Yale-China Association

The Yale-China Association (Chinese: 雅禮協會; pinyin: Yǎlǐ Xiéhuì), commonly known as Yale-in-China, is an independent, nonprofit organization which seeks to develop educational programs in and about China and further understanding between Chinese and American people. Founded in 1901 and originally a Protestant missionary society, Yale-China's work is characterized by sustained, long-term relationships designed to build Chinese institutional capacity. Current programs include the fields of public health and nursing, legal education, English language instruction, American Studies, and cultural exchange for Chinese and American students. Publications include a regular newsletter, biennial report, and the annual Yale-China Health Journal.

The Yale-China Association was first incorporated as the Yale Foreign Missionary Society, and was known informally as Yale-in-China as early as 1913. It was nondenominational from its beginnings and by the 1920s had ceased to be an overtly missionary enterprise. It was re-incorporated in 1934 as a secular organization, the Yale-in-China Association, and in 1975 as the Yale–China Association.

A reflection of the religious fervor sweeping American college campuses at the end of the 19th century, which took form in the Student Volunteer Movement, Yale-China was founded in 1901 as the Yale Foreign Missionary Society by a group of Yale graduates and faculty members committed to establishing a Christian missionary presence overseas. The founders chose China as the focus of their work, in part to honor the memory of a Yale graduate from the class of 1892, Horace Tracy Pitkin, who had worked in China as a missionary and was killed in 1900 during the Boxer Uprising. The city of Changsha in Hunan Province was chosen as the base of operations in China after consultation with other foreign missionaries.

At the urging of the home office in New Haven as well as other missionaries in China, the Yale Mission early on assumed more of an educational than evangelical function. With the arrival of Dr. Edward H. Hume in 1905, medical education and care became a major focus of the endeavor. The educational compound that began with Dr. Hume's medical clinic eventually grew to comprise a preparatory school, the Yali School; the College of Yale-in-China (later moved to Wuhan, where it joined two other missionary colleges to form Huachung University); and the Hsiang-Ya Medical College, Nursing School and Hospital. Over the years, Hsiang-Ya (a compound of hsiang, denoting Hunan, and ya, denoting Yale-China; transliterated today as Xiangya) developed a reputation for providing the most advanced training in Western medicine in all of central and southern China. More than at other foreign-affiliated institutions, an effort was made early on to bring as many Chinese faculty and administrators on board as possible. By the late 1920s, all major leadership positions were held by Chinese, and Yale-in-China was very much a joint Sino-American enterprise.

...
Wikipedia