Chinese Badgers/Badgers in China

media release: This event will be held in the library's main floor Room 126.

At this annual spring workshop, students will present profiles of early UW-Madison students who came from or worked in China.This year's special event will place these profiles within the context of a 19th century debate among Chinese educators over the value of student and cultural exchanges.

The profile subjects will include:

• Zhou Yichun 周诒春, 1910 master's degree in Education, pioneering president of Tsinghua University in Beijing. (Presentation by History Major Sidney Wang)
• Zhao Guocai 赵国材, Political Science Bachelor’s Degree in 1910 and Master’s Degree in 1911. Zhao served as vice president of Tsinghua University under Zhou Yichun, and acting president after Zhou’s resignation in 1917. He was also head of the 1920 Chinese Education Mission to the U.S. (Presentation by Political Science Major Tony Jing)
• John Earl Baker, Class of 1906, bachelor's degree in philosophy, and 1936 honorary degree, helped launch the Chinese International Famine Relief Commission (CIFRC) in 1921, led relief efforts during famines across China in the 1920s and 30s, and served as inspector-general of the Burma Road (key supply route for China) during World War II. Baker also reported home to newspapers in Wisconsin about what he was seeing in China. (Presentation by Economics Major Rowan Bickett)
• Tso-Yung Chu 朱瑞祯, first Chinese woman to be awarded a degree. She arrived in Madison in September 1922, transferring from the University of Chicago, and received a bachelor of science degree in bacteriology from the College of Agriculture with the Class of 1924. (Presentation by History Major Arden Sigmund)

An original screenplay, "From Whose Air Do We Draw Breath?" by Andrew Liu (History, Class of 2024), will present the debate between Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Chen Lanbin 陳蘭彬 and the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university, Yung Wing 容闳.