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Synopsis

Fu Ching “F.C.” Yen or sometimes Yan Fuqing [颜福庆; 1882-1970] was a prominent Chinese medical and public health pioneer, civil servant, and educator who hailed from a renowned family traditionally serving Chinese government and society. His relatives include Chinese Premier W.W. Yen (his cousin) and Liu Hongsheng (his in-law). Born in Shanghai in 1882, Yen went on to be educated first at St. John’s College in Shanghai, and then on to South Africa, where he treated Chinese miners. He subsequently enrolled in Yale Medical School in the United States and founded the Yale in China program. He went on to return to China and drove several public health initiatives including the establishment of a local Red Cross, overseeing the Hunan-Yale Agreement, the foundation of the National Medical Association of China, and the foundation and establishment of the National Shanghai Medical College (also called Shanghai First Medical College and now the Medical College at Fudan University). Yen actively treated patients through the Japanese Occupation of China during WWII, as well as subsequently during the Cultural Revolution led by Mao Zedong. However, because of his historical social status, practice of Christianity, and Western ties, he was barred from joining the Communist Party of China (CPC) and his home, property, and social standing were subsequently destroyed for political reasons. He died under house arrest in 1970, but has more recently been celebrated as a patriot and hero by the Chinese government.

Early Life and education

Born in July 1882, Yen was the second of Yen Rusong’s five children. Yen and his family were exceptional for their time in that they were practicing Episcopalians, and also that they were Western-educated. In fact, both Yen Rusong and his brother Yen Yongjing had volunteered to fight for the Union North in the American Civil War while attending college at Kenyon in Ohio. Yen grew up in a relatively cosmopolitan environment heavily influenced by Western and Christian morality and thought. After his father, Yen Rusong, passed away, Yen and his siblings came under the care of their uncle, Yen Yongjing.

Yen Yongjing had founded and was a principal educator at St. John’s College in Shanghai, and so Yen and his siblings were educated there in the Anglican style. Part of his education included visits to St. Luke’s Hospital as exposure to Western techniques in comparison to Traditional Chinese Medicine. It was at this time that Yen developed an interest in medicine that would ultimately lead to his career in public health and medical education.

After graduating from St. John’s college in 1903, Yen briefly went to work at St. Luke’s Hospital before traveling to South Africa to treat Chinese miners working in the then-British colony.

Time in South Africa

After the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, the British government sought to address the issue of a labor shortage and subsequent low production in Witwatersrand gold mines with workers imported from China. Between the years of 1904-1910, over 60,000 Chinese contracted miners were sent to work in the mines of Witwatersrand, ultimately stimulating the economic development and post-war of South Africa and making the mine one of the most productive gold mines in the world.

In recruiting a labor force, the Chinese government also contracted Chinese doctors to accompany the miners. Meeting the unusual requirements of both English language and Western Medical education, Yen was recruited and signed up after passing an examination by a medical panel in Tianjin.

Upon arrival in South Africa and subsequently while treating the Chinese miners, Yen was appalled by the dangerous and unsanitary conditions to which the laborers were subjected. He also realized that his clinical skills were inadequate to his standard of a doctor, and after practicing in South Africa for one year, Yen went on to the United States to further his medical studies. Before leaving, the miners presented Yen with a gold badge to show their gratitude for his practice.

Time at Yale

Yen relocated to the United States in 1906 and enrolled in Yale University’s Medical school at age 24.

Despite his language skills, Yen struggled in his first year and the transition to both the rigorous curriculum and New England winter. Ultimately overcoming these obstacles, Yen completed his basic courses and shifted to clinical education in his third year at Yale. By his fourth year, Yen was engaged in clinical practice and started writing his dissertation, entitled, “A Study of the Cutaneous Method of Von Pirquet and the Percutaneous Method of Moro and a Comparison with Other Tuberculin Tests in Diagnosis of Tuberculosis. ”

Fu Ching Yen graduated in June of 1909 as a Doctor of Medicine. That same year, he was elected a member of the American Natural Sciences Association.

During his time as a student, Yen was active in the Yale Chinese Students’ Club and met AC Williams, a Yale-China Association Trustee who suggested that yen could join the Yale-in-China mission in Changsha upon completion of his medical degree. Upon completion of his studies, Yen made his way to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool, England for one semester’s advanced study (where he earned a certificate of study), and then returned to China on a 2 year Yale-China Association contract.

Return to China

Dr. Yen returned to Shanghai during the winter of 1910. His presence as a Chinese doctor in the leadership of a Western medical organization drove confidence and interest among other Chinese medical practitioners, and allowed Yen to serve as a bridge for cooperation and outreach between traditional Chinese medicine and culture, and Western medicine.

Yen was a prolific administrator and practitioner for the next 18 years of his career. His many accomplishments included: the establishment of the Hunan Red Cross (to which he was subsequently elected leader); launching a public health initiative that ultimately eradicated bubonic plague in areas along the Peking-Hankou Railway; initiating various public hygiene education campaigns; building a Tuberculosis hospital in Changsha, the foundation of the National Medical Association of China (the group that established widespread practice of Western medicine in China), the co-foundation and service as first Dean of the institution that would ultimately become the Fudan University Medical School, the opening of the Shanghai Medical Center, and the establishment of the Hunan Yale Medical School (a leader in preventive medicine in China). Yen also developed several public health outreach and education programs tackling specific diseases, including a hygiene program to address cases of snail fever in the Tongting Lake area, and the construction of an advanced sanitation system and public education campaign to address hookworm infestations among coal miners. These and similar efforts ultimately laid the foundation for standardizing industrial sanitation rules in China, and went on to save countless lives.

In 1921, Yen briefly returned to the United States with his wife and eldest daughter Hilda to study Ophthalmology. Despite the fears of his friend and Yale-China colleague Dr. Edward Hume, rather than give up his work in preventive medicine, Yen simply added Ophthalmology to his medical practice.

The 1920’s were a time of burgeoning instability in China. The social and political atmosphere that emerged around the time of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 largely shaped China’s tumultuous twentieth century. The anti-imperialist, anti-western, and strongly Nationalist student-driven movement had a strong impact not only on the environment in which the Yale-China Association could operate, but also on foreign-educated professionals like Dr. Yen, their relationships with foreign colleagues and friends, and ultimately the stability of their practices.

By the mid-1920’s, the Northern Expedition - a military campaign launched by the Kuomintang (also known as the Nationalists) against the Beiyang Government and other regional warlords with the purpose of reunifying China - was approaching Changsha. It was under pressure from the Northern Expedition’s approach that Yen’s longtime colleague and friend Edward Hume boarded an ocean liner bound for the US led by an armed escort in 1926. It was at the same time that Yen left the Changsha region, the headquarters of the Yale-China Association and Yali Hospital.

While working at the Hunan Yale Medical College in 1919, Yen received a Director’s approval to grant a free sickbed to a peasant woman who had fallen ill after delivering a baby. As was his propensity for patients who could not afford treatment, Yen granted the request and forgot the incident. Thirty-seven years later, Yen would be reminded of this event when he sat beside Chairman Mao Zedong at a dinner held for intellectuals in Shanghai, where Mao recounted that the woman had been Mao’s wife, Yang Kaihui.

In 1927, Yen became Vice President of Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), the leading medical school in China at the time. Later that year, the Northern Expedition army captured Nanking and attacked foreign institutions, homes, consulates, churches, and schools. The Vice President of Nanking University was shot dead in his home by looters, and five dormitories were set on fire. Despite the danger inherent to both academics and those with foreign ties, Yen led a group from PUMC in 1927 to Wuhan as part of the Wounded Soldiers Relief Association to treat those who had been injured in the fighting.

Return to Shanghai and establishment of National Shanghai Medical College

Nine years prior to his return to Shanghai, Yen had joined several other Chinese physicians in Shanghai to attend the conference of the China Missionary Medical Association. It was during this conference that the Chinese doctors decided to found their own version of this association, which ultimately resulted in the foundation of the National Medical Association of China (into which the China Missionary Medical Association was later merged). The establishment of this group laid the foundation for widespread practice of Western medicine in China. Yen was its first President as well as co-Founder.

In moving back to Shanghai, Yen focused his efforts on the National Medical Association of China, and particularly on the establishment of a medical college in Shanghai. It was Yen’s personal ambition to found a medical school focused on the teaching and practice of Western medicine comparable to Peking Union in reputation, but run by native Chinese. Yen had previously proposed a western medicine-focused medical college in Southeast China 3 years earlier at the annual National Medical Association conference, and it was subsequently established with funding from various sources including a portion of the British Boxer Indemnity reparation (a program similar to the US’ Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program) as well as the Rockefeller Foundation.

It was in 1927 that the Shanghai Medical College was founded with the distinct honor of being the first medical university run exclusively by the Chinese. The school underwent a succession of name changes, starting as the Fourth Sun Yatsen University Medical College, to the Jiangsu University Medical College, to the National Central University Medical College. It was ultimately renamed the National Shanghai Medical College. Soon after its opening, Shanghai Medical College attracted top talent in both students and faculty, and was soon recognized as a leading medical institution in China largely because of Yen’s and other leaders’ ties to the West, which made it easier for the faculty to stay abreast of and teach to the highest international standards and techniques, and also to acquire modern equipment.

In 1928, Yen leased the General Hospital of the China Red Cross Society from the organization, becoming its first Director and providing a convenient and willing institution for clinical medical education. It was in 1929 shortly before departing to participate in the Pan-Pacific Surgery Conference in Honolulu that Yen drew up plans for establishing the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital. He submitted the plan for what was initially called the Shanghai Medical Center the following year. By January of 1931, significant funding had been secured (including by fellow Yale alumus and Central Bank President H. H. Kung, as well as the Soong sisters, who were relatives of Dr. Yen and married to H.H. Kung, Sun Yat-Sen, and Chiang Kai-Shek) and the project was officially initiated. The hospital’s mission was to focus on public health and disease prevention, both major gaps in healthcare generally in the city of Shanghai at the time.

World War II & Japanese Occupation

As the Shanghai Medical College expanded its staff, student body, and scope of education and medical practice, the Japanese invaded China. Soon after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Shanghai was quickly militarized and in August of 1937, the Battle of Shanghai was launched. During the fighting, Yen was appointed Chairman of a medical response coalition set up in response to the invasion and tens of thousands of wounded soldiers. During their assault on the city, the Japanese indiscriminately bombed and attacked civilians and medical personnel alike, resulting in the deaths of hundreds if not thousands. On August 23rd, Japanese soldiers attacked one of several medical auxiliary groups and shot 5 doctors and nurses on their knees at point blank range. When Shanghai officially fell to the Japanese in early November of 1937, Yen and the staff of the Sun Yatsen Hospital scrambled to evacuate the staff, patients, and the equipment of the hospital once it was clear that they had lost the protection of Chinese military forces. Dr. Yen and his teams retreated inland to Chongqing with other Chinese civilians and government officials, and was subsequently appointed the Minister of Public Health.

Southwest China was relatively underdeveloped at the time, and had no public health facilities even in the regional capital Chengdu. In part as an introduction to his post, and in part to lay out a foundation of work for his temporary home, Dr. Yen wrote an article entitled, “China’s Wartime Health Administration” which defined Chinese public health policy, including a focus on supporting provincial authorities in laying the foundation for healthcare work to encourage local authorities to build more permanent infrastructure. These efforts were indeed the successful foundation for healthcare facilities all across the region.

In parallel to Yen’s flight inland and his subsequent efforts to establish modern public health policy and facilities, thousands of other Chinese citizens flooded into the region at the same time. Many of these people focused on similar infrastructure and other mobilization efforts both with respect to both domestic improvement and wartime support. As both a doctor and in his capacity as Public Health Minister, Yen was concerned by the high rates of disease and dismal living conditions of many citizens, particularly laborers (in the context of their necessity to the war effort). To address this issue, Yen worked with the central government to set up 72 medical rescue stations along regional highways as part of an emergency medical network. After the Japanese war and occupation, these were subsequently converted to full hospitals and served as crucial foundations for the area’s public medical infrastructure.

Dr. Yen’s family became involved in the war effort as fighting continued. His daughter Hilda partnered with fellow aviatrix Li Xiaqing to fly for fundraising events in the United States. Yen recalled his eldest son William (Woqing) from college in the United States to assist in the war effort. Yen’s wife Cao Xiuying, a leader of the Shanghai Anti-Japanese Women’s Federation, set up an orphanage for wartime orphans. Her organization also mobilized women in Shanghai to sew uniforms and shoes for soldiers.

In 1940, Yen resigned from his post as Public Health Minister and traveled to the United States for surgery on a stomach ulcer. At the end of the year, on his way back to China via Hong Kong, he was intercepted by Japanese police and placed under surveillance.

By 1942, Yen returned to Shanghai and started to teach at Shanghai Medical College. At the time, Shanghai Medical College was one of few institutions in the city that remained under non-Japanese control. Although the College was ultimately forced to register with the Japanese occupation government, the administration ultimately did so on the condition that no leadership from the Nanjing puppet government be sent to take control. Partially due to this, the Nanjing puppet government constantly harassed Yen and other senior colleagues with bribes and offers to take roles in the occupational government, which Yen consistent refused.

In March of 1943, Yen’s wife Cao Xiuying died suddenly of a stroke at age 62. Yen’s first grandson, Yen Zhiyuan, was subsequently born in February of 1945. By July of 1945, the Japanese surrendered to the United States, ending World War II.

Communist Revolution

By the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945, the Communist Party had grown in both power and membership. Their "Liberated Zone" contained 19 base areas, including one-quarter of the country's territory and one-third of its population. Moreover, the Soviet Union turned over all of its captured Japanese weapons and a substantial amount of their own supplies to the Communists, who received Northeastern China from the Soviets as well.

As the Communists took over abandoned Japanese weapons and moved through the countryside toward major cities, they mobilized tremendous numbers of starving peasants with promises that a CPC victory would lead to their liberation. This strategy provided the CPC with an almost unlimited supply of manpower and socio-political support. By 1946, China was once again plunged into Civil War. By 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the foundation of the People’s Republic of China and Chiang Kai-Shek and approximately 2 million Nationalist soldiers retreated to Taiwan.

It was against this backdrop of political uncertainty and change that Yen decided that rather than flee the country like many of his peers and social counterparts, he would remain in China to rebuild the country. Driven by a strong political ardor, Yen remained in Shanghai to work at the Medical College and served as a consultant to the CPC. This marked the start of his complicated relationship with Mao and the Communist Party.

Cultural Revolution

Yen was barred from the Communist Party as a Christian, and instead joined the Jiusan Society - one of 8 legally-sanctioned political parties allowed by the Communist government - as an alternative. Into the 1950’s and 1960’s, Yen often held social events at his home. These included Westernized activities like bridge and Western-style social dancing. With the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Yen was condemned for these events as well as listening to foreign music, and answering the telephone with an English “hello?,” as these activities were signifiers that Yen lived a “decadent and bourgeois life”. Red guards searched Yen’s home and office repeatedly during the Cultural Revolution, during which time they destroyed gramaphone records of Western classical music and jazz, as well as his family’s personal effects. It was later in the 1960’s when Red Guards set his granddaughter’s dollhouse on fire proclaiming that it was now the property of the Communist Party.

In the spring of 1966, Yen asked his eldest grandson Zhiyuan to take and distribute Yen’s savings among family members in anticipation of the Cultural Revolution. He also asked that Zhiyuan destroy several potentially politically-sensitive personal effects, including a photograph of Yen’s daughter Hilda with her airplane, which included an American flag in the backdrop.

June of 1966 began a campaign of character assassination against F.C. Yen, which included both mental and physical torture by the government and its agents. At eighty-four years old, Yen was condemned as a US spy, an active counter-revolutionary, and several other fabricated charges that he could not comprehend. In August, Yen was made to wear a sign around his neck that read “I am a bastard” and paraded through the streets of Shanghai while crowds yelled Communist slogans and denounced him. Yen’s grandchildren were often made to walk through the streets with Yen during these public humiliations, supporting the elderly man by the arm. They were often spat on and hit by rioters. After returning home, Yen would often comfort his young grandchildren and minimize the harassment in fear that they might be traumatized.

In subsequent searches of Yen’s home, Red Guards gradually stole any and all property from the doctor and his family that they were able to find. This included gold, jewelry, US dollars, deeds to property, a refrigerator, a motorcycle, several bicycles, trunks of clothing and textiles, and much more. After much of the family’s property had been stolen, Red Guards would also come into the house and carve their names or Communist slogans into walls and cabinets.

Yen was placed under house arrest where a Communist government propaganda team was also subsequently stationed. Throughout the day, the Communist Party team would curse, yell Communist slogans, threaten, and condemn Yen as his family remained in the house powerless to help him. Although Yen’s conviction that he had done nothing wrong and his resolve not to commit suicide (as was the common reaction of many subject to this treatment at the time) was strong, the elderly man’s health failed under these conditions.

After suffering a sudden pulmonary episode at home, Yen was rushed to the Sun Yatsen Hospital where he was promptly refused treatment for political reasons. When his son Victor, also a physician, requested use of an oxygen cylinder for treatment at home, he was also promptly refused. The family returned home and Victor was able to secure medication and oxygen via other channels, at great risk to all involved. These channels included Dr. Li Huade at Sun Yatsen hospital.

Yen spent his final days living with his youngest son Victor, Victor’s wife Mary, and their 5 children. In November of 1969, after years of illness, harassment, and house arrest, F.C. Yen passed away at home at the age of 88.

Legacy

Despite his treatment by the government at the end of his life, Dr. Yen has since been lauded by the Communist Party as a national hero.

In November of 1978, a state-organized ceremony was held on the anniversary of Yen’s death during which state leaders and celebrities gathered to honor Yen’s public service and accomplishments. In 1997, a large statue of Dr. Yen was erected on the Medical school’s Eastern campus to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Shanghai Medical College. In 2005, for the 100th anniversary of Fudan University, the road in front of Yen’s statue was renamed “Fuqing Road.”

In addition to these official and physical designations, Yen’s contributions to the foundation of public and western medicine across China were critical to the tremendous economic and social growth that the country has enjoyed since the 1980’s.

Personal Life

Yen was married to Cao Xiuying, a relative of Sun Yat-sen. After her marriage to Yen, Cao became a philanthropist and opened several orphanages that also functioned as schools. Cao and Yen had six children, four of whom survived to adulthood: Woqīng (Western name William), Yǎqīng (Western name Hilda), Xiangqīng (Western name Dorothy), and Ruiqīng (Western name Victor). Cao was renowned for her generosity, exemplified by one story where she lent a Steinway piano to an impoverished fellow parishioner in the 1930s in order to help the woman provide for her two young daughters. After ultimately having the means to raise her daughters and for them to marry well, the family returned Cao’s piano to her family in 1966 (after her death), just before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution.

During his time at Yale Medical School, Yen became close friends with the only other two foreign students in his class - Jacque Louis Buttner, from France, and Carl Johannes Grade, from Denmark. When Yen returned to the United States for the treatment of a gastric ulcer in the 1950’s, it was Buttner who acted as his surgeon at New Haven Hospital.

Yen had eight grandchildren and enjoyed his role as grandfather as he aged. During the Three Years of Great Chinese Famine, Yen’s rations were provided by the government as he was a senior intellectual. He consistently distributed these to his grandchildren, concerned that they would not grow without adequate nutrition.

Yen Zuiyuan, F.C. Yen’s eldest grandson, is currently an Associate Professor at Fudan University and has assisted in the writing of a comprehensive biography of his grandfather’s life. It was published in 2007 by Fudan University Press and has been translated into English.

In 1921 when Yen took a two year sabbatical from his roles at the Yale-China Association and Hunan Medical College, his daughter Hilda won entry into Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Eighty-nine years later, Dr. Yen’s great-granddaughter Alita Yen Edelman would go on to graduate from Smith College. Ninety-three years after Hilda’s admission to Smith College, another great-granddaughter - Victoria Yan - would also graduate from Smith College.