History

In thinking about why UW-Madison proved attractive to so many students from China in the early 1900s, the Department of Political Science points to one of its own, Prof. Paul Reinsch.   President Woodrow Wilson named Prof. Reinsch the first American minister to post-imperial China in 1913.  Political Science department historian Crawford Young writes that Reinsch sparked “a striking flow of  doctoral students to the department in the interwar years.  Between 1929 and 1936, 7 of the 28 doctorates awarded went to Chinese scholars.”

Other important faculty in the history of UW and China:

Franklin Hiram King, for whom King Hall (housing the Soil Science Department) is named, was a Wisconsin native and professor at the University of Wisconsin from 1888-1902.  His best-known book, Farmers of Forty Centuries (King, 1911 a) discusses agricultural practices he observed in China, Japan and Korea in 1909.

Chow Tse-Tsung 周策縱, acclaimed historian of the May Fourth Movement, left Harvard in 1963 to join the faculty of the fledgling Department of East Asian Languages and Literature at UW-Madison.  He directed the program through most of the 1960s and 70s, directed over 20 dissertations, and drew large enrollments for his classes on calligraphy, history and literature.

Kuo-P’ing Chou, linguistics professor at UW-Madison, 1952-1980.  She helped establish the Department of Chinese in 1960 and served as its first chair.  Renowned for her teaching skills and innovations in language instruction, she was among the first women on campus awarded Emeritus status.

In 1974, plant pathology professor Arthur Kellman was among the first UW-Madison faculty members to visit China in the post-Mao era.  Dr. Kellman traveled with a group of scientists to study China’s agricultural systems.  Horticulturalist Warren Gabelman and political scientist Edward Friedman also conducted research in 1970s China.

Two key leaders served, at critical times in the 20th century, as bridges between Madison and China, exemplifying the Wisconsin Idea:

Zhou Yichun 周詒春 wrote his 1910 master’s thesis (spelling his name Ye-Tsung Tsur) in education on the development of Wisconsin High Schools.  He returned to China to transform Beijing’s Tsinghua prep school into today’s leading university.  He designed the campus and developed curriculum based in part on his experience in Madison, all the while encouraging students to study at his alma mater.

Chancellor Irving Shain led one of the first university delegations to China of the post-Mao era, in the process launching a visiting scholar program that attracted hundreds of Chinese academics (now known as “Shain Scholars”) to Madison.  In 1980, UW-Madison had the largest PRC group on any American campus. Many of these scholars returned to China to become leading scientists and engineers.

Other key institutional events in the history of UW and China:

In June 1980, 88 scholars of Chinese literature joined a Madison conference on “Dream of the Red Chamber,” the great 18th century Chinese novel by Cao Xueqin. The international conference, which featured 42 papers presented over five days, was organized by UW-Madison Professor Chow Tse-tsung 周策縱 and was hailed as milestone for three significant features: it was the first international conference on “redology” or Red Chamber research; the first time an international conference focused on one novel; and was believed to be the first post-Cultural Revolution international conference that Chinese scholars were allowed to attend. As stated by Professor Chow, the importance of this conference is “undoubtedly an unprecedented important event in the history of China and the world literature exchange.” In 2010, Memorial Library held a special exhibit to mark the 30th anniversary of the conference.