“There are moments when history ceases to be a collection of dates and becomes something you feel in your bones. For me, that moment arrives every time I step off the plane in Changsha. The humid air, the surge of the Xiang River, and the modern skyline stand as testament to a city reborn. Yet beneath that modernity, I walk in the footsteps of giants. As great-grandson of Dr. Edward Hicks Hume, founder of what would become the Xiangya Hospital system, my life has been a series of bridges between a distant family past and the living, breathing Chinese present. As Yale-China celebrates its 125th anniversary in 2026, I find myself reflecting on the invisible ties that bind a Yale graduate from 1897 to the bustling Changsha of today.
When Dr. Hume arrived in Changsha in 1905, he walked into a world of suspicion and hostility. He later recounted his arrival in vivid detail in his memoir, Doctors East, Doctors West. At the dock, he faced stares and whispers, wondering whether the crowd was friendly or hostile. Passing through the city gates, he saw posters with anti-foreign slogans. Mothers hid their children from the “evil eye” of the foreigner, and he could hear the muttered epithet “Yang guizi” (洋鬼子)—“foreign devil.” His colleague Brownell Gage described the suffocating feeling of the walled city’s narrow streets, where hanging signs and straw awnings blocked out the sun entirely. Into that environment, in 1906, Dr. Hume founded a small 20-bed clinic in a former rice warehouse on West Pailou Street. They named it “Yali” (雅礼), a phonetic rendering of Yale that also conveyed the Confucian concept of “refined comportment.” That tiny clinic was a seed from which a mighty tree would grow.
My great-grandmother, Lotta Carswell Hume, managed a household that was a microcosm of cultural negotiation, navigating Chinese social hierarchies with humor and deep curiosity. She collected the stories she heard from neighbors and her children’s Chinese playmates, and years later shaped them into a cherished book, Favorite Children’s Stories from China and Tibet. Growing up, we were spellbound by those same tales. It was our first introduction to the land where my grandmother, Charlotte Elizabeth Hume, was born in 1906 in the mountain retreat of Kuling.
The real breakthrough came in 1914. The local Hunanese gentry, led by figures like Tan Yankai, desired a medical college to train Chinese physicians in modern science. An agreement between Yale-China and the Hunan Yuqun Association created the first cooperative educational venture of its kind in China. The new institution was named “Xiangya” (湘雅), combining the literary name for Hunan – “Xiang” – with “Ya” for Yale. A Chinese saying was born that endures to this day: “In the North, the Union; in the South, Xiangya,” placing the young institution on par with the Peking Union Medical College, established in Beijing around the same time by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Dr. Hume’s philosophy was ahead of its time. He insisted on the highest scientific standards while deeply respecting Chinese culture. “We are guests here,” he wrote. He actively recruited brilliant Chinese colleagues, most notably Dr. Yan Fuqing, the first Chinese graduate of Yale Medical School, who became Xiangya’s founding dean. In 1925, as Dr. Sun Yat-sen lay ill in Beijing, a group of Xiangya medical students requested a message from the dying revolutionary leader. He took up his brush and wrote four powerful characters: 学成致用 (Xue Cheng Zhi Yong)—“Learn, and then put it into practice.” It was a mandate from China’s founding father to an institution our great-grandfather had helped build.
The mid-1920s brought tremendous strain. As Chinese nationalism intensified, Dr. Hume proposed turning over administrative control of the college to Chinese leadership. When the trustees in New Haven rejected the proposal, he made the personally difficult decision to resign in 1927, a testament to his conviction that the work must be Chinese-led to endure. It did endure. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Xiangya’s staff packed their equipment and followed the Chinese government inland, treating casualties and refugees across a country at war. Our formal partnership was severed in the early 1950s with the Korean War, but the foundation was too strong to crumble.
In 2009, I had the privilege of retracing my great-grandfather’s steps. Standing before Xiangya’s iconic Red Building, completed in 1916, I felt the weight of a century. The welcome I received was extraordinary. Chinese colleagues speak of Dr. Hume not as an outsider, but as a friend, a founder, and a pioneer. Today, Xiangya performs over 100,000 operations a year and has sent medical teams to battle Ebola in Sierra Leone. In 2016, I stood before a portrait of my great-grandfather alongside Dr. Sun Hong, President of Xiangya Hospital. It was a moment of full circle.
The Chinese say: 前人栽树，后人乘凉—“The predecessors plant the trees, and the descendants enjoy the shade.” For over a century, I have enjoyed that shade. Now it is our turn to plant. Yale-China’s next 125 years call us to mutual trust, new science, and a shared responsibility for the world we hold in common. The work is not done. It has only just begun.”
— Nathan Shroyer, great-grandson of Dr. Edward Hicks Hume
