Salute to Great Overseas Chinese

Salute to Great Overseas Chinese One of grandfather’s mentors was Dr. Chen Youren, 陈友仁 Chen Youren was a former Nationalist government Foreign minister, who was the first to take back China’s land that was lost during the Qing Dynasty court’s unequal treaties with the British. Chen Youren was from the Guangdong government, and a friend to Soong family members like Soong Zhiwen and Qingling Soong, and was an English teacher to Meiling Soong after she returned from her higher education in Wellesley. As the celebrated humorist 林語堂 Lin Yutang said, “I was deeply touched by Chen Youren’s English article, and I decided to work for the government.” 再生包公 要求收回汉口英租界 “The people looked up to these overseas Chinese like Chen Youren or his legal consul, Zhao Bin. They either were born abroad or went abroad to study and got a Ph.D. or a law degree, and they have ways to help us.” 赵冰以外交部法律顾问的身份，与陈友仁跟英国谈判，收回汉口、九江的英租界。 In China, we are inferior to the British, but if you have an Oxford degree, can you talk to them on an equal playing field? The mentality in 1920’s China against the British is very much like the present day Middle East. People yearned for equality and an end to the suppressive control. Khalil Gibran was the 1920’s mystic Arabic writer with his book, “The Prophet” on the top chart of the Arab world and also in the U.S. He influenced JFK’s coined phrase, “Ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” The conceptualization of the world in “New Frontier” in Gibran’s thinking was of the two types of Middle Easterners. This was true of China also, where some people were looking to the past, some to the future. In China, the newly educated abroad were bound to generate equal treaties to help the motherland’s tragic fate. Thanks for their hard works. Dr. Chen Youren was born in England and received a degree from Oxford. Dr. Zhao Bin received a law degree from Oxford. Who would be better served to help the British and the Chinese to untie their unequal treaties? Dr. Chen Youren as the Nationalist government foreign relations minister, Dr. Zhao Bin as the Nationalist government foreign department’s legal consul. They both negotiated with the British as a team, and took back concessions like Hankou of Hubei province and Jiujiang of Jiangxi province. In the aftermath of when the British military opened fire on the Chinese citizens in Hankou, and sent war ships in to fire on Sichuan province, and the furor of the laborers and students strikes from 1925 - 1927, the British finally recognized the overall sentiment in China from north to south, was not to put up with the British colonial military suppression anymore. After 16 times of negotiations, England and China signed the “Hankou Concession Recovery Agreeement” on February 19, 1927. This concluded the 66 years of Hankou occupation of China’s territory on Chinese soil. Hankou was dubbed “A nation within a nation”. This created a new era in Chinese modern diplomatic foreign relations. The Middle Yangtze River’s British colonial stranglehold like Jiu Jiang and Han Kou were returned back to China. One important factor is that this mainly was due to the overseas Chinese scholars who had the mentality and the training from the respectable Oxford University which was held in awe in the colonial British’s mind.