Before Tsu-Kai Chu began his speech yesterday in McCosh 46, each member of the small audience took a few seconds to introduce themselves.
Among the audience were members of the University community, including graduate members of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars — which organized the lecture — a few undergraduates and professor Perry Link of the East Asian Studies department.
This diverse group had come to hear Chu deliver a speech entitled "150 Years of Chinese Students in America" — an examination of the history of Chinese students studying in America. Most of the material came from the research Chu did while writing a preface for his translation from the Chinese of "Chinese Students Encounter America."
"This is a report on the work I have done," Chu said.
Chu — who trained as a physicist and worked at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory until 1994 — said he began to lecture on culture and history almost by accident.
"I visited Ching-hwa University and one day I stopped by the book store and I saw this book [Chinese Students Encounter Amer-ica]," he said. He added that he felt that he had the same experience as many of the students in the book.
Born in China and raised in Taiwan, Chu's first educational experience in America was as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D.
Like many other Chinese students in America, Chu worked hard to fund his education, washing dishes and taking odd jobs. He even took a job in Alaska because the pay was better, he said.
Chu began his speech with a discussion of China at the eve of the Opium War in 1840. At the time, Chu said, China was entrenched in an agrarian economy and far behind the Industrial Revolution.
Chu said that in 1847 Yung Wing became the first Chinese student to study in America, attending Monson academy in Massachusetts and Yale University. Wing soon helped establish a program to send Chinese boys to receive American educations.
"Imagine their reception when they arrived in San Francisco, in Hartford," Chu said. "How would they be different from E.T?"
Suprisingly, however, Chu said the Chinese students were met with a warm reception. "The students came, they were welcomed, they were treated well," Chu said.
Political issues soon ended the stream of students, but the flow of Chinese immigrants to America resumed in 1909 with the beginning of the Boxer indemnity fund and continued until the Communist takeover of China.
Finally, Chu said, the third wave of student immigration began in 1979 and has continued up to this day.
Speaking after his lecture, Chu emphasized that Chinese students were once much more integrated into American culture than they are now. He discussed the case of Liang Cheng, former Chinese minister to the United States and a member of one of the first waves of Chinese students to study in America.
While attending Phillips Academy in Andover, Chu said Cheng was the star of the school's baseball team. As the story goes, when President Theodore Roosevelt met the Chinese minister, he recognized him as the baseball player who had hit a three-run homer to beat Roosevelt's Exeter squad.
Chinese students now have more of a "besieged fortress mentality," Chu said. "They have very little interaction with American society."
Chu also discussed opinions on the American education of Chinese students, as well as the effects the students had when they returned to China.
"It's a fascinating cultural exchange," he said.
Chinese students who studied in France and Japan came back and became revolutionaries, he said. "The students from America, they came back and didn't overthrow the government," he added. "The most important factor was a stable education. They went through structured study. They learned."
The University of Washington Press will publish Chu's English translation of "Chinese Students Encounter America," in about two months.
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