UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN CHINA 447 



Among other irregular institutions is the Shansi University at 

 Tai-yuen-fu, now under foreign control, but which will soon be turned 

 over to the provincial government. This is doing effective work, as is the 

 Tongshan Engineering College, of which S. S. Yung, a graduate of the 

 University of California, is president. This school is under the control 

 of the Board of Posts and Communications. Kan-Yang College at 

 Shanghai, banking University at Nanking, and a host of others make 

 up a list which it would take too long to enumerate, and as the relation- 

 ships of many of them are somewhat vague it would in many cases be 

 difficult to decide whether a given school were really a part of the 

 regular system or not. Among these are five naval colleges already 

 established, and six additional ones proposed, numerous medical schools, 

 for training surgeons for the army and navy, training school for officials, 

 and other special schools. In many of these, in order to secure students, 

 the tuition, books, and board were not only free, but the students actually 

 received a stipend of a few dollars per month. The instruction in many 

 of the schools was at first of little account, and they were derisively 

 cermed cliih fan lisiieh fang (" eat-food schools"). These also are 

 now nmch improved in effectiveness, and the ability of Chinese physi- 

 cians, notably Dr. AVu Lien-teh, formerly vice-director of one of these 

 schools, was conclusively shown in the handling of the outbreak of the 

 plague in northern China in the autumn of 1910. 



From this brief review it will be seen that university work in China 

 lies in the future rather than the present, as the most advanced work at 

 present, that of the Pei-Yang University, is little better than of college 

 grade, Avhile this and all the other advanced secondary schools are 

 largely technical in character. University work, in the ordinary sense 

 of the word, is not yet being done, the demand for vocationally trained 

 men being greatest. The difficulties of higher secondary educational 

 work are numerous, among them the necessity of conducting it in some 

 foreign language, usually English. This is not due, as might be at first 

 supposed, to the necessity of employing foreign instructors, but is 

 rather because, for a number of reasons which would require too lengthy 

 explanation, it is not practicable to translate text-books of university 

 grade into Chinese ; to teach the students the foreign language being at 

 once easier and better. This is one of the problems of the future ; for- 

 eign instructors are expensive ; the use of foreign language by native in- 

 structors will present many difficulties, while those encountered in the 

 preparation of advanced text-books in the" Chinese language are almost 

 insuperable. Another problem is the insurgent spirit of the student 

 body in many institutions. Though a proverb similar to that regard- 

 ing the teaching of one's grandmother to suck eggs is well known in 

 China, its full force is not always appreciated by the students, though 

 in extenuation of their oftentimes insubordinate conduct it must be ad- 



