Yan Fuqing (; 1882–1970), also known as Fu Ching (F.C.) Yen, was a Chinese medical practitioner, public health pioneer, civil servant, and educator.
Born in Shanghai in 1882, Yen came from a renowned family with a history of serving the Chinese government and society. Notable relatives include cousin Chinese Premier Yan Huiqing, in-law Liu Hongsheng, and the Soong sisters.
A graduate of St. John's College and Yale Medical School, Yen later returned to China and pioneered several public health initiatives, including the establishment of a local Red Cross, overseeing the Hunan-Yale Agreement, the foundation of the National Medical Association of China as well as the National Shanghai Medical College, now the Medical College at Fudan University.
Yen actively treated patients during the Japanese occupation of China in World War II, and subsequently during the Cultural Revolution. Due to his historical, social status, practice of Christianity, and Western ties, he was barred from joining the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By 1966, his home, property, and social standing had been destroyed for political reasons. Yen died under house arrest in 1970. After his death, he has been celebrated as a patriot and hero by the Chinese government.
Early life and education The second of five children, Yen Fuqing was born in July 1882. His father, Yen Rusong, was a pastor who raised their family as practicing Episcopalians. Yen and his siblings were noted for being Western-educated. Both his father and his uncle, Yen Yongjing, had volunteered to fight for the Union North in the American Civil War while attending college at Kenyon in Ohio.
During his childhood, Yen Fuqing's father died, leaving his uncle, Yen Yongjing, to take care of him at the age of seven. Due to his father's death and his mother's sickness, Fuqing became interested in medicine at a young age. He grew up in a relatively cosmopolitan environment, heavily influenced by Western and Christian morality and thought. Uncle Yan Yongjing was founder and a principal educator at St. John's University in Shanghai, and Yen Fuqing was given an Anglican education there. After graduating from St. John's University's School of Medicine in 1903, Yen briefly went to work at St. Luke's Hospital before traveling to South Africa to treat Chinese miners working in the then-British colony.
Time in South Africa After the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, the British government sought to address the issue of a labor shortage and subsequent low production in Witwatersrand gold mines with workers imported from China. Between the years of 1904-1910, over 60,000 Chinese contracted miners were sent to work in the mines.
In recruiting a labor force, the Chinese government contacted Chinese doctors to accompany the miners. Yen was recruited for meeting the unusual requirements of both the English language and Western medical education. He enrolled after passing an examination by a medical panel in Tianjin.
Upon arrival in South Africa, Yen was appalled by the dangerous and unsanitary conditions to which the laborers were subjected. He found his own clinical skills to be inadequate, and after practicing in South Africa for one year, Yen went on to the United States to further his medical studies. Before leaving, the miners he had treated, presented Yen with a gold badge to show their gratitude for his practice.
Time at Yale Yen relocated to the United States in 1906 and enrolled in Yale University's medical school at age 24.
At Yale, Yen struggled with the transition to both the rigorous curriculum, the New England winter, and the language barrier. However, by his third year at Yale, he had completed his basic courses and shifted to clinical education. By his fourth year, Yen was engaged in clinical practice and started writing his dissertation, entitled, “A Study of the Cutaneous Method of Von Pirquet and the Percutaneous Method of Moro and a Comparison with Other Tuberculin Tests in Diagnosis of Tuberculosis".
During this time, Yen was also active in the Yale Chinese Students’ Club. It was through the Chinese Students’ Club that he met A.C. Williams, a Yale-China Association Trustee. Williams later suggested that Yen join the Yale-in-China mission in Changsha upon completion of his medical degree.
In June 1909, Yen graduated and became the first Asian to receive a doctorate in medicine at Yale University. That same year, he was elected a member of the American Natural Sciences Association. Upon completion of his studies, Yen made his way to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool, England for one semester's advanced study. For his work, Yen earned a certificate of study.
Return to China Yen returned to Shanghai in the winter of 1910 on a two-year Yale-China Association contract, where he worked with Dr. Edward H. Hume. His presence as a Chinese doctor in the leadership of a Western medical organization inspired confidence and interest among other Chinese medical practitioners. This faith allowed Yen to serve as a bridge for cooperation and outreach between traditional Chinese medicine, culture and Western medicine.
Yen was a prolific administrator and practitioner for the next 18 years of his career. Between 1910 and 1921, he established himself and was elected leader of the Hunan Red Cross. He also launched a public health initiative that ultimately eradicated bubonic plague in areas along the Peking-Hankou Railway, initiated various public hygiene education campaigns, built a Tuberculosis hospital in Changsha, and founded the National Medical Association of China. In 1914, he founded the Xiangya Medical College (now part of the Central South University) in Changsha and served as the first principal. He also obtained a certificate in public health from Harvard around this time. In 1901, Yen attended the China Missionary Medical Association conference, and decided that he and other Chinese doctors would found their own version of this association. This happened in 1915, when he co-founded the Chinese Medical Association with Wu Lunde. The establishment of the group laid the foundation for the widespread practice of Western medicine in China. Already a co-founder, Yen would go on to become the first president of the group.
In 1921, Yen briefly returned to the United States with his wife and eldest daughter Hilda Yen to study Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. Despite the fears of his colleague Dr. Hume that he would give up his work in preventive medicine, Yen simply added Ophthalmology to his medical practice. In 1926, Yen also co-founded and became the first Dean of the institution that would ultimately become the Fudan University Medical School. He would go on to spearhead the opening of the Shanghai Medical Center and the establishment of the Hunan-Yale Medical School.
While working at the Hunan-Yale Medical College in 1919, Yen received a Director's approval to grant a free sickbed to a peasant woman who had fallen ill after delivering a baby. As was his propensity for patients who could not afford treatment, Yen granted the request and forgot the incident. Thirty-seven years later, Yen would be reminded of this event when he sat beside Chairman Mao Zedong at a dinner held for intellectuals in Shanghai, where Mao recounted that the peasant woman had been Mao's wife, Yang Kaihui.
During this time Yen developed several public health outreach and education programs tackling specific diseases. Yen's efforts, which included a hygiene program to address cases of snail fever in the Tongting Lake area, and the construction of an advanced sanitation system and public education campaign to address hookworm infestations among coal miners, ultimately laid the foundation for standardizing industrial sanitation rules in China.
The 1920s were a time of burgeoning instability in China. The social and political atmosphere that emerged around the time of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 largely shaped China's tumultuous twentieth century. The anti-imperialist, anti-western, and nationalist student-driven movements and the Northern Expedition led by the Kuomintang had a strong impact on the environment in which foreign-educated professionals like Yen could operate. This affected Yen's relationships with foreign colleagues and friends and ultimately the stability of his practices. Under pressure from the Northern Expedition's approach, Yen's longtime colleague Dr. Hume retreated to the US led by an armed escort in 1926. It was at this same time that Yen left the Changsha region.
In 1927, Yen became vice president of Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), the leading medical school in China at the time. Later that year, the Northern Expedition army captured Nanjing and attacked foreign institutions, homes, consulates, churches, and schools. The vice president of Nanking University was shot dead in his home by looters, and five dormitories were set on fire. Despite the danger inherent to both academics and those with foreign ties, Yen led a group from PUMC into Wuhan as part of the Wounded Soldiers Relief Association to treat those who had been injured in the fighting.
In 1928, Yen leased the General Hospital of the China Red Cross Society from the organization. He then became its first director, providing a convenient and willing institution for clinical medical education.
In 1929, shortly before departing to participate in the Pan-Pacific Surgery Conference in Honolulu, Yen drew up plans for establishing the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital. He later submitted the plan for what would become the Shanghai Medical Center the following year.
By January 1931, significant funding had been secured from sources such as fellow Yale alumnus, Central Bank President H. H. Kung, Sun Yat-Sen, Chiang Kai-Shek, and the Soong sisters, and the project was officially initiated. The hospital's mission was to focus on public health and disease prevention, both considered major gaps in healthcare in the city of Shanghai at that time.
Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Communist Revolution In the summer of 1937, as the Shanghai Medical College expanded its staff, student body, and scope of education and medical practice, the Japanese invaded China. Soon after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Shanghai was quickly militarized and the Battle of Shanghai was launched. During this time, Yen was appointed Chairman of a medical response coalition to treat wounded soldiers.
During their assault on the city, the Japanese attacked civilians and medical personnel alike. On August 23, Japanese soldiers attacked one of several medical auxiliary groups and shot five doctors and nurses on their knees at point blank range. When Shanghai officially fell to the Japanese in early November 1937, Yen and the staff of the Sun Yatsen Hospital rushed to evacuate the staff, patients, and equipment of the hospital. Yen and his teams retreated inland to Chongqing with other Chinese civilians and government officials. At this time, he was appointed the Minister of Public Health.
Thousands of other Chinese citizens flooded into the region at the same time. Many focused on similar infrastructure and other mobilization efforts, both with respect to both domestic improvement and wartime support. As both a doctor and in his capacity as Public Health Minister, Yen was concerned with the high rates of disease and dismal living conditions of many citizens, particularly laborers. To address this issue, Yen worked with the central government to set up 72 medical rescue stations along regional highways as part of an emergency medical network. After the Japanese war and occupation, these were subsequently converted to full hospitals and served as foundations for the area's public medical infrastructure.