ANs on verso of a color-tinted photograph postcard of the Hotel Stewart, Geary St., San Francisco. Postmarked San Francisco, Sept. 5, 1910. To R.D. Shipman (a former American missionary in China), Northford, Connecticut.
He writes: “Arrived here Saturday evening with Robertson YMCA Secretary of Tiensin, China. The Chinese students will arrive on the 10th of inst. We are making preparations to welcome them…” A distinguished scholar and future Rector of St. John’s University in Shanghai, David Yin was working for the YMCA in China when the U.S. Government returned some of the “indemnity” money it had received from the Chinese Government for the loss of American life and property during the Boxer Rebellion, to fund scholarships for 100 Chinese students a year to study at American universities. After a rigorous national selection process of students who could speak English and possessed “good health, an upright character, no defects in physical appearance and an unblemished background”, the first 100 students were sent to the US in 1909. The following year, Yin sailed for San Francisco to welcome the second contingent of 78 scholars who were coming to study engineering, science, agriculture and commerce at such schools as Harvard, Yale, Columbia and UC Berkeley.