Thirst for learning proves a winning legacy

A respect for learning was the spark that led to the establishment of an Asian studies program at a great university more than 100 years ago.

Dean Lung was a valet for Mayor Horace Walpole Carpentier of Oakland, California, who at one time controlled the Bay Area city's waterfront after he headed west during the Gold Rush.

In fact, the temperamental Carpentier once fired Dean. When Carpentier's house later burned down, Dean went to express his sympathy. Carpentier was so moved that he rehired Dean.

In the 1880s, the wealthy Carpentier returned to his home state of New York, and Dean made the move with him. Carpentier was later elected to the board of trustees at Columbia University, his alma mater.

When Dean retired, he wanted to use whatever savings he had to seed the study of China and Chinese in the United States.

"I send you herewith a deposit check for $12,000 as a contribution to the fund for Chinese learning in your university. Respectfully, Dean Lung, a Chinese person," said a letter, dated June 28, 1901, which made its way to Columbia University President Seth Low.

Considering that Dean was an uneducated Chinese worker in the largest city in the US at the turn of the 20th century, it was not the easiest of circumstances.

His generosity inspired his boss Carpentier to donate some $200,000 in Dean's honor for the endowment of Chinese studies at the Ivy League university, which is now the esteemed Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

According to the Columbia website, some people assumed that the "Dean" in Dean Lung's name was an academic title, "a thought perhaps stemming from the widespread belief in the West that learning in China had been the preserve, if not almost a monopoly, of an educated Confucian elite".

But Dean was an Anglicization of his Chinese family name, which was either Ting or Ding. Columbia described Dean as having a "deep respect for learning that Confucianism had engendered in most Chinese".

The next year, Columbia appointed its first professor of Chinese, Friedrich Hirth, who intended to use his own books for China study at Columbia.

He didn't need to, because in the same year, Columbia got a tranche of books from China's imperial government, starting the university's Chinese book collection, the basis of what is now the C.V. Starr East Asian Library.

The Columbia anthropologist Franz Boas, having learned of Dean's and Carpentier's generosity, made a plea in 1902 for Columbia and the American Museum of Natural History to establish "a great Oriental School" that would "imbue the public with a greater respect for the achievements of Chinese civilization".

Boas, in reference to the materials being acquired for the museum by the distinguished sinologist Berthold Laufer, said: "We hope by means of these collections to bring out the complexity of Chinese culture, the high degree of technical development achieved by the people, the love of art which pervades their whole life, and the strong social ties that bind the people together."

Vice-Premier Liu Yandong said in a recent visit to Columbia: "Perhaps the names of Dean Lung and Horace Carpentier are not familiar to most people, but what they did to promote the understanding and friendship between the people of China and the US is still reverberating today."

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com