Dedicated to the 125th Anniversary of the Yale-in-China Association

By Alfred CHE Wei

谨以此文为雅礼协会成立125周年华诞献礼

车巍

For over a century, our family has treasured an old graduation photo of my maternal grandfather taken more than a hundred years ago. Captured in the monochrome frame of Yali College, the photo marks the very beginning of our family’s century-spanning connection with Yali and Yale, dating back to the summer of 1917 in Changsha. As a member of the first graduating class of Yali College, my grandfather Nantou Wen stood tall among eight promising young scholars, dressed in the academic gown identical to those worn at Yale University.

多少年来，我们家里一直珍藏着一张一百多年前外公在雅礼大学的毕业照。雅礼大学堂的黑白光影里，我们家与雅礼和耶鲁百年情缘的发轫，就定格在1917年长沙的盛夏。外公文南斗先生，作为雅礼大学首届毕业生，身着与耶鲁本部同源的学士服，玉树临风，站立在八位风华正茂的青年学子之中。

First Class of Yali College graduates. From left in the rear： Nan-tou Wen, Yu-ching Ngeo Yang, Chi-chiang Lao, Tsen Chang；in the front：Nai-shuen Ching, Lan-sing Liu, Tso-shu Hwa and Pu Hwang

1917年雅礼大学本科第一届毕业生。左起，后排：文南斗、欧阳峙 (又名欧阳余庆)、劳启祥、张君俊 (又名张俊)；前排：陈乃勋、刘南山 (又名刘兰生) 、华楚书、黄溥

This year marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Yale-in-China Association. Looking back across the decades, this vintage photograph not only brings to mind the enduring bond between our family with Yali and Yale, but also bears witness to a century of cultural exchanges between China and the United States.

今年恰逢雅礼协会成立125周年，抚今追昔，透过这张老照片，不仅让我联想到我们家与雅礼和耶鲁一百多年薪火相传的情缘，更看到了中美文化交流的百年传承。

I still have faint memories of Grandfather Nantou Wen in his aging years when I was a little kid. He often wandered and rested on the campus of Kunming No.1 High School, where our family was and my aunt once lived nearby. To outsiders, he appeared to be a lonely old man forgotten by the world. But whenever he chatted with senior students on campus, they would soon find him a knowledgeable and approachable gentleman. When asked for help with English, he would instantly brighten up, quoting lines from Shakespeare off the cuff as if returning to his robust youth.

我小时候隐约记得，外公孤独衰老的身影，时常会出现在昆一中（当年外公随我们住在昆明第一中学和附近姨妈家）校园里散步歇息，似乎是被世人遗忘的老人。但每当他和校园里高年级同学闲聊起来，同学们惊喜地发现是位博学多识和蔼可亲的长者，向他请教英文时，外公立即又神采飞扬，信口拈来，巧妙引用莎士比亚的名句，仿佛又重新焕发了青春。那是我对外公最后最美好的记忆。

Grandfather Nantou Wen was born on November 2, 1892, into a traditional family in Hengyang, Hunan Province. He received a rigorous education in traditional Chinese classics and culture from an early age, and was also exposed to modern Western schooling in his youth. He attended John D. Wells School, a missionary school in Xiangtan. In the autumn of 1914, he was admitted to Yali College in Changsha and graduated with outstanding academic performance in 1917. He then went north to Peking and studied at the Divinity School of Yenching University, one of the most prestigious missionary institutions of the time. He earned his Bachelor of Divinity in 1920 and returned to Hunan to serve as a pastor. Later, sponsored by the church, he embarked on an overseas journey. Travelling via Egypt and Britain, he crossed the ocean to North America and pursued further studies at Yale Divinity School.

外公文南斗1892年11月2日出生于湖南衡阳一个典型的旧式中国家庭，自小接受传统文化教育的同时，很早就接触到西方现代教育，中学就读于湘潭的教会学校益智（John D. Wells）中学。于1914年秋考入设在长沙的雅礼大学，以优异的成绩于1917年毕业；随后负笈北平，就读于最富盛名的教会学校燕京大学神学院，于1920年获神学学士，返回湖南，成为牧师。后在教会的资助下，飘洋过海，经由埃及英伦，到达北美，在耶鲁大学求学。

After returning to China, he settled back in his hometown Hunan and served as a pastor at the Xiangtan Presbyterian Church, winning deep affection and respect from local believers and townsfolk. Suffering from chronic poor health, he was granted care by the church. In early 1930, he moved his entire family to Lushan Mountain (better known as Guling or Kuling to Westerners) for recuperation, devoting himself to writing while continuing his pastoral work. Upright, gentle and warm-hearted, he befriended people from all walks of life and always stood up for the vulnerable. He was everyone’s friend and nobody’s fool among local residents of Guling.

外公回国后，返回故乡湖南，在湘潭长老会继续担任牧师，深受当地教友和民众爱戴。由于长期健康不佳，受到教会的关照，遂携全家于1930年初到庐山修养，以著述为主，同时担任牧师。外公为人正直，秉性温润，乐于助人，在结交各界人士的同时，常为弱者打抱不平，成为广受牯岭居民喜爱的人物。

It was this erudite man, well-versed in both Eastern and Western learning, who sowed the first seed of our family’s bond with Yale during his years at Yali and Yale, laying a solid foundation for the century-long connection. His two sons, my uncles Wen Guanghua and Wen Fudan, followed in his footsteps and graduated from Yali High School one after another. His two daughters, my mother Wen Qingyun and my aunt Wen Jiuman, attended Fusiang Girls’ School, which enjoyed intimately close ties with Yali.

正是学贯东西的外公，在雅礼播下了我们家与耶鲁的缘分种子，也为我们家与雅礼和耶鲁的百年情缘，写下了最初坚实的注脚。他的两个儿子——我的两位舅舅文光华与文复旦，都沿着父亲的足迹，先后毕业于雅礼中学；而他的两个女儿——我的母亲文卿云与姨妈文糺缦，则就读与雅礼有着千丝万缕的福湘女中。

Left: Four brothers and sisters of Author’s mother’s; Right: Author’s Grandfather in his youth

左图：作者母亲兄妹年轻时合影：大舅光华（后左）、小舅复旦（后右）、姨妈糺缦（前右）和母亲卿云；右图：青年时的作者外公 instead of 左边：作者母亲兄妹年轻时合影：大舅光华（后左）、小舅复旦（后右）、姨妈糺缦（前右）和母亲卿云；右边：青年时的作者外公

As the daughter of my grandfather, my mother was also a daughter of Yali and a daughter of Yale. Upon graduating from Fuxiang, she entered Huachung University — a Yali-affiliated missionary school and the predecessor of today’s Central China Normal University. She always felt an innate affection and reverence for the University across the ocean. This heartfelt connection, woven into our family bloodline, was also quietly passed down to me.

母亲是外公的女儿，亦是雅礼和耶鲁的女儿。福湘毕业后，她即考入雅礼系的教会学校华中大学（即今天华中师范大学的前身）。母亲的一生，始终对那座大洋彼岸的学府，怀有天然的亲近与敬意。这份蕴藏于血脉里的牵挂，也悄然落在了我的身上。

In 1993, I took the GRE and TOEFL exams, resigned from my public service post, and applied for further studies in the United States on my own. After receiving admission offers from several Ivy League universities, I chose Yale University without the slightest hesitation. Tracing Grandfather’s footsteps, I embarked on my studies in international relations.

1993年，我通过GRE和托福考试，辞去公职，申请赴美深造。在同时接到几所藤校录取后，我毫不犹豫地选择了耶鲁大学，循着外公的足迹，迈入了国际关系专业的课堂。

On my very first day in New Haven, filled with joy and anticipation, a wonderful coincidence awaited me. The first “Yale” building I stepped into was the elegant, time-honored house of the Yale-China Association Head Office, located not far from my residence. Nancy Chapman, then President of the Association, gave me a warm welcome as a “freshman” newly arrived on campus. Before I could finish telling her the story of Grandfather’s and my family’s, all awkwardness as strangers between us faded away, as if we had long been acquainted. From then on, I became a regular visitor to the Yale-China Association. Every time I returned to campus, I would stop by. It also became a must-see spot whenever I showed friends and relatives around Yale campus.

十分有趣的是，在我满怀欣喜和期待开启在纽黑文的第一天，可能是上天冥冥中的安排，我走进的第一座“耶鲁”的建筑，竟然是离我住所不远、古朴典雅的小楼“雅礼协会”。届时协会会长贾南溪（Nancy Chapman），热情接待了我这个校园里不请自来的“新鲜人”；还没等我讲完外公的故事，我们之间的陌生感早已云消雾散，仿佛我们早已相识。从此，我便成了雅礼协会的常客，以后每次返回母校，总会抽空去坐坐，而且只要陪同亲朋好友参观耶鲁，这里都是必去之处。

During my two years at Yale, I studied beneath the shadows of its Gothic architecture and attended classes given by distinguished scholars including Jonathan Spence, Helen F. Siu, and William D. Nordhaus. Learning from these leading academics in the United States and around the world enabled me to re-examine the history of my homeland and perceive the world from a brand-new perspective for the very first time. In our campus life, it was fortunate enough for my wife and me to meet Professors Chie and Howard H. S. Chao, whose intergenerational friendship has become dearly cherished that endures throughout our lives.

耶鲁两年求学时光里，我在哥特式建筑的光影中研读，在史景迁、萧凤霞和诺德豪斯等教授的课堂上听课，师从这些全美乃至全球最有影响的学术权威，让我第一次以一个全新的视角，重新理解故乡的历史脉络，观察分析世界。在两年的校园生活里，我和我太太也有幸结识赵浩生先生和金泉智惠教授夫妇，收获了伴随我们一生的忘年交。

Top left: Professor Jonathan Spence and Author at the 1995 graduation reception in Henry Luce Hall; Top right: Professor Helen F. Siu and Author in her office; Bottom left: Professors Chie and Howard Chao with Author at Yale Commencement; Bottom right: Author receives Yale Diploma from Professor Sylvia Maxfield as Professor Gaddis Smith looks on

左上：史景迁教授1995年在毕业典礼上与作者合影 ；右上： 作者与萧凤霞教授在其耶鲁办公室的合影 ；左下： 作者与赵浩生夫妇在毕业典礼上合影 ；右下： 作者从麦可斯菲尔德教授手中接过耶鲁毕业证书

Upon graduation, I made a cross-ocean phone call to my mother in Kunming. She smiled with pride and said playfully, “I was once a Yale daughter, and now I am a Yale mother!” This warm remark has become a special token of our family’s bond with the university through the years. She always placed my graduation photo alongside my grandfather’s old portrait on her desk. Every time her gaze fell on the two pictures, her eyes brimmed with immense pride.

毕业之际，我给母亲打了一通越洋电话，远在昆明家中的她不无骄傲地笑言：“我从‘耶鲁女儿’，变成‘耶鲁妈妈’了！”这句温馨的玩笑，成了我们家跨越时空、情系耶鲁的暗语。她总爱将我在耶鲁的毕业照，与外公的老照片并置在书案之上，目光拂过两张照片时，眼里满是难掩的骄傲与欣慰。

Author with Mother in front of Sterling Memorial Library in 2004

作者陪母亲于2004年在斯特林图书馆前的合影

In the summer of 2012, my mother passed away, still holding her affection for Yale in her heart. Though she never lived to see the next chapter of our family’s legacy, making her a "Yale grandmother", our profound bond with the University has never faded.

2012年夏，母亲带着对耶鲁的牵挂离开了我们，虽然未能等到这份情缘的下一个节点，亲眼见到她成为“耶鲁奶奶”的那一天，可我们家的耶鲁情缘，并未因此中止。

In 2023, the fourth generation of our family, my nephew Daniel Che, a national-prize winning pianist in the States, was admitted to the Yale School of Music upon his undergrad graduation from Northwestern University, majoring in the piano. After two years of diligent studies, he gave his final master’s recital in the concert hall of the Yale School of Music in the early summer of 2025. Exactly one hundred years had passed since Grandfather pursued his studies at Yale Divinity School. In that moment, I seemed to hear echoes drifting across Yale’s time-honored campus through the century.

2023年，我们家的第四代、全美青少年钢琴获奖者、刚从西北大学本科毕业的侄子车爱轮（Daniel），考入耶鲁音乐学院主修钢琴。经过两年的寒窗苦读，于2025年初夏，端坐在耶鲁音乐学院礼堂，完成硕士毕业演奏最后一曲时，距离外公在耶鲁神学院念书，刚好整整过去了一百年。那一瞬间，我仿佛听见了跨世纪穿越耶鲁古老校园上空回响的钟声。

Left: Daniel playing the piano; Right: Two family members of Author’s and brother Hao’s in front of Sterling Memorial Library in 2024

左图：轮弹琴照； 右图：2024年作者和胞弟车浩两家人在斯特林图书馆前的合影 instead of   左边：2024年作者和胞弟车浩两家人在斯特林图书馆前的合影；右边：爱轮弹琴照

This is never a solitary personal story. It is a century-long family letter written to Yali and Yale by four generations of our family, traversing mountains and oceans and spanning a hundred years. It is also a humble testament reflecting the profound integration and vicissitudes of Sino-American cultural exchange over the past century.

这并非一个人的故事，而是一家四代人薪火相传，写给雅礼和耶鲁的一封穿越山海、横跨世纪的家书，一封折射出中美文化交融的百年沧桑的家书。

— Alfred CHE Wei 车巍

(The Author graduated in 1995 from Yale University with Master’s degree in International Relations)

(作者1995年毕业于耶鲁大学，获国际关系硕士学位）

“It’s quite remarkable to think 125 years and how much the relationship between China and the city of New Haven has grown over those years in large part because of the work of the Yale-China Association...

My hope is that initiatives like the Yale-China Association that have had such long roots in New Haven can play an increasingly important role in helping us understand one another, understand that we’re human beings, connect with one another, and set aside those small differences that we might have. My hope is in the many years to come we continue to foster those kind of relationships and more and more people can experience that connection with one another...

Happy 125th anniversary! It’s an exciting time for our city and we’re so grateful to the Yale-China Association for everything that you have done for our city.

非常感谢雅礼协会为NewHaven所做的一切！”

— Justin Elicker, Mayor of New Haven

Photos courtesy of Ted Falk, grandson of Dr. Edward Hume, selected from the Hume family collection

Bringing a patient to the Hunan-Yale Hospital

Edward Hume taking the pulse of an early patient, a member of Changsha's gentry

The Hsiangya Unit at the fighting front

Hume and two colleagues at the door of the Central Inn, the Yale Court of Medicine – the first hospital

Vegetable peddler on Yale campus, with chapel building in background

“When I reflect on my Yali and Xiuning Middle School experiences, I’m deeply grateful for the transformation and growth I experienced. I can only hope that the impact I had on students and other teachers is a fraction of what I have received. It started with Coach Walter inviting me to practice with the Yali football (soccer) team. Their views of me as a role model on and off the field (华人 (ABC) who played at Yale) forced me to shed my own self-view as a 6-year-retired player who failed to go pro. Besides teaching English and organizing the musicals, I found an embodied purpose serving as their football coach with the responsibility of encouraging the students to strive for more. After moving to Xiuning for the 2nd year, in the absence of a school football team to coach, I returned to playing football myself. What started as just casual play with students and teachers turned into a renewed passion for the game to push past my own previous limits. I stayed in China for 2 more years, continuing to coach, train, and play in Chinese football. I ended up living out a childhood dream of playing professional football by trialing with Chengdu Rongcheng of the Chinese Super League. I’ll be forever grateful for the Yale China fellowship for introducing me to the world of Chinese football and coaching - and showing me firsthand how an educator who believes in their students can really transform their lives.”

— Allen Wang, Yale-China Fellow (Xiuning, Yali 2021-'22)

“In July 2024, I boarded a plane to New Haven for the first time, carrying with me a deep passion for nursing informatics and elderly care. From the moment I arrived at Yale, language became my first real challenge. I started from the very basics — practicing daily greetings, learning how to craft an elevator speech, working through sentence structures and paragraph writing in class, and spending long hours in the library sharpening my listening and speaking skills. Slowly, English stopped feeling like a barrier and became something more — a window through which I could truly feel and understand this new world around me. Every conversation, every lecture, every debate quietly expanded the boundaries of who I was. And through it all, the Yale-China Association made sure I never felt alone. It was through the Association that I found myself hiking through hills blazing with autumn color alongside friends from across the globe, sitting in a chapel letting the resonance of a pipe organ wash over me, and laughing around a dinner table, telling stories of home in my still-imperfect English. These moments may have seemed small, but they were the quiet strength that carried me through my time far from home.”

“Inside the classrooms of Yale School of Nursing, something shifted in me. I audited courses in quantitative research methods and healthcare innovation, attended lectures on NIH grant writing and case analysis, and sat alongside scholars from around the world to discuss how digital health could genuinely serve the needs of older adults. Every discussion felt like a beam of light falling on the question I cared about most deeply — how could technology be made gentle enough to truly understand the lives of elderly people, and how could frontline healthcare workers be given tools that were both intuitive and precise? It was here at Yale that I saw, more clearly than ever before, the vast and promising intersection between nursing informatics and elderly care. The memory of morning sunlight streaming through the nursing school windows, falling across a desk full of lecture notes, still lives clearly in my mind — a reminder of why I had come, and what I had found.”

“When I returned home, I carried that clarity with me. The research I had been developing — a graphical assessment tool for evaluating the capabilities of community-dwelling elderly — moved forward with renewed purpose, nourished by the methods and insights I had gathered at Yale. Then in September 2024, I took what felt like the most meaningful step of my professional life: I formally began my doctoral studies in nursing, committing myself to the deep integration of elderly care and nursing informatics as my academic mission for the years ahead. On the late nights when the research is hard and exhaustion sets in, I find myself thinking of the warmth the Yale-China Association showed me, of the generosity of my teachers at Yale, of the trust Xiangya Hospital placed in me when they let me go, and of my family, waiting quietly for me on the other side of the world. Gratitude, to me, is not something you simply say — it is something you earn, slowly, through every honest step you take forward. One hundred and twenty-five years ago, the Yale-China Association planted a seed of connection across oceans and cultures. One hundred and twenty-five years later, that seed is still growing, still blooming, in the stories of people like me. I am so grateful to be even a small leaf on that tree. May this bond endure, and may it continue to bring warmth to all whose lives it touches.”

— LI Jing, Chia Health Fellow (Yale, 2024-’25)

Li Jing is a supervising nurse at Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, specializing in nursing informatics and elderly care. She visited Yale School of Nursing from July to December 2024.

“In 1984, a young woman named Nina McPherson walked into a classroom at Central China Normal University in Wuhan.

At the time, none of us knew that she represented an organization with a history already stretching back more than eight decades. Nor did we understand that her presence in that classroom was part of a much larger story connecting New Haven and China, Yale and Yali, two cultures separated by oceans and political systems but joined by a quiet belief in the power of education.

To us, she was simply Nina.”

A photo of the author taken by Nina Mcpherson in 1985

“Fresh out of Yale University, blonde, energetic, and not much older than many of the students she taught, she became the first foreigner most of us had ever met. China in the mid-1980s was only beginning to open to the world. For many of us who had grown up in small towns and rural villages, the outside world was something we knew only through books, newspapers, and imagination.

Then Nina appeared.

The first thing she gave us was not grammar or vocabulary. It was a name.

On the first day of class, she assigned English names to each student, offering several choices and encouraging us to select one we liked. I chose Tim simply because the first letter of my last name is also T. At the time it seemed like a small classroom exercise. Forty years later, I realize it was much more than that.

That name traveled with me from Wuhan to Beijing, from Frankfurt to Zurich, from Paris to New York. It appeared on business cards, conference badges, and countless introductions. Through it, a young man from rural western Hunan gradually learned to move through an international world.

The name was a gift. But the greater gift was confidence.

Nina made foreignness feel ordinary.

She showed us that people from different countries were not mysterious or frightening. They laughed, made mistakes, shared meals, worried about life, and cared about their students. Through her, many of us began to trust people beyond our own culture. In later decades, Americans, Germans, French, Swiss, Indians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Nigerians would become colleagues, partners, and friends. Looking back, I can trace that openness to a young Yale graduate standing in front of a classroom in Wuhan.

Photographs from those years preserve moments that memory alone cannot.”

“In one picture, Nina stands among a group of young men leaning over a balcony railing. Behind them rises a massive red column of the university building, occupying the center of the frame. The students wear expressions that only youth can produce—half confidence, half uncertainty, entirely hopeful. Looking at the photograph today, the red pillar seems almost symbolic. It stands like a bridge between worlds, connecting students who had barely seen beyond China with a visitor who had crossed the Pacific to teach them.

In another photograph, Nina stands among a row of female students. Behind them is a large mural of a young woman’s face, painted in soft yellow tones and decorated with sparkling stars. The image captures the aspirations of an era. China was beginning to imagine possibilities beyond old limitations, and those students, like the figure in the painting, looked toward a future that seemed both distant and luminous.

A third photograph shows the entire class gathered around Nina. Behind them hangs a political slogan familiar to every Chinese student of that generation. Yet what catches the eye today is not the slogan but the people. The future professors, teachers, scholars, businesspeople, and professionals stand together around a teacher who, without knowing it, would become part of their life stories.

Nina’s influence extended far beyond language instruction.

She introduced us to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. For many students, it was the first time seeing Western art. Some still remember their first encounter with nude paintings in a university library under Nina’s guidance. Others remember learning about Monet, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. Several classmates later became university professors and would eventually teach those same ideas to new generations of students.

Her writing classes were equally memorable. She corrected essays with extraordinary care, evaluating vocabulary, sentence quality, content, grammar, and rhetoric separately. She selected excellent phrases from student papers, typed them on a typewriter, and distributed them for discussion. Long before “student-centered learning” became a fashionable term, Nina practiced it naturally.

She taught us how to write. More importantly, she taught us how to think.

Outside the classroom, she embodied generosity.

She lent students her camera for a budget trip to Lushan Mountain. She shared books. She brought chocolates sent by her mother from America—tiny treasures in a China where few students had ever tasted chocolate. She invited students to meals and encouraged conversations that continued long after class ended.

Years later, classmates would remember details that seemed insignificant at the time: a lunch of hot dry noodles, an evening conversation outside her apartment, advice about writing to the university president or the city mayor, encouragement to speak English without fear.

What remains remarkable is not any single memory, but the consistency of them all.

Again and again, people remember kindness.

Again and again, they remember curiosity.

Again and again, they remember respect.

Only later did many of us learn that Nina was part of a much larger story.

She had come to China through Yale-China Association, known in Chinese as the Yali Xiehui.

Founded in 1901, Yale-China has spent more than a century building relationships between China and the United States through education, medicine, public health, and cultural exchange. Its impact can be measured in institutions, schools, hospitals, and programs. Yet perhaps its deepest influence cannot be measured statistically.

Its true legacy lives in human relationships.

History often records organizations through budgets, buildings, and official achievements. But organizations ultimately shape history through people. The influence of Yale-China was carried not only by presidents, scholars, and administrators. It was also carried by individuals like Nina, who entered classrooms, shared knowledge, listened carefully, and built trust one conversation at a time.

One young teacher influenced dozens of students.

Those students became professors, educators, researchers, entrepreneurs, and professionals.

They taught thousands of students of their own.

The circle expanded.

This is how influence moves across generations.

This is how history works.”

The author visited Yale-China Association in April 2026

“When I visited Yale-China’s headquarters at Yale University in 2026, more than forty years after Nina first walked into our classroom, I found myself thinking less about institutions and more about people.

Organizations create opportunities.
People create memories.

Organizations build bridges.

People cross them.

For 125 years, Yale-China has connected two nations not primarily through policies, but through relationships. It has done so through countless individuals whose names may never appear in history books, yet whose quiet actions altered lives.

For our class, one of those people was Nina McPherson.

We remember her not because she represented an institution.

We remember her because she made the institution human.

And perhaps that is the most enduring achievement of Yale-China over the past century and a quarter: transforming distant nations into familiar faces, and turning strangers into lifelong friends.”

— Tim Tang, Ph.D.