







































 

Kunhua Ge (1838-1882) 

Figure 1: This picture still hangs at the main 

entrance of Harvard-Yenching Library. 

From Greek/Latin To Chinese:  

What We Can Learn From The First Chinese Teacher At Harvard 

 
Ye Tian 

University of Pennsylvania 

 

Abstract 

Higher education in the U.S. underwent numerous 

changes during the late nineteenth century. The 

classical education model used for teaching Latin 

and ancient Greek was gradually removed from 

university curriculum as educators began valuing 

modern subjects, including modern languages. 

Harvard’s hiring of Kunhua Ge        (戈鲲化), a 

language teacher from China, to teach Chinese in 

1879 exemplified this change. This research 

examines both the external and internal factors 

that limited Kunhua Ge’s achievements in 

promoting Chinese language at that time. It 

suggests that the external anti-China sentiments 

that existed in American society may have created 

a difficult teaching environment for Kunhua Ge. 

Ge’s internal understanding of his job differed 

from American society’s and the Harvard 

Administration’s expectations for Chinese 

language education, which valued practical 

language proficiency over cultural knowledge. 

Using Kunhua Ge as a case study, this research 

suggests that the development Chinese language 

education is tightly connected to the development 

and reform of the educational system in the U.S. 

The case of Kunhua Ge shows how the social, 

political, and economic environment between the 

U.S. and China in fact inevitably affects the rise 

or decline of the Chinese language education in 

the U.S. 

  

Introduction 

When discussing the formation and rapid 

expansion of East Asian Studies programs in 

American colleges and universities during the 

1990s, scholars often suggest that the economic 

rise of Asia at that time contributed to this 

phenomenon (Chang, 1999). In fact, American  

universities had already shown academic interest 

in Asia as early as the late nineteenth century, and 

interest in China in particular. One important 

example is Harvard University hiring its first 

Chinese language instructor—Kunhua Ge i  — 

from China in 1879. Kunhua Ge was the first 

Chinese teacher who came from China to teach at 

an American university, and his arrival caused 

great public interest in the New England area. 

Many newspapers published news of his arrival 

alongside pictures of Kunhua Ge (e.g., Figure 1) 

and gave continuing reports of Kunhua Ge’s 

Chinese course as well as his life at Harvard 

University. However, historians have overlooked 

Kunhua Ge until very recently. No scholarly 



55 
 

article has been written about him in English, and 

only recently have scholarly articles appeared in 

Chinese that briefly introduce his story. These  

Chinese scholars have placed high value on 

Harvard’s arrangement—hiring a Chinese scholar 

instead of an American scholar to teach Chinese 

language and culture at Harvard. For example, 

Zhang (2001) argues that it actually marks the 

beginning of academic two-way communication 

between the United States and China. Although 

Kunhua Ge only taught at Harvard for three short 

years, he impacted the image of Chinese people in 

the eyes of Americans, especially elite 

intellectuals at Harvard (Cui, 1994; Zhang, 2001; 

Xia, 2004). 

While Kunhua Ge’s experience is a 

landmark moment in the history of teaching 

Chinese as a second language, Kunhua Ge’s 

achievements at Harvard University were quite 

limited. He only had five students in total during 

his three-year tenure, and Chinese language 

education at Harvard was suspended for almost 

forty years after his sudden death in 1882. It 

could thus be argued that Kunhua Ge’s mission to 

establish and promote Chinese language and 

cultural education at Harvard was not entirely 

successful. 

This article considers both the external 

factors, which include political, economic, social, 

and especially educational conditions in the U.S. 

in the early 1880s, and internal factors, include 

Kunhua Ge’s own understanding of his job, 

which affected his teaching at Harvard. I use 

Kunhua Ge at Harvard as a case study to suggest 

that American popular sentiments towards China 

and attitudes towards earning Chinese contribute 

to the success of Chinese language education in 

the U.S. If Chinese language educators could 

better understand Kunhua Ge’s relatively 

unsuccessful experience at Harvard, they could 

better understand the challenges of teaching the 

Chinese language in the United States today. 

 

The Rationale for Modern Foreign Language 

Education in the U.S. 

Foreign language education in the U.S., 

including Chinese language education, is tightly 

connected to the development and the reform of 

the American educational systems. To help us to 

understand this point, I turn to the beginning of 

modern foreign language education in pre-

colonial America. Although as early as 1608, 

French and Spanish missionaries taught their 

native languages to their immigrant children, the 

instruction of modern foreign languages only took 

place primarily at the elementary school level 

from the pre-colonial era to the 1810s in the U.S. 

(Watzke, 2003). During this period, modern 

foreign languages were the medium for the 

instruction of other subjects, such as English, 

science, and philosophy, and prepared students 

for future social and vocational life (Watzke, 

2003). Scholars claim that the number of students 

who learned foreign languages in the U.S. 

increased greatly with the establishment and early 

growth of public high schools during the 1820s to 

the 1870s. But it is worth noting that this “foreign 

languages” mainly refers to classical languages: 

Greek and Latin (Watzke, 2003). Modern foreign 

language was not a part of the college preparatory 

curriculum either in the growing public secondary 

education or in the declining Latin grammar 

school and the private academy (Watzke, 2003). 

Two key concepts summarize the 

educational philosophy of higher education before 

the 1880s: classical education and mental 

disciplinarianism (Diener, 2008; Geiger, 2014; 

Thelin, 2011; Veysey, 1965). Classical education 

refers to the teaching of Latin, Greek, 

mathematics, science, and philosophy, subjects 

which not only composed the core curriculum of 

college education but permeated grammar schools, 



56 
 

high schools, academies, normal schools, and 

seminaries as well (Geiger, 2014; Nash, 2005; 

Thelin, 2011; Veysey, 1965). Disciplinarianism 

relates to the concept of mental power. American 

educators believed that “[j]ust as the muscles of 

the body could be strengthened through vigorous 

exercise,” the human brain “could be trained 

through properly conceived mental gymnastics” 

(Kliebard, 1986,4-5). As the task of education 

was to develop the mental power of the human 

brain, educators believed that certain types of 

subjects were best equipped to foster this 

development. Therefore, “until the end of the 

nineteenth century these two core doctrines of 

education, that true education is classical 

education and that the chief goal of education is 

to foster the development of mental faculties, 

went hand in hand” (Diener, 2008, 63). 

In general, most educators and scholars in 

the U.S. before the 1880s believed in the 

instruction of the classical subjects because, after 

all, these subjects had proven for centuries the 

ability to provide the mental exercise and 

discipline necessary for the training of the brain 

faculties (Diener, 2008; Geiger, 2014; Thelin, 

2011). At the same time, they often questioned 

the newer subjects, such as modern foreign 

languages, which were gradually being 

introduced by some educational reformers. The 

decision to include modern languages in the 

university curriculum was not without struggle, 

for these newer subjects had not yet proven their 

value(Diener, 2008; Lantolf, 2001; Watzke, 2003). 

U.S. higher education experienced a 

fundamental change away from the classical 

education from the 1880s to the 1900s (Diener, 

2008; Kliebard, 1986; Thelin, 2011; Veysey, 

1965; Watzke, 2003). In fact, the hiring of 

Kunhua Ge and the establishment of Chinese 

language education was the result ofthis 

educational reform, which replaced the classical 

languages with modern foreign languages. 

Charles William Eliot (Figure 2), who was the 

president of Harvard University from 1869 to 

1909, played a crucial role in this historic turning 

point (“Charles William Eliot,” 2014, Diener, 

2008; Kliebard, 1986).  

 

 
 

Figure 2 
Charles W. Eliot 

(1834 –1926) 

 

As an educational reformer, Eliot was not one of 

those educators who had blind faith in classical 

education. He removed Harvard’s requirement 

that all freshmen study classical languages in 

1884 and the undergraduate entrance requirement 

in Greek in 1887 (Morison, 1930).Imitating 

Harvard, many other colleges began to remove 

their Greek and Latin requirements during the 

1880s. Eliot also valued modern foreign 

languages because he believed that any subject 

had the potential to foster mental discipline 

(Morison, 1930; Diener, 2008).The hiring of 

Kunhua Ge to teach Chinese at Harvard in 1877 

reflects this belief. 

  

Kunhua Ge at Harvard 

On February 22, 1877, Francis P. Knight, 

a Boston businessman and former U.S. Consulate 

to Niu Zhuang, China Consular, wrote 

a letter to Eliot. Drawing on his fifteen years of 



57 
 

experience in China, he believed that the United 

States could derive enormous economic and 

diplomatic benefits from China. These benefits 

would keep expanding until China’s importance 

to the United States exceeded the Western 

countries’ importance. Knight stated that knowing 

nothing about Chinese language was a common 

mistake made by many Americans who went to 

China to conduct business (Records relating to 

instruction in Chinese, 1877). To further convince 

Eliot, Knight also pointed out that Yale 

University had already established its Chinese 

course in 1876.Eliot consulted with Boston 

merchants engaged in the China trade, and then 

replied to Knight on March 10, 1877 that Harvard 

had agreed to his suggestion (Records relating to 

instruction in Chinese, 1877).  

With the help of Edward Bangs Drew, a 

Harvard graduate who had worked for several 

years in the Chinese customs service, Francis P. 

Knight soon raised a subscription of $8,750 for 

the position of Professor of Chinese. Returning to 

China in 1878, Knight spent almost two years 

locating an educated Chinese gentleman willing 

to go to Cambridge for this service. In June 1879, 

he finally found and persuaded Kunhua Ge to 

accept a three-year contract beginning on 

September 1, 1879 (King, 1881). Kunhua Ge was 

born in 1838 in Ningbo, China. When he grew up, 

Kunhua Ge received the most traditional Chinese 

education. Although he was not a recognized 

scholar and he did not obtain any degrees by 

examination held by the then imperial Chinese 

government, he was very learned and was a 

locally prominent scholar (Records relating to 

instruction in Chinese, 1877).His hometown, 

Ningbo, was one of the five treaty ports 

established at the conclusion of the First Opium 

War between China and the United Kingdom by 

the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, which probably 

allowed Kunhua Ge to come into contact with 

foreign cultures. Thus, although Kunhua Ge did 

not know how to speak English, he had rich 

experience with foreigners in China. For example, 

he had taught Chinese to translators at the U.S. 

Consulate in Shanghai for two years. After that, 

he worked for fifteen years at the British 

Consulate in Ningbo, where E. B. Drew studied 

Chinese with Ge (“Ge Kunhua,” 2017; Cui, 1994; 

Lum, 2008). 

Kunhua Ge’ s salary was $2,400 a year. 

This was considered very fair, because in July 

1875, Harvard fixed the salary of an assistant 

professor in his second term of five years at 

$2,500 a year. Harvard also covered all the travel 

costs, including nine round-trip steamer tickets 

for Ge’s wife, two sons, three daughters, one 

interpreter, and one maid (King, 1881).  

 

Ge became the subject of massive media coverage 

as soon as he arrived in Cambridge, 

Massachusetts with his family at the end of 

August 1879. For example, The New York Times 

reported Ge’s meeting with the Mayor of 

Cambridge on August 29, 1879: 

 

As Mayor Cooper sat in his office 

yesterday afternoon, he was somewhat 

surprised by the entrance of two 

Chinamen, gorgeously attired in the 

peculiar costume of their county, and 

wearing long pig-tails and silk skui-

caps[sic]. They bowed to his honor, who 

came forward and shook them warmly 

by the hands…Mayor bade them 

welcome to the City… 

 

On August 29, 1879, Harvard University held a 

welcome party for Ge. The New York Times not 

only reported on this party but also expressed 

concerns about the new Chinese course: 

 

Nothing has been said about studying 

Chinese literature as a branch of 



58 
 

education at Harvard, nor has there ever 

been an expressed desired on the part of 

any student for an opportunity to perfect 

himself in that department. It is not 

decided yet how the language will be 

taught…how ample will be the 

opportunity of taking up the study, or 

what books will be used. 

 

In fact, Kunhua Ge already had a basic 

plan for how to teach Chinese at Harvard. 

According to E. B. Drew’s memo to President 

Eliot, the textbook that Kunhua Ge planned to use 

was A Progressive Course Designed to Assist the 

Student of Colloquial Chinese, written by Thomas 

Francis Wade in 1867. To guarantee teaching 

quality, enrollment would be limited to three to 

four students per class. Classroom instruction was 

one hour per day, five days a week. Students had 

to conscientiously devote two to three hours daily 

to studying and practicing Chinese after class 

(Records relating to instruction in Chinese, 1877). 

According to the plan, Kunhua Ge would give 

instruction to any competent person (except for 

women) who had serious purpose for acquiring 

the Chinese language. Harvard faculty, staff, or 

businesspeople could also take instruction even if 

not enrolled as students at Harvard. Harvard 

students who wished to do future business or 

missionary work in China were especially 

welcomed. This course was free for Harvard 

students; non-Harvard students had to pay 450 

dollars per year (Records relating to instruction in 

Chinese, 1877). 

Although Ge and Harvard had a relatively 

detailed plan, The New York Times’ concern that 

students might lack interest in taking 

Chinese unfortunately became a reality. 

Originally, the course would start in the fall term 

of the 1879 collegiate year, but for the first few 

months no one wanted to take it. For a long time, 

Kunhua Ge had only one student in his class, who 

was actually Harvard’s Pope Professor in Latin: 

George Martin Lane (Cui, 1994), who had taught 

at Harvard for 43 years. When he passed away in 

1897, The American Journal of Philology lauded 

Lane as the greatest scholar of Latin in America. 

Kunhua Ge and George Lane soon became 

friends and language partners and, with Lane’s 

help, Kunhua Ge gradually learned some English. 

In fact, Kunhua Ge only had five students in total 

before he died in 1882 (Cui, 1994). 

On February 14, 1882, after suffering a 

cold for two weeks, Kunhua Ge died of 

pneumonia somewhat suddenly at his home in 

Cambridge, leaving his wife and six young 

children behind him. Harvard University and 

Edward Drew helped to raised funds in Boston to 

pay for his family’s return to China and his 

children’s education (“Ge Kunhua,” 2017; Lum, 

2008), though no record has been found about 

where Kunhua Ge was buried. 



59 
 

Just aswithhis arrival, his death also 

caused a stir in the local community. Newspapers 

published a series of articles to report his death. 

For example, on February 15, 1882 the Boston 

Daily Advertiser reported: “The professor was a 

genial man of a kindly nature, warm in his 

attachment, loyal to friends—a high-minded, 

honorable gentleman…”The Daily Graphic: New 

Yorkreported on Feb 18, 1882 that:“When he 

came here Professor Ko could not speak a word 

of English, but he couldconverse quite fluently in 

it before his death.He was a man of very refined 

manners, simpleand modest in his demeanor” 

(Figure 3). As a Chinese proverb says, “you can 

draw definitive conclusion on a person's merits or 

demerits after death” (Gai Guan Ding Lun, 盖棺

定 论 ). We can also find American public 

opinions towards Kunhua Ge from 

newspapersobituaries. In general, most of these 

articles devoting much space only focus on 

introducing Kunhua Ge’s life story, praising his 

honorable behavior and character, and mourning 

for him. 

What LimitedKunhua Ge’sAchievements at 

Harvard? 

However, it is worth noting that, among 

those obituaries, some newspapers also fairly 

pointed out that his work was not that 

successful.For instance, the Boston 

DailyAdvertiser wrote on Feb 18, 1882 that “If 

this trial has failed to prove satisfactory 

[emphasis added] to those whose money and 

whose public spirit made it possible, it is certain 

that the work of intruding so recondite a study as 

this could not have been entrusted to better 

hands.”The New York Times reported on February 

15, 1882 that “Whether his experience will be 

regarded as a successful result of the experiment 

undertaken by the college byhis engagement is a 

question. He has had only fouror five pupils in 

all…” 

After 

all, his 

Chinese 

languag

e class 

only 

attracte

d five 

students 

in three 

years.It 

seems 

that 

Harvard 

Univers

ity also 

held the 

same 

opinion as these news reports. For example, in 

1930 the Harvard University Press publishedThe 

Development of Harvard University Since the 

Inauguration of President Eliot, 1869-1929 

(Morison, 1930). In this book, the development of 

modern languagesat Harvard covers 41 pages, yet 

Chinese language and Ge’s story were 

notmentioned at all.Moreover, Harvard 

University did not offer courses in Chinese again 

until the spring of 1922. 

This gap begs the question,what limited 

Kunhua Ge’s achievements at Harvard?This 

paper argues that althoughthe educational 

environmentwas supportivetowards learning and 

teaching modern foreign language at Harvard, 

Kunhua Ge, and especially the Harvard 

administration, failed to recognize the American 

people’s anti-China sentiments and pragmatic 

attitude towards Chinese language learning. 

ModernLanguage Teaching at Harvard 

Despite the negative influence brought by 

the classical education and mental 

 

Figure 3 

Kunhua Ge’s obituary in The Daily 

Graphic: New York, Feb 18, 1882 

 



60 
 

disciplinarianism in higher education before the 

1880s,it's fair to say that, compared to other 

higher educational institutions in the 

U.S.,Harvard was quite supportive of modern 

language education.For example, as early as in 

1787, French teacher Joseph Nancrède became 

Harvard’s first paid instructor in a modern 

language (“Joseph Willard”, 2014).Italian and 

Spanish havebeen offered since at least the early 

nineteenth century. Portuguese was added in 1886 

(“Academics,” 2014).In 1868, French even 

became obligatory in the first year and was an 

elective in the last three years, along with German, 

Spanish and Italian (“History,” 2014).In 1900, the 

Department of Romance Languages and 

Literatures was formed, which merged the 

Department of French with several Romance 

branches of the Modern Language Department, 

which was formed in 1869 (“History,” 

2014). Although specificenrollment data on these 

programsare not available, judging from their 

continuity we can conclude enrollment was at 

least good enough to keep these programs running 

continuously throughout this period. Since 

Harvard students were quite interested in learning 

modern foreign languages, we have to considerthe 

context of this new Chinese language course to 

find the reasons forGe’s abbreviated tenure. 

This research suggests thatthe following 

four factors constrained Ge’s work.First, the anti-

Chinese sentiment existing in society at the time 

did not provide a friendly environment that would 

have encouraged students to take 

Chinese.Second,the Harvard administration and 

Kunhua Ge failed to recognize the real 

significance of China and Chinese language 

education to the United States. Third, the Harvard 

administration had different expectations about 

this new Chinese language course than did the 

public. Last, Kunhua Ge’s teaching practice also 

deviated from the original rationale for 

establishing this course. 

Americans’ Anti-Chinese Sentiments 

Kunhua Ge started his venture in the U.S. 

in 1879, which was not an ideal time either for 

Chinese immigrants or for Chinese language 

teaching. The 1870s and 1880s sawAmerican 

society’s anti-Chinese sentiments reachtheir peak 

(Cole, 1978; Pfaelzer, 2007; Spring, 2007; Takaki, 

1990). As the first of group Asian immigrants in 

the U.S., the Chinesearrived in California in the 

1850s to join the goldrush. There were about 

20,000 Chinese immigrants in California by 1852 

and approximately 16,000 Chinese immigrants 

were working in the California gold fields by the 

1860s (Spring, 2007). But as mining profits 

decreased, the Chinese immigrants had to 

compete with other Americans, including 

European Americans for other jobs, which 

directly caused racial tensions (Cole, 1978; 

Pfaelzer, 2007; Spring, 2007; Takaki, 1990). For 

example, in 1871, 22 Chinese men were lynched 

by Los Angeles mobs due tothis racial 

hostility(Spring, 2007).Although Chinese 

immigrant workers contributed toCalifornia's 

economic growth through their labor in the mines, 

in agriculture, and on the railroads,they,like other 

racial minorities, in the U.S. also raised complex 

economic, cultural, and political questions. 

At that time EuropeanAmericans tended to 

rationalize the economic exploitation of people 

from Asia by portrayingthem as immoral and 

racially and culturally inferior.For example, 

CaliforniaCongressman James Johnson labeled 

Asians as "barbarians" and considered them an 

"inferior" race (Spring, 2007). Similar 

discrimination can also be found in the field of 

education (Fraser, 2010; Spring, 2007). For 

example, the California school code regulated that 

no public education was to be provided for Asian 

Americans in 1872. All children of Chinese 



61 
 

immigrants in California had to attend private 

schools established by other Chineseimmigrants 

until 1885 when the state legislature created 

segregated public schools for Chinese (Spring, 

2007). These prejudices were not confined to 

California. For example, in Mississippi, Chinese 

immigrants were required to send their children to 

segregated “colored” school till the early 

twentieth century (Spring, 2007). 

During this period, fears of so-called 

“yellow peril” stalked the U.S.American 

politicians further fortified these anti-Chinese 

sentiments. For example, the U.S. Congress 

passed the Page Act in 1875, which was the first 

restrictive federal immigration law and prohibited 

the entry of immigrants considered "undesirable." 

This term was defined as any individual from 

Asia who was coming to America to be a forced 

laborer, and any Asian woman who would engage 

in prostitution. Racial discrimination against 

Chinese immigrants eventually peaked in 

1882,the year that Kunhua Ge died at Harvard, 

when President Chester A. Arthur signed the 

Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited further 

immigration of Chinese laborers to the United 

States (Cole, 1978; Pfaelzer, 2007; Spring, 2007; 

Takaki, 1990). The hostility towards Chinese 

immigrants on the East Coast continued to grow 

after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. 

For example, Boston police arrested over 300 

Chinese after an immigration raid in 1903, which 

cut the number of Boston’s Chinese residents by 

almost one-third (“History of Chinese in Boston,” 

2014). 

This is the larger social context in which 

Kunhua Ge worked during his three years at 

Harvard. Although we do not have directevidence 

to show that it affected Ge’s work or Harvard 

students’ attitudes, this pervasive and escalating 

anti-Chinese sentimentcould help to explain why 

both Harvard and Yale hadlow enrollments for 

Chinese coursescompared to other modern 

languagecoursesthat were established at the same 

time. It is hard to imagine that Harvard students 

would like to learn a foreign language spoken by 

an “immoral” and “inferior” race, or to learn a 

language spoken by people who are not allowed 

to come to the U.S. It is also worth noting that 

Chinese scholars who have studied Ge’s life and 

work have not consideredthis social contextof 

anti-China sentiments that prevailed in this period.  

American Public Opinion on Chinese 

Language Education 

Although privately established Chinese 

schools were already in operation by the 1870s in 

the U.S. (Lai, 2000), no evidence suggests that 

students other than Chinese immigrants’ children 

attended these schools. Harvard’s surprising 

decision to offer a new Chinesecourse reflecteda 

world-class educational institute’s foresight and 

sagacity. However, American public 

opinionvalued this new Chinese course at 

Harvardsolely from an economic 

perspective.They hoped this course could help 

equip young American businessmen with 

necessary language skills before they traveledto 

China. For example,when reporting Kunhua Ge’s 

arrival at Harvard, one newspaper forecasted that: 

“The day is probably coming when the 

hieroglyphics on tea chests and firecracker boxes 

will be as intelligible to the average Yankee boy 

as the signs over the shops of his native village 

are now” (Lum, 2008).Here the “tea chests” and 

“firecracker boxes” stands for two of China’s 

major exported goods to the U.S. at that time. The 

New York Times directly pointed out on Aug 30, 

1879 that this new Chinese course was proposed 

for commercial purposes alone.When reporting 

Kunhua Ge’s death,the Boston Daily 

Advertiseremphasized the same argument on Feb 

15,1882, “the sudden death of this gentleman, 

professor of the Chinese language and literature at 



62 
 

Harvard University brings a sad termination to the 

experiment of introducing this study here as a 

means of promoting our commercial interests 

in China[emphasis added].” 

In fact, when Francis P. Knight first 

proposed the establishment of the Professorship 

of Chinese at Harvardto its President Charles W. 

Eliot in February 1877, his main reasoning was 

that “it would be of great advantage to young men 

intending to enter commercial life [emphasis 

added], and who would like to engage in 

business[emphasis added] with the East, to have 

a speaking familiarity with the Chinese language” 

(Harvard’s Chinese professor, 1879). This course 

was established to serve the American 

businessmen’s interests in China. Since the pre-

colonial era,American educators have 

distinguished different functions of classical 

languages and modern languages. Although 

classical languagesserved some vocational needs-

-for example, Latin for lawyers and doctors and 

Greek for ministers--they were mainly taught for 

higher education and leadership. Modern 

languages, including English, mainly served 

vocational and societal purposes, such as doing 

business (Watzke, 2003). American’s public 

opinions on this new Chinese course fit into this 

tradition very well. 

The Harvard Administration’s Expectations 

about This New Course 

However, Harvard sought much more than 

this direct commercial purpose. An article 

published inThe Harvard Registerin 1880 was 

representative. It stated that Harvard considered 

this course as a new way to communicate with 

China and the Chinese beyond the common 

channels of trade and commerce (King, 

1881).Through this course, a student would not 

only simply “qualify himself to hold business 

relations with the Chinese people,” but also might 

be able to “make a critical study of it [Chinese 

language]” (King, 1881, 161-162). This article 

also points out that mastering Chinese “is an 

indispensable key to Japanese, Corean [sic], and 

the dialects of the Burmese peninsula, and at the 

same time is rapidly acquiring a political and 

commercial values[sic]” (King, 1881, 161-162). 

The author even relates this course with 

immigration and religion. As more and more 

immigrants had come into the U.S.from China, 

American people should “adhere to the broad, 

free, and Christian principles of our forefathers.” 

The author continues: “we shall not deny them a 

footehold [sic] in America, but rather exert 

ourselves to elevate and improve those among us” 

(King, 1881, 161-162). Thus, knowing Chinese 

would be an advantage even in the U.S.It was also 

hoped that by mastering the language, 

“We[Harvard students] may now, if we will, look 

at them [Chinese people] through the finer 

telescope of the mind. This is the only way in 

which we shall come to understand their real 

worth as a people, and the important relations 

sustained by their venerable civilization to ours” 

(King, 1881, 161-162). 

In short, unlike the public’s pragmatic 

attitude towards this new Chinese language 

course, which mainly focused on commercial 

interests, the Harvard administration had very 

idealized and, sometimes, unrealistic expectations 

about it. In fact, Yale University had a similar 

problem. In his letter to Eliot, Knight pointed out 

that Yale University had already established its 

Chinese course in 1876. But the fact was that no 

one signed up for Yale’s Chinese course in 1876 

(Cui, 1994; Zhang, 2002). 

Kunhua Ge’s Understandings about His Job 

Unfortunately, little direct evidence 

remains allowing for an investigation of Kunhua 

Ge’s daily classroom teaching practices, from 

which his own understanding of his role at 

Harvard could be inferred. Judgingfrom the 



63 
 

available evidence, however, it seems that 

Kunhua Ge never considered himself merely as a 

language teacher in the modern sense but more 

like traditional Chinese literati. Unlike other 

Chinese language educators in Europe both 

before and during his time, who compiled many 

practical Chinese language textbooks (Zhang, 

2002), Kunhua Ge wrotehis own book called 

Chinese Verse and Prose(Ge, 1881) (Figure 

4),which he intended to use asa textbook to 

teach English speakers to write Chinese 

poetry. As the first Chinese poetry 

textbookwritten by a Chinese person in 

English, this book certainly has its unique 

value,but its effectiveness in terms of teaching 

language was quite questionable. 

Unlike Samuel Wells Williams at Yale, 

the first professor of Chinese in the United 

States, who laid out many specific hints and 

suggestions for learning Chinese sound, grammar, 

and characters (Chao, 2007),it seems that Kunhua 

Ge seldom talked about learning Chinese 

language; at least, no record about hislanguage 

teaching activities has been preserved at all.When 

describing his teaching contribution and his 

communication with local intellectuals at Harvard, 

research only emphasizes thathe composed and 

shared Chinese poetry with his friends and 

guests.Researchers tend to interpretthis activityas 

Kunhua Ge’s unique wayof promoting Chinese 

culture and re-establishinga civilized image of 

China in the eyes of the American public (Zhang, 

2001; Guo, 2007).In his book,Chinese Verse and 

Prose, readers can still find the poems that he 

wrote for his American friends and 

colleagues.Even though most of his friends did 

not know Chinese at all, Ge wrote many of the 

poems explicitly for them. For example, amongst 

others, the poems were dedicated to:Samuel 

Wells Williams, the first Professor of Chinese 

language and literature at Yale University; 

Charles W. Elliot, the President of 

Harvard;George Martin Lane, Harvard’s Pope 

Professor in Latin and Ge’s first student at 

Harvard; Edward Bangs Drew, his former student 

and official in Ningbo Taxation 

Division,whoinitially introduced him to 

Harvard;Ge’s doctorMorrilWyman; acolleague 

who was one of Harvard’s French language 

Professors; and three American ladies.One of his 

quatrain poems was dedicated to Charles William 

Eliot in November, 1881: 

歲歲櫻桃熟，掄才大典逢。 

短長量玉尺，四國仰文宗。 

 

In cherry time, the summer’s prime, 

You, Wisdom calls to classic halls. 

For she hath made a rule of jade, 

Our precious stone, and thus alone 

Your wealth she measures of learning’s 

treasures, 

Whose honored name, and glowing fame, 

The North and South, the East and West, 

Proclaim the wisest and the best. 

This poem is considered as “striking, both for its 

preservation of the adulatory tone typically of 

classical Chinese poems written for social 

superiors, and for the Victorian idiom of the loose 

 

Figure 4 

Chinese Verse and Prose 



64 
  

Figure 5 

A picture of Ge and his two sons on The 

Boston Book Bulletin 

English translation that Ge presented with it” (Ge 

Kunhua”, 2017).  

In addition to the scholarly focus on Ge’s 

poetry, many American newspapers also 

noticedthis feature. For example, in his 

obituary,The New York Timeswrote on Feb 15, 

1882: 

He published a volume of poems in 

China…. Since his residence here he has 

written and published poems in his native 

language. At the time of his death he had 

nearly finished a translation of some of his 

poems into English, which it was his 

purpose to publish the coming year. 

The New York Daily Graphicsimilarly 

emphasized his poetry in their obituary for him on 

Feb 18, 1882.Composing and sharing poetry is 

the most representative feature of traditional 

Chinese literati. Obviously, Ge brought this habit 

to Harvard University. As elegant as it was, this 

kind of activity was a long way from language 

instruction for everyday use. 

Besides poetry writing,Kunhua Ge’s 

another featurethat was mentioned the most was 

that he insisted on wearingtraditional Chinese 

clothes, especiallyofficial mandarin costumes,no 

matter how strange it made him look to the 

American public at large. Almost every 

newspaper article about him at that time 

dedicated a significant amount of copyto describe 

his exotic attire. For instance,after The Boston 

Book Bulletin sent a reporter to visit Kunhua Ge’s 

family in Cambridge, they printedalmost two 

pages to describe the Ge’s family’s 

behaviors,manners,and clothes (Figure 5):  

At a later visit we met Prof. KoKun-Hua. 

He had the face of a gentleman and a 

scholar, refined and thoughtful, and his 

bearing was as lofty as that of a Spanish 

grandee.His attire was elegant. A skull cap 

of a solid kind of satin,with the red silk 

button, which denoted his rank, came 

down to his forehead. On his feet were 

"Mandarin boots," which seemed to be 

ofsoft, white leather, and reached half-way 

up to the knees in wrinkles like Turkish 

boots. His lower garment was a skirt of 

heavy blue silk, and the upperone was 

ofsuperlative beauty and richness, made of 

silk of a deeper blue, and worn over 

another of a lighter shade, the smaller 

sleeves of which showed below the ample 

folds of the outer when he raised his hands. 

It had a close collar and was fastened with 

gold buttons; and on the shoulders, the 

sleeves, and down the breast were 

exquisitely wrought medallions in a 

pattern which indicates his rank (Records 

relating to instruction in Chinese, 1877). 

In fact, when Ge taught at Harvard 

University, the clothing choiceof Chinese 

diplomats and Chinese students who came to the 

U.S.on the Chinese imperial government’s 

sponsorships werevery sensitive. For example, the 

first Chinese ambassador to Britain and France, 

Songtao Guo, was removed from his office in 

1879. One of the indictments was that he wore 

western clothing once(Wang, 1995). The first 

group of young Chinese studentswas sent to the 

U.S. in 1871 to study western science and 



65 
 

engineering by the then Chinese imperial 

government.Conservative Chinese officials also 

launched a strong attack on their “over-

westernization” behaviors, including playing 

basketball and wearing western clothing (Chu, 

2004). These attacks and criticisms took 

placefrom 1877 to 1881,exactly the time when Ge 

taught at Harvard.Afraid of “losing” these 

students,the then Chinese government forced all 

these young Chinese students to come back to 

China in 1881, whether they had graduated or not 

(Chu, 2004).Chongjie Ding belonged to this 

group of students. He had only spent one year at 

Harvard University when he received this order in 

1881. He was also one of Ge’s five students 

(Ding, 2005). We don’t know if Kunhua Ge’s 

choice of traditional Chinese clothing had 

something to do with these 

incidents.However,researchers now prefer to 

interpret Kunhua Ge’s choice of clothes as his 

way to demonstrate his own cultural identity as a 

Chinese official, literati, and teacher(Cui, 1994; 

Zhang, 2001; Guo, 2007).  

From these few records, we can infer that 

Kunhua Ge positioned himself more like a 

traditional Chinese poet and literati than as a 

modern Chinese language teacher, andfirmly 

defended his own dignity as a teacher in the 

conventional Chinese sense (Shi Dao Zun Yan, 

师 道 尊 严 ).Heaven-Earth-Sovereign-Parent-

Teacher are the most remarkable characteristics in 

Chinese traditional culture, and they reflect the 

ethics of Confucianism. The teacher was a sacred 

occupation in China. In 802 AD, Han Yu (韩愈), 

one of the finest prose writers in China, wrote his 

famous article about the teacher, which has 

influenced the teacher’s role in China until now. 

He (and most Chinese after him) believed that a 

real teacher should “propagate the doctrine, 

impart professional knowledge, and resolve 

doubts”(Chuandao,传道 ;Shouye,授业 ;Jiehuo,解

惑). A teacher who only teaches a child to read 

and to punctuate is not propagating the doctrine 

or resolving doubts.As a traditional Chinese 

intellectual, it was impossible for Kunhua Ge to 

get rid of the influence of this value about his role 

as a “teacher” at Harvard. Only aftergrasping this 

point can we understand why Kunhua Ge could 

never fulfill this new course’s initial purpose and 

American businessmen’s expectations about it, 

which was helping young American businessmen 

with necessary Chinese language proficiency to 

do business with China. To Kunhua Ge, teaching 

students how to bargain with Chinese 

businessmen cannot compare to teaching them 

how to write and appreciate Chinese poetry in 

terms of“propagating the doctrine.”  

Conclusion 

 When President Chester A. Arthur signed 

the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, only five 

American students had studied Chinese at 

Harvard. However, during his recent State Visitto 

the U.S. in 2015, the Chinese President Xi Jinping 

met the U.S. President Obamaand announced a 

“One Million Strong” initiative that aims to have 

a million American students learning Mandarin 

by 2020. I believe that understanding where the 

Chinese language education begins can help to 

understand where it goes in the future.  

Although Kunhua Ge only taught Chinese 

at Harvard for three short years, his story reflects 

American elite intellectuals’ foresight and 

sagacity at the end of nineteenth century when 

American higher education experienced a historic 

transformation. However, as the first Chinese 

teacher and scholar who was hired to teach at an 

American University, Kunhua Ge’s mission to 

promote Chinese language teaching at Harvard 

was relatively unsuccessful.The larger anti-China 

sentiments that existed in American societyled to 



66 
 

an extremely difficult teaching environment 

forKunhua Ge.Though evidence is scarce, this 

research finds that Ge and Harvard clearly had 

their own ideas about Chinese education, and they 

invested it with their own hopes and 

expectations.The conflicted goals and 

expectations about this course amongst American 

public opinion, the Harvard administration, and 

Kunhua Ge contributed to this unsuccessful 

experiment. The initiators and the American 

public hoped this course could equip young 

Americans with necessary language skills when 

they conducted business with China in the future. 

The Harvard administration believed this course 

would start the new era of comprehensive 

understanding of China and Chinese people in the 

U.S. But they all over estimated China’s influence 

in the world and attractions to its students at the 

end of the nineteenth century, when China was 

only a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country 

where powerful Western states could dump their 

surplus goods. Furthermore,Kunhua Ge did not 

adjust himself into a language teacher in the 

modern sense. His insistence on his identity as a 

traditional Chinese official, literati, poet, and 

teacher impeded his teaching practice at Harvard 

and also inevitably posed an obstacle tosatisfying 

the original intention of this course. 

Pedagogical Implication 

Although Kunhua Ge’s achievement was 

limited, Harvard’s experiment and Kunhua Ge’s 

story are still worth studying. Even though 140 

years have passed, the Chinese language program 

at Harvard (and at most American Universities) 

today still has the same pedagogical structure 

(one hour per day, five days a week, plus 

homework) that Edward Bangs Drew proposed in 

his letter to Charles Eliot. More importantly, it 

makes us consider the following three issues that 

are critical to Chinese language teaching in the 

U.S. today.  

First, Chinese language teachers should be 

aware of their role as a language teacher. As 

mentioned above, Kunhua Ge encountered the 

problem of role definition more than 140 years 

ago. He did not realize that his role as a Chinese 

language teacher was not the role of a teacher in 

the traditional Chinese sense. Shengli Feng, the 

former director of the Chinese language program 

at Harvard University, once said that a common 

mistake made by the greenhorn in the field of 

teaching Chinese language was that he/she did not 

consider himself or herself as a language teacher 

but as a conventional teacher who always tries to 

propagate the doctrine to his/her students. He 

even stated that it would be better for a Chinese 

language teacher to consider himself or herself as 

an athletic coach rather than a teacher (S. Feng, 

personal communication, June, 2006). In other 

words, Kunhua Ge’s identity dilemma affords us 

lessons that still merit attention today.  

Second, Chinese language teachers should 

be aware of the limitations of their role as a 

language teacher. Kunhua Ge only had five 

students. However, according to the China 

Association for International Education, more 

than 330,000 foreign students studied Chinese in 

China in 2012. 25,000 of them were from the 

United States, second only to South Korea. But 

Chinese language teachers should be aware that 

the number of Chinese language learners is 

growing due to the fact that China's political, 

economic, and military conditions and national 

strength are increasing on a global scale. Chinese 

language teachers in the U.S. should therefore not 

be complacent or take credit. In 2007, I met 

Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard’s former 

president, at a ceremony and told him that the 

Chinese language program was the second largest 

foreign language program at Harvard. He replied 

that in the 1980s the most popular language was 

Russian; in the 1990s, it was Japanese; now, it’s 



67 
 

the turn for Chinese (L. H. Summers, personal 

communication, January, 2007). While his reply 

could be discouraging, in fact, his comments were 

thought provoking. As evidenced by Kunhua Ge’s 

career at Harvard, to the previous Harvard 

president’s comments, the development of 

Chinese language teaching in the U.S. has always 

been closely bound up to the development of 

China.  

Third, Chinese language teaching and 

language teachers must adapt to the macro 

educational environment in the U.S. and fulfill 

American society’s expectations about Chinese 

language learning. Instrumental motivation, such 

as commercial interests, are likely still the biggest 

motivation for American students to learn 

Chinese, not an attraction to Chinese culture, as 

was the case 140 years ago when Harvard hired 

Kunhua Ge (Wen, 2011). Therefore, in the 

Chinese language classroom, the dissemination of 

culture must serve the interests of improving 

language proficiency, not the other way around. If 

Chinese culture is overemphasized, we will only 

fail just like Kunhua Ge, or raise concerns that 

Chinese language programs will present a 

selective and politicized view of China, like the 

ones shared by the Confucius Institutes, as a 

means of advancing the country's soft power 

internationally.  

  



68 
 

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i “Kunhua Ge” is the modern spelling for his name. During 
his lifetime, his name was spelled in various ways in English. 
For example, in the contract with Harvard, it was spelled as 
“Ko K'un-hua.” In his book, the author’s name is “Yen-Yun 
K.H. Ko.” In The New York Times, it was spelled as “Ko Kun 
Hua.” In The Boston Book Bulletin, it was spelled as “Ko 
Kun-hua.” 


