunan that lasted for a decade. In the late 1920s, they co-founded Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan. Historian Reuben Holden wrote: “The establishment of Yale-in-China was a logical outgrowth, and its purpose was to provide an education which would be the equivalent of that secured at Yale in New Haven, an education which would also be based in part on the best of the ancient culture of the East.”

By the start of the 20th Century, Yale had well-established connections with China. Yale graduate Dr. Peter Parker had founded the first Western-style hospital, the Ophthalmic Canton Pok Tsai Hospital, in 1835. The first Chinese graduate of any American college was Rong Hong (Yung Wing) 容閎 who graduated with honor from Yale in 1854. He was followed by young men of the Chinese Educational Mission (1872-1881), who traveled to New England to attend American colleges, especially Yale. Most returned to China to become leading scholars, engineers and officials; prominent among them were diplomat Liang Cheng 梁誠, Republican Premier Tang Shaoyi 唐紹儀, Admiral Cai Tinggan 蔡廷幹, and the father of China’s railroads, Zhan Tianyou 詹天佑. During the 20th century, Yale’s engagement with China deepened through the educational and medical work of the Yale-China Association, and the frequent flow of faculty and graduates between the New Haven and
Changsha campuses.

The Yale-in-China education and health institutions in Central China grew and flourished despite the tremendous tumult of the first half of the 20th century. The Yale-China community witnessed and survived the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, political and xenophobic movements and warlords, the May Fourth Movement, rise of communism, the worldwide Depression, fires and epidemics in Hunan, the invasion by Japan in the 1930s, the devastation of World War II (including the destruction of Changsha by a massive fire in 1938 (文夕大火)), and finally the 1949 revolution that resulted in “New China.” Throughout these upheavals and dangers, Americans and Chinese worked alongside each other, graduating tens of thousands of students, nurses and doctors, rising to national prominence, and encountering Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek—both of whom praised Xiangya Hospital. One of the most extraordinary developments of “this on-going idealistic enterprise” was the intentional transfer by the late 1920s of leadership of the educational and health institutions from Americans to local Chinese; fundraising and overall guidance remained the responsibility of a board based in New Haven. In the words of Ruth and Phillips Greene, who spent nearly thirty years at Yale-in-China (as an educator and surgeon, respectively):

“From the beginning of his association with Yale-in-China, Dr. Edward Hume (胡美 ) had seen and stressed the importance of a shared responsibility between Chinese and Americans. He had lived it out in his close association with his colleague, Dr. Yan Fuqing (颜福庆). Together they had formulated the policies by which the medical work was largely locally self-supporting and, by 1926, the Governing Board of the Medical School was entirely Chinese. Yale-in-China and its first president were well ahead of their time.”

Yali High School 雅礼中学

Founded in 1906, Yali (the name is an early transliteration of “Yale,” derived from the Analects of Confucius) graduated its first class in 1912. Over the following century, 70,000 more graduates followed. In recent years, Yali has ranked among China’s top high schools, with students regularly accepted to Tsinghua and Peking Universities, Oxford, Stanford, Yale, and other top universities. One long-running institution at Yali has been the placement of recent Yale graduates to serve as teachers of English language and American culture and society. More than 150 of these teachers—first called “Bachelors” and later “E.L.I.s” (English Language Instructors) and currently “Yale-China Fellows”—have added to Yali’s campus culture, high level of English language fluency, and international educational outlook.

In the 21st century, Yali has grown into network of middle and high schools in Hunan. The partnership between Yale-China and Yali High School has expanded to include the establishment of four “sister school” relationships between Yali schools and schools in New Haven, including the Foote School, the Hopkins School, the John C. Daniels International School, and the ACES Educational Center for the Arts. Starting in 2014, Yale-China has coordinated for young faculty of Yali schools to come teach Chinese language and culture in New Haven public schools. Serving for the year, the Chinese Teaching Fellows parallel the long-running tradition of Yale-China Fellows going to schools in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, making the exchange of teachers fully two-directional. 

Xiangya Hospital and Xiangya Medical School (中南大学湘雅医院)

Established in 1906 by Dr. Edward Hume and Yale-in-China, the “Yali Clinic” was one of the earliest Western medicine hospitals in China.  In 1910, Shanghai-born Dr. Yan Fuqing—the first Chinese graduate of Yale Medical School—joined Hume to run the hospital and build its local reputation. By 1915, a new hospital, the distinctive red building of Xiangya Hospital, was constructed outside the north gate of Changsha to house the combined hospital and Xiangya Medical College. This brought together medical education, medical care and nursing training. In October 1915, the Governor of Hunan, Tan Yankai, declared the new building “Xiangya Hospital.” Two years later, the American College of Surgeons accredited the hospital. In the ensuing decades of growth, Xiangya’s reputation was said to match that of the Rockefeller-supported Peking Union Medical College—a success captured by the phrase “In the South Xiangya, in the North Union.” 

During wartime (1937-1945), Xiangya cared for thousands of casualties, soldiers, officials and refugees, before moving in 1938 to escape the bombing and invasion of the city to Yuanling in western Hunan, and to Guiyang, Guizhou Province. Americans and Chinese on the hospital staff survived the vicissitudes of war together. American-trained medical staff, like Maude and Winston Pettus, nurse and chief surgeon respectively, worked alongside their Chinese colleagues, like Hospital Director Dr. H.C. Chang, managing to provide care, staff and medical supplies despite the constant dangers and uncertainties. When Xiangya Hospital and Medical College staff returned to Changsha in 1945, they found most of the campus destroyed by Japanese bombing. Hospital care resumed and continued throughout the period of revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. An American fundraising campaign led by Yale-educated magazine founder Henry Luce enabled the rebuilding of the hospital and campus, which was completed in 1951—just as the Korean War began. The new war meant that Americans and Chinese were now enemies, and all Americans had to depart China. The Xiangya Hospital and Medical School were nationalized and the long-time Chinese and American partners tragically lost communication with each other for three decades.

In 1979, as soon as it was possible to do so with the re-establishment of Sino-American diplomatic ties, the Xiangya Hospital and Medical School and the Yale-China Association reached out to each other. Then called Hunan Medical College, the school had continued to grow, serve the population of Hunan, and advance its reputation with many famous medical professionals and many research and clinical firsts in China. Building on their earlier friendships and professional successes, the renewed Yale—Hunan partnership identified new forms of cooperation to meet China’s late-20th century needs. These included extensive training of medical professionals through lectures and short courses taught by Yale professors in Changsha and study by Xiangya physicians and professors who came to Yale. English-language training, provided by Yale-China Bachelors/ E.L.I.s/Fellows also played an important role, since English proficiency opened doors for study abroad and professional advancement. Areas of cooperation included pediatric cardiology, HIV/AIDS training, cooperation to create a manual for SARS care after the 2003-04 epidemic, and creation of the Yale-China Medical Journal. During the 2010s Yale and Xiangya medical faculty formed a special collaborative team to create a new Medical Residency Training curriculum and implementation program for China (a level of medical training that China had never had before). The new model that this team created was tested and implemented at Xiangya, then selected to be the official training program for Hunan, and finally was adopted for China’s national model—with an impact on China’s tens of thousands of MDs completing the final stages of their medical training each year. The creation of the model also ended up impacting Yale. Some of the evaluation criteria were incorporated into Yale’s own residency training program—a wonderful example of the increasingly two-directional, and mutually-beneficial relationship between Yale and Xiangya medical communities in the 21st century.

Xiangya School of Nursing (中南大学湘雅护理学院)

Ranked today as China’s number one school of nursing, and among the top 100 in the world, the introduction of nursing training began in 1909—prior to the founding of the Medical School, and the School was officially established in 1911, in the midst of the revolution that ended the Qing Dynasty. Yale-in-China’s establishment of the nursing school met an urgent need for assistants and attendants in the rapidly-growing Xiangya Hospital. There had been no equivalent role in traditional Chinese medicine, so the introduction of Western-style nursing essentially created a new profession in China. The Chinese word for nursing was coined at Xiangya. Both men and women made up the early classes, and soon Xiangya-trained nurses were in high demand across China. Yale-trained Nina Gage became the first dean of the School in Changsha, and later founded the Chinese Society of Nursing. By the time Maude Pettus served alongside her Chinese colleague nurses during World War II, the nursing profession was well-established and crucial to the expansion of Western medicine across China, and care for millions of patients throughout the war and subsequent years of revolution. After thirty years of isolation, when Yale-China and Xiangya re-connected in the 1980s and 90s, nursing again became a focus for collaboration and training. During the Era of Reform and Opening, exposure to modern American-style nursing was a revolutionary concept. Xiangya sought to catch up to world standards of medicine, which it swiftly accomplished. American and Chinese nurses led the way in the 1990s and 2000s when Yale-China introduced its highly-effective HIV/AIDS Train-the-Trainer Program in cooperation with Xiangya and Hunan Health authorities, eventually training tens of thousands of health professionals all across China. Following the school motto “Diligence, Honesty, Precision and Fortitude,” Xiangya today offers three levels of nursing education programs: baccalaureate, graduate, and doctorate nursing, with 30 full-time faculty ,168 part-time instructors, and practical learning in Xiangya’s three affiliated hospitals. Started in the late 1990s, Yale-China’s Chia Fellows Program provides an opportunity for women in the nursing and medical professions to study and engage in research at Yale—an effective launching pad for many of these women to rise to positions of leadership. Today, the School of Nursing is one of the 32 professional schools of Central South University in Changsha and continues to build its national and global reputation. In 2020, Xiangya nurses have been among leaders on the front lines of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan and nationwide.

Yale College in China and Huazhong Normal University (华中师范大学)

From 1917, Yale College had a flourishing academic campus in Hunan for a decade that was accredited by the state of Connecticut. The College included a high school preparatory department (Yali High School) and shared an American-style campus with the hospital and medical and nursing schools. New York-based architects Murphy and Dana rendered drawings for the campus design and the Yale-educated American philanthropist Edward Harkness provided funding for the modern Hospital building.

In 1927, at a moment when turmoil in China briefly shut down the Yale-in-China enterprise, the Yale College in China came to an end. The “Yale College department” of Yale-in-China, with its faculty of mostly science and engineering professors, transferred to Wuhan one province to the north, and merged with several other universities (Hua Chung College (华中大学), Chunghua University (私立武昌中华大学), and the Pedagogical College of Zhongyuan University)) to form Huazhong University. Huazhong University’s founding president was the legendary educator, Dr. Francis C.M. Wei, who served from 1924 to 1951. Huazhong went on to become one of China’s top universities—known as “Hua Shi”—and became a productive partner of Yale-China again in the 1980s and 90s, when the Yale-China Fellows program formed an exceptional English-language and American culture teaching program and produced an influential textbook, known as “Basic Training,” and later hosted the Guizishan Fellows program.

New Asia College (新亞書院) and Chinese University of Hong Kong (香港中文大學）

In the early 1950s, the Yale-China Association embarked on a new partnership in Hong Kong, a territory then engulfed in a refugee crisis. No longer able to work in the mainland since the start of the Korean War, Yale-China was seeking a new way to fulfill its mission. The organization was introduced to a group of refugee scholars, led by eminent Confucian scholar Ch’ien Mu, who had launched a promising Chinese-language college that was in urgent need of connections and resources. Partnering with Yale-China, New Asia College began a rapid rise, growing five-fold in the next decade, and moving to new buildings in Farm Road in downtown Kowloon with funding from Yale-China and The Ford Foundation. Yale-China brought its “Bachelors” program of young American teachers to New Asia to promote English-language proficiency and student life activities. In the mid-1960s, New Asia joined with two other local colleges to become the Chinese University of Hong Kong at a new campus over the mountains at Shatin, in Hong Kong’s New Territories. Yale-China became an enthusiastic supporter and donor to the new university, contributing a health clinic, student life center, visitors’ hostel, language-teaching center, and supporting the internationalization of the campus through the launch of the “International Asian Studies Program” to bring foreign students to study at the campus. The special bond with New Asia College also continued. Bachelors (later called “E.L.I.s” and today known as “Fellows”) have taught English literature and American cultural studies now for nearly seven decades. Yale-China has sponsored scholarships and other opportunities for New Asia students, and Yale-China’s Hong Kong Director is resident on campus, teaching and engaging in campus life. In the mid-1990s, Yale-China launched the “American Studies Summer Institute” that ran at both the Chinese University and Yale campuses. And for more than 20 years, students at both New Asia and Yale College have competed for places on the popular annual exchange program known as “YUNA” (Yale University New Asia), which brings undergraduates to each other’s campuses for two weeks mid-year to experience different academic lives and cities. These brief but deep experiences have changed the course of many college careers and built lasting friendships. Going forward, Yale-China will find new paths and continue to deepen this transformative partnership with New Asia College, Chinese University, and Hong Kong.

Yale-China’s Changing Names 

When the Association was founded in 1901 by Yale graduates and faculty, it was first envisioned as a missionary enterprise, part of a nation-wide movement seeking to improve the world through evangelism. Launched in memory of a classmate killed in the Boxer Rebellion, the ambitious endeavor to establish a Yale presence in China was first named “The Yale Mission.” However, by the time funds had been raised, a location decided upon (Changsha) and arrangements negotiated with both American and Chinese leaders, the goals had shifted from missionary work to education according to an early pamphlet:

“In setting up an offshoot of Yale in the center of China, we leave the active evangelical work to the missionary bodies with which we are in hearty competition.”

In December 1903, The New York Times reported that, “An entirely new idea in American foreign mission work is behind the venture which an association of well-known Yale alumni has just planned for China. Instead of preaching, the Yale China Mis­sion will limit its efforts to teaching. In­stead of going out among the Chinese armed with the Bible, the men who have taken up the venture will go armed with textbooks, grammars, histories. volumes on economics, on medical science, mer­cantile life, and natural science.”  By 1911, the Association changed its name to “College of Yale-in-China” to emphasize the strictly educational objective. While Christianity remained a part of the school’s “Yali Spirit,” it represented part of the ideal of moral behavior rather than efforts to make conversions.

During the subsequent four decades, the campus and Yale presence in Hunan grew rapidly and thrived, serving thousands of students, staff and patients throughout periods of unrest, warlords, student movements, invasion, and war. During these decades, Yale’s presence went by several names. Sometimes the entire Yale enterprise was known after the translation for Yale that referred more to its educational work, Ya-Li (雅礼) and sometimes better known for the Hospital and health schools, called Xiang-Ya (湘雅). In 1934, the organization officially changed its name to the Yale-in-China Association, and in 1975 it changed again to the Yale-China Association. The hyphen is significant, implying the equality of the American and Chinese partners, and the word “Association” speaks to the united community of Chinese and American people who have been touched and changed by the organization’s work. Today the organization and the community are often known simply as Yale-China.

Yale-China in the New Century

As both China and the United States change, Yale-China’s programs have adjusted to rapidly-shifting urgent needs—while maintaining the organization’s unbroken mission and “Yali Spirit.”  Our role as a positive and enthusiastic bridge between Chinese and American people seems more important than ever—in the present era of diplomatic tensions. Yale-China’s expertise in promoting medical and nursing excellence and collaborating to improve public health and build medical capacity has given us an extraordinary platform for doing still more. Through immersive learning experiences, voluntary service, and teaching language and culture, our education work transforms thousands of lives and trains global citizens. Today, Yale-China is exploring new ways to achieve its mission, bring people together, deepen tolerance and understanding, and solve societal problems together.

To increase our impact, and to meet the urgent needs and changed circumstances of the 21st century, Yale-China has launched new collaborations, fellowships and exchanges. Our work is now envisioned as partnerships in New Haven, Hong Kong, Changsha, Kunming, and Xiuning with the benefits flowing in both directions across the Pacific. These include a growing arts program with Hong Kong artists and arts activators in residence at Yale, designed to support Hong Kong’s rising arts scene and new arts institutions. A Chinese Teaching Fellows Program also brings young professional teachers from Changsha and Hong Kong to New Haven to teach Chinese language and culture in American classrooms. Our annual Lunarfest celebration in New Haven now attracts close to 4,000 attendees across ten venues—the largest celebration of Lunar New Year in Connecticut. New health initiatives build capacity in public health, nursing and medical ethics in China, and support women in the health professions through the Chia Fellows programs at Yale and Xiangya. Since 2018, a new Autism Training initiative brings American expertise from the Yale Child Study Center and the Center for Children with Special Needs to our partner organizations in Hunan to meet an urgent need for a growing number of families with children on the autism spectrum. Our Residency Training program has now expanded beyond Hunan to become the national model for training of physicians across China, and the model has changed how residents are trained at Yale, too. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Yale-trained physicians and doctors were among the hundreds of Xiangya medical staff on the front lines caring for patients in Wuhan, and members of our community sent encouragement and PPEs to each other in both directions. Now we are starting an ambitious focus on solving health inequity in the villages and townships of China’s rural areas through a public health collaboration bringing together the resources and innovations of Xiangya, Yale, Jishou University (in Western Hunan) and the Hunan Health Commission—a new initiative called the Western Hunan Initiative to Improve Services at the Local Level—WHISL.   These are the initiatives that match needs and resources in our chosen areas of work—education, health, and arts—in Yale-China’s second century. Yale-China remains nimble and responsive to change, even as our core values have remain consistent across 120 years of partnership, service, and learning.