136
H. J. LETHBRIDGE
Of the forty-eight Chinese sent to Europe in 1876 by the Foochow Arsenal in order to acquire knowledge of modern shipbuilding and allied skills, the majority went to Britain. Another party came in 1881 to study naval and military science and technology. Increasingly, numbers of privately-supported students started to arrive to further their education. In 1916, there were over 300 Chinese students in Britain, of whom approximately a quarter were financed by the Chinese Government and the rest private students. Favoured disciplines were medicine, law, and economics; engineering, mining, and chemistry were also popular. At the older British universities, Chinese students were no longer absent or rare but formed a normal component of the student population, together with Indians and Africans. They were still 'exotics' in the 1920s but their presence in small packets in various university towns must have convinced some that the gap between the races was not unbridgeable, that each had many points in common. Moreover, they spoke English (some imperfectly), but not pidgin English, the lingua franca of the coolie class. The changing composition of the Chinese population in Britain must have influenced, one surmises, English attitudes to Chinese, have weakened stereotypes to some degree, although this process of normalisation was to take several decades before it made a significant impact, in the post-1945 period.4
Miao Chung-yi was neither a student in Britain nor did that country become his domicile; but he may be selected as representative of the student or educated class. Hong Kong Chinese, and Chinese from the former British possessions in South-East Asia, tended to study in Britain; those from Shanghai and especially northern China, where there were many America-supported universities and institutions, were likely to go to the United States (as Miao did). The number of Chinese studying abroad has grown greatly since the 1920s; the trend, until recent times, has been ever upward. According to Ng Kwee Choo, in 1968 there were about 45,000 overseas Chinese in Britain, of whom 30,000 (mainly from the New Territories) were immigrant workers, and the rest 15,000 mostly students or nurses, etc. (these figures do not include British-born Chinese; so the figure given by Ng greatly underestimates the number of people recognizably Chinese in Britain).50
136
H. J. LETHBRIDGE
Of the forty-eight Chinese sent to Europe in 1876 by the Foochow Arsenal in order to acquire knowledge of modern shipbuilding and allied skills, the majority went to Britain. Another party came in 1881 to study naval and military science and technology. Increasingly, numbers of privately-supported students started to arrive to further their education. In 1916, there were over 300 Chinese students in Britain, of whom approximately a quarter were financed by the Chinese Government and the rest private students. Favoured disciplines were medicine, law, and economics; engineering, mining, and chemistry were also popular. At the older British universities, Chinese students were no longer absent or rare but formed a normal component of the student population, together with Indians and Africans. They were still 'exotics' in the 1920s but their presence in small packets in various university towns must have convinced some that the gap between the races was not unbridgeable, that each had many points in common. Moreover, they spoke English (some imper- fectly), but not pidgin English, the lingua franca of the coolie class. The changing composition of the Chinese population in Britain must have influenced, one surmises, English attitudes to Chinese, have weakened stereotypes to some degree, although this process of normalisation was to take several decades before it made a significant impact, in the post-1945 period.4
Miao Chung-yi was neither a student in Britain nor did that country become his domicile; but he may be selected as represen- tative of the student or educated class. Hong Kong Chinese, and Chinese from the former British possessions in South-East Asia, tended to study in Britain; those from Shanghai and especially northern China, where there were many America- supported universities and institutions, were likely to go to the United States (as Miao did). The number of Chinese studying abroad has grown greatly since the 1920s; the trend, until recent times, has been ever upward. According to Ng Kwee Choo, in 1968 there were about 45,000 overseas Chinese in Britain, of whom 30,000 (mainly from the New Territories) were immigrant workers, and the rest 15,000 mostly students or nurses, etc. (these figures do not include British-born Chinese; so the figure given by Ng greatly underestimates the number of people re- cognizably Chinese in Britain).50
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