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| Post card – Place Maghin (1) |
Number 5 was like any other residence building at the Maghin Square. It was situated in a neighborhood far away from the bustling center of Liège, with an unblocked view of the Saint-Léonard prison and in short walking distance of the river La Meuse. And yet, in the morning of February 18, 1904, it started to attract onlookers to its facade.
But the interior's redressing was not what peaked local interest. It was the new inhabitants whose clothes had been described in vivid detail by Belgian newspapers.
***
The Chinese students arrived at the Guillemins train station before noon, and they were not alone. After having descended from the Express with their Chinese and Belgian companions, they were greeted by the rector of University of Liège and his associates. And -well- by another crowd of spectators, who according to the correspondent of Étoile Belge, were less behaved than the crowd that the foreigners had faced at Bruxelles-Nord some hours ago. (3)
Transported in covered Landaus, the students and entourage made their way through the city, northbound. They stopped by Maghin Square for a meal, while their supervisor Yan Haiming was hanging the flag of the Qing Empire on the balcony, and then hurried to Hotel Mohren for a handsomely decorated banquet, where a bust of King Leopold II was flanked by Chinese and Belgian flags. Among the invitees of the banquet were the staff of Chinese legation and a representative of the Belgian Ministry of Public Education. (4)
There were toasts for the Guangxu Emperor and the King of Belgians, words of respect for Yan Haiming and warm welcome greetings for the Chinese students. Then, anticipatory silence fell for the speech of the Secretary of the Chinese Legation, who ceremoniously led the inauguration of the "First Chinese School in Belgium."(5) In this speech he expressed the Celestial Empire's hope for the young cohort to absorb all the necessary knowledge (i.e. mining and engineering) in this country once their French language training had been completed at the school.
***
Although the presence of the first Chinese school indicated something unprecedented in Chinese-Belgian history, it echoed what had already come before, for the Chinese students at the banquet were not the first being sent to the region of Liège to learn.
Hidden in the folds of time, in April 1892, a group of Chinese men were brought in to train at the Cockerill factories in Seraing, about seven kilometers to the south-west from Hotel Mohren.(6) Like the Chinese students, they came over from the same province Hubei, got a governmental stipend to cover their living costs, lived in rented accommodation and had a Chinese official to supervisor them. They were just not labeled étudiants chinois or liuxuesheng by the outside world, but were referred to as ouvriers chinois or gongjiang. Over the course of two years, these men learned how to operate heavy machinery required for steel work. Once these men finished their training, they returned to Wuhan, where they became active in a new industrial project – the Hanyang Iron and Steel Works.
In the history of people being sent abroad by the Qing, the steps to go from "laborers" and "artisans" to "students," from "training" to "schooling," from "learning the ropes" to "education," were small and slow over the course of the nineteenth century, but accelerated drastically in the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) when urgency dawned on the Qing officials regarding the place of the Heaven-Empire in a world full of competing nation states and foreign-born knowledge became something that even the elite had to appropriate quickly, not just in order to be on top of new developments, but also to preserve their place at the top. Reforms for rolling out an own education system and for sending people to schools abroad came swiftly afterwards.
***
The day after the banquet, the French classes by Father Steenackers could commence and the novelty of the école Chinoise wore off quickly for local journalists. Readers had to wait until June when a new development took hold at the boarding school – or, more accurately, a sudden lack of.
The school strike was going on for quite a while when the Étoile Belge entered the building to look for an explanation. After a round of inquiries, they published details on the life at the boarding school. The daily routine of the students was as follows:(7)
6:30: wake up
7:00-7:30: Breakfast
7:50-8:45: Leisure
9:00-11:00: Class
11:30-12:15: Leisure
12:15: Lunch
12:45-13:45: Leisure
13:45-14:15: Study
14:15-16:30: Class
16:30: Tea
16:45-17:30: Leisure
17:30-19:00: Study
19:00: Dinner
19:30-20:15: Leisure
20:15-21:00: Study
9:15: Bedtime
The students, who had suspended their study of French verbs during the school strike, had been called back to Brussels. In their absence, the Étoile Belge claimed to have found a piece of paper with Chinese characters on the kitchen table, which, translated to French, read: "We don't want to be in barracks. We prefer to return to our country." (8)
As the students were a project of Sino-Belgian diplomacy, the Belgian Minister of Public Education and Chinese legation of Brussels had to come together to manage the "crisis inside the house." Rumors had it that the Belgian Minister wanted to "barrack" the students, but, whatever the truth of the situation was, changes had to be made if they did not want to repeat events like these, especially with the arrival of new Chinese students around that time.
After back and forth, the young cohort resumed their French lessons shortly afterwards.
***
In September 1904, the Chinese students got the permission from Beijing to leave the house and to go to the city of their choosing.(9) The group split up. Some returned to China, like Yan Haiming's relative, a few stuck around in Liège, others went to Namur and Mons, some even went to study in Paris like Hu Bingke (胡秉柯, 1882-1914) and the rest moved to Brussels like Shi Qing (史青, 1886-1962).
And so concludes the very brief history of the first Chinese student house in Belgium.
FOOTNOTES
(1) I found the photo on https://histoiresdeliege.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/la-place-des-deportes-et-le-pont-saint-leonard-ou-maghin/. The photo is dated early 20th century.
(2) "Ainsi que nous l'avons annoncé...," Étoile Belge, February 16, 1904; "Liège: étudiants chinois," Étoile Belge, February 19, 1904.
(3) "Liège: étudiants chinois," Étoile Belge, February 19, 1904.
(4) Idem.
(5) Idem.
(6) "Les Chinois Aux Établissements Cockerill," La Meuse, April 9, 1892.
(7) "Nous nous y attendions," Étoile Belge, June 5, 1904.
(8) Idem. Original quote: "Nous ne voulons pas être casernés. Nous préfèrons rentrer dans notre pays."
(9) "Les Chinois à Liège," La Meuse, August 13, 1904.