Zeng Laishun (13 September 1826 – 2 June 1895) was a Chinese interpreter, businessman, and educator. He was among the first Chinese people to study at a foreign college. Born in Singapore to a Teochew father and a Malay mother, he was orphaned as a young child. He was educated by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, a Christian missionary organization, where he converted to Christianity. He was sent to the US in 1843, and in 1846 was admitted to Hamilton College, but he did not graduate due to a lack of funds. Zeng subsequently traveled to China.
After several years working as a missionary assistant in Guangzhou, he left with his family to pursue a trading career in Shanghai. In 1866, Zeng was hired by the local Fuzhou government as an English language instructor at the newly established Fuzhou Navy Yard School. Seeking to gain experience with Western practices and institutions, the imperial government began the Chinese Educational Mission in 1871, amassing a group of 120 Chinese boys to study in the US. He worked as an interpreter and English tutor for the mission under bureaucrat Chen Lanbin and Zeng's colleague Yung Wing. He returned to the US in 1872, where he was frequently and erroneously hailed as the "Chinese Commissioner of Education".
Zeng settled with his family in Springfield, Massachusetts. He delivered public lectures on Chinese society and participated in local civic life. He was briefly dispatched to Cuba near the end of 1873 to investigate the poor working conditions of Chinese indentured servants brought to the island as part of the coolie trade. He was abruptly recalled to China in late 1874, likely for diplomatic purposes; during his return journey, he traveled through Europe to assess universities for future educational missions. He became the Chief Private English Secretary of Li Hongzhang and served as an interpreter in diplomatic negotiations with the Western powers over the following two decades.
Early life, family and education Zeng Laishun was born on 13 September 1826 in Singapore. His father was a Teochew migrant from eastern Guangdong (a province of southern China), and his mother was Malay. Zeng was brought up mainly speaking Malay. Both of his parents worked as vegetable farmers, and they died when he was a young child. He worked serving tables at the American Consulate. In 1836, he was noticed by American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionary Joseph Travelli, who enrolled him in a Chinese day school which had been established by his colleague Ira Tracy the previous year. The school's missionaries referred to Zeng as Chan Laisun.
In February 1837, Zeng entered the American Board's Chinese School, a bilingual (English and Chinese) boarding school along with around 40 other students, mostly of Chinese-Malay ancestry. They were forbidden from speaking Malay and taught science as well as arts such as singing, which became a lifelong interest for Zeng. While studying at the American School, Zeng converted to Christianity. The school closed in late 1842, when the missionaries left Singapore to preach in China following the Qing Empire's defeat in the First Opium War. Zeng was baptized instead by Thomas L. McBryde, a minister of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
Education in the United States
Around April 1843, Zeng was sent to the US to continue his education. He was accompanied by the Presbyterian missionary John Hunter Morrison, who was returning to America after work in northern India. They went west via the Indian and Atlantic oceans, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to dock on the east coast of the country. Morrison raised funds from among his friends and enrolled Zeng in the Bloomfield Academy, a boarding school in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Morrison returned to India in 1846, and Zeng was put into the care of an American Board missionary previously stationed in Guangzhou, Samuel Wells Williams. In late 1846, Zeng transferred from Bloomfield Academy to Hamilton College, a Presbyterian institution in Clinton, New York. Williams arranged for the First Presbyterian Church in Utica, New York, to support Zeng's study for two years, the "faculty offering to teach him gratuitously, and the ladies in Brooklyn to clothe him."
According to historian Edward J. M. Rhoads, Zeng was the first Chinese person to attend college in the United States, and possibly the first at any foreign college. At Hamilton, Zeng studied the New Testament in Koine Greek (likely under classicist Edward North) and taught Sunday school at a local church. He was active in the college's glee club. In early 1848, his funding ran out, and he was forced to withdraw from the college. Williams attempted to arrange for the American Board to take Zeng to China to work as a teacher at their mission in Xiamen, but the American Board refused, stating that it was the Presbyterian Church's responsibility to transport him, and that foreign-educated Chinese Christians were unsuitable for mission work. Instead, he traveled to China with Williams and his wife, departing from New York City in late May 1848.
Career Zeng arrived in Hong Kong, and attempted to secure a position teaching at the Morrison Educational Society. The society lacked the funds to hire him, and he was instead hired as an assistant at the American Board mission in Guangzhou in November 1848, working closely with missionary and educator Dyer Ball. Being initially from a Malay and Teochew household, Zeng did not speak the local Cantonese dialect, and was illiterate in written Chinese. He was enrolled in Chinese study for two years.
Zeng married in 1850 and returned with his wife Ruth to Guangzhou, where the couple had two daughters within the following two years. By 1851, Zeng was helping to teach classes at Ball's boarding school. The following year, he began preaching at the mission's daily midday service, and supervised the distribution of religious tracts. He grew unhappy with low pay; although his salary was doubled after his marriage, it was half that of unmarried foreign missionaries. Zeng attempted to negotiate for a raise for over a year, which was formally denied in April 1853. He left Guangzhou with his family and moved to Shanghai.Shanghai was emerging as a center of Western trade. Zeng found employment as a comprador with two Western firms; first with Bower, Hanbury and Co., where he became a close friend of owner Thomas Hanbury, and later set up his own business in partnership with Clapp and Company. Zeng fared well in business, with an American Episcopal missionary who visited him in 1856 writing that "some profitable employment in the foreign community, and every token of prosperity surrounds him", although his separate venture with Clapp was unsuccessful. Williams, meanwhile, regretted Zeng's turn away from preaching, writing that his "Christian character suffers a severe trial" in Shanghai.
In August 1856, Zeng was introduced to fellow convert Yung Wing, who had also attended college in the United States. Zeng briefly left China for Bangkok in 1857 for business purposes. During the 1850s, the Pantays, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Red Turban Cantonese rebels and Nian rebels spread across much of southern China, the rebels espousing their own local form of Christianity. In late 1860, Yung and Zeng boated up the Yangtze to visit the Taiping capital. They met with one of the kings to attempt to ascertain the beliefs of the Taiping kingdom and their likelihood of success. After a two-month journey, they left unimpressed with the Taiping movement and returned to Shanghai.
Following the defeat in the Second Opium War, the Qing regime began the Self-Strengthening Movement, seeking to modernize and gain equal footing with the Western powers. Zeng was hired by the imperial general Zuo Zongtang in 1866 as an English teacher at the newly established Fuzhou Navy Yard School. He taught in the school's English division, which primarily taught navigation, and worked as an assistant and interpreter for James Carroll, the division head. Following the graduation of the first class of students in 1871, Zeng was granted the courtesy name Hengzhong for his service at the school. Zeng achieved the official status of fifth-rank supervisor.
Chinese Educational Mission
In August 1871, Chinese political and military leaders submitted a memorial to the Qing court calling for a group of 120 Chinese boys to be sent to study in the United States for a period of fifteen years, to familiarize them with Western practices and institutions. This was based on an earlier proposal by Yung Wing, but Zeng occasionally claimed that he and Yung had come up with the idea for the program together. The memorial was soon approved by the chief foreign policy officer and then the imperial court itself the following month.
The bureaucrats, Chen Lanbin and Yung Wing, were tasked to head the mission, with Zeng Laishun serving as the third-in-command as well as the mission's translator. In addition to his knowledge of English, Zeng had become familiar with a range of different varieties of spoken Chinese across the coast of south China. He could translate for students with mutually unintelligible forms of Chinese; the students were recruited mainly from Cantonese-speaking families, with a smaller contingent of Ningpo city and Shanghainese speakers. A preparatory school for the mission's students was established in Shanghai, with Zeng as the English teacher and his teenage sons Elijah and Spencer as assistants. They were extremely strict towards their students, inflicting corporal punishments over mispronunciations; they were described by alumnus Yung Kwai as "this Satan with his infernal offspring". When Zeng left to travel with the first group of students, Kuang Qizhao, a lexicographer, took over English instruction.
Return to the United States In August 1872, Zeng departed from Shanghai aboard the Pacific Mail steamer Costa Rica along with his family, Chen, and the first party of 30 students – including Spencer. As Yung Wing had arrived in the United States before the rest of the mission, Zeng was the sole English-speaking official. Following brief stops in Nagasaki and Kobe, they arrived in Yokohama, and transferred to the larger SSGreat Republic. They arrived in San Francisco in late September and met with dignitaries, including Mayor William Alvord. After five days in the city, lodging at the Occidental Hotel, they departed east on the transcontinental railroad. They reached Springfield, Massachusetts, eight days later and reunited with Yung. The group split up, the boys joining host families in Connecticut and western Massachusetts.
While Chen and Yung relocated to Hartford, Connecticut, after the students departed, Zeng decided to stay in Springfield for unclear reasons. The mission may have wanted Zeng to stay to greet later student cohorts. He purchased a house for himself and his family, who became active in the local community. Spencer and Elijah stayed with Zeng as they attended school; although Elijah was not officially a member of the mission, his schooling was nevertheless funded by it. Despite widespread xenophobic attitudes towards Chinese people in the United States, Zeng reported little racist harassment against him and his family. He was well-received among upper-class circles in Springfield, where he was frequently referred to as "our fellow citizen" in the Springfield Daily Republican.