Dean Lung: Founder of Chinese Studies at Columbia University
Today, we will continue to talk about Dean Lung, the 19th-century Chinese immigrant who donated his life savings to establish Columbia University’s well-known Chinese Studies program as well as his persistent efforts to bridge the two cultures.
Drawing on his close relationship with Columbia University President Seth Low, Carpentier, a University Trustee, wrote him a letter on June 8, 1901, and enclosed a check for US$100,000. In the letter, Carpentier said: “For 50 years and more, I have been saving something from whisky and tobacco bills, which with fair interest would amount perhaps to the sum of the enclosed check, which I have the pleasure to send you toward the founding of a department of Chinese languages, literature, religion, and law, to be known as the Dean Lung Professorship of Chinese.”
Ten days later, a separate letter from Dean Lung himself was also in the office of President Seth Low. It said, “I send you here with a deposit check for $12,000 as a contribution to the fund for Chinese learning in your university.” The letter was signed, “Dean Lung, a Chinese person”.
This was a considerable sum of money. According to the official price of gold in the US at that time, one dollar could be exchanged for 1.37 grams of gold, which is close to US$350,000 in today’s money, and this was the savings Dean Lung had accumulated throughout his life.
For his part, Seth Low accepted the two payments, but it left him in an awkward predicament. You see, the US had essentially just completed the second industrial revolution, and its productivity gains needed the much larger Chinese market to digest its products, so the US government was encouraging well-known universities to establish departments to teach Chinese culture. But it was considered a bit outrageous to name the most prestigious chair in the department after an unknown Chinese man.
Columbia University’s President Low wanted to name the professorship after Carpentier, who flatly refused. He then questioned Dean Lung’s qualifications, even to the point of wondering if there was a Dean Lung at all.
Carpentier wrote directly to President Low again in the strongest terms stating that, “The identity of Dean Lung needs not to be questioned. He is not a myth but a real person. I am not a China man nor the son of a China man... It seems to be time for us to know something more about the seven hundred millions inhabiting Eastern Asia and its islands... Please use the name of Dean Lung as you think best; and it is only fair that he should receive the credit that is his due.”
President Low also believed that it would be necessary to establish a Chinese library, and he appealed to the then ruling Qing government for help. On November 3, 1901, four days before his death, Li Hongzhang, a famed politician and diplomat who was acclaimed as the most internationally savvy politician in the late Qing, donated a set of Wuying Palace block-printed edition of the Great Collection of Ancient and Modern Books. The donation was comprised of over 5,000 volumes. Over the ensuing years, they were described as the Chinese Encyclopedia and were the first books used by teachers and students of Chinese studies at Columbia. The original Chinese library was thus established, forming the foundation of what is now the C.V. Starr East Asian Library.
But the Qing government didn’t want the professorship named after Dean Lung, preferring to name it after Li Hongzhang or Wu Tingfang, the ambassador to the United States at that time, as they considered it was matter of national dignity. And not only did Dean Lung not have anything to do with the Qing government, he had never even attended school.
But true to his nature, Carpentier repeatedly negotiated with university authorities and made various public statements in support of Dean Lung, even threatening to withdraw the funds. Later, the Qing government compromised and agreed to name the professorship after Dean Lung. Carpentier had successfully defended this honor for his companion.
In a letter to Carpentier in 1901, Seth Low wrote: “As you say, the United States and China are likely to be more intimately connected than ever in the years to come... I can think of no better way of developing among our own people a correct knowledge of the Chinese than the way you have chosen.”
Soon, the Department of Sinology at Columbia University was established, and it was time for Dean Lung to return home. Carpentier also went to visit China, as he had always wondered what it was really like. On the China-bound cruise, the two men shared a first-class room. This aroused strong protests from some of the “noble” upper-class white people, because in their eyes, an inferior Chinese servant was not qualified to stay in a top-class compartment alongside them.
Carpentier told the passengers that Dean Lung was a philosopher who had come to America to lecture, and that he was only Dean Lung’s secretary. The protest was quickly silenced, and everyone on board looked upon the inconspicuous Chinese man with respect.
After arriving in China, Dean Lung took Carpentier on a sightseeing tour of Hong Kong, Guangdong Province, and many other places. Carpentier recognized the great potential of China and decided to invest in Chinese railroads as he had done in the US. With the help of Dean Lung, Carpentier invested in several projects, which resulted in considerable profits. Soon after, Carpentier returned to the US, where he presented Columbia University with a number of artifacts purchased from China.
In 1902, Columbia University appointed its first Chair Professor of Chinese, Friedrich Hirth, previously of the University of Munich. Hirth, who was born in 1845 and died in 1927, had spent many years at Columbia University. He was one of the few scholars in the West who could read ancient Chinese texts and apply modern research methods to interpret Chinese culture. And under Hirth’s leadership, the China Studies program grew rapidly. Later holders of the Dean Lung Professorship include L. Carrington Goodrich, Hans Bielenstein, and its current occupant Madeleine Zelin.
Since 2014, a giant picture of Dean Lung, based on one of the two known archival images of him, adorns Kent Hall, the building that houses the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
Dean Lung’s last departure from the US was recorded in 1905, and he never returned to the US. In the absence of Dean Lung, Carpentier moved to his hometown of Galway, a small town in Saratoga County, about 280 kilometers north of New York, where he dismissed most of his servants, leaving only an obedient sheepdog. Carpentier even named the street in front of his mansion in Galway after Dean Lung. Carpentier gradually changed from a capitalist in pursuit of fame and fortune to a true philanthropist, setting up various foundations to help people of different colors as well as women and children, and always promoting exchanges between China and the US.
He continued to provide funds to Colombia University and endowed scholarships in various names. By the time of his death, Carpentier had contributed close to US$500,000 to the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture. He also donated large sums of money to the University of California, a Chinese-dominated State, so that they could buy more books and strengthen their study of Chinese culture.
In addition, Carpentier donated US$25,000 to the Canton Christian College in Guangzhou of Guangdong Province to purchase a building constructed by the University of Pennsylvania on the campus of the Canton Christian College. He renamed it Carpentier Hall, and it was later converted into the first temporary dormitory for women at Lingnan University, a private university established by a group of American missionaries in 1888. Nowadays, the building exists on the campus of Sun Yat-sen University.
Carpentier, who remained unmarried for his entire life, died peacefully at his home in Galway in 1918.
The Columbia Department of Sinology gradually developed into the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture, becoming the highest institution for the study of East Asian cultures in the US, making great contributions to the spread of Chinese culture in the West. In the early decades of the 20th century, Chinese intellectual leader Hu Shi was attracted to Columbia by the philosopher and educator John Dewey. It has also trained many top talents for China, such as famed philosopher Feng Youlan, educator and thinker Tao Xingzhi, the famed poet Xu Zhimo, and poet and scholar Wen Yiduo.
Paul Anderer, former chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures who also served the University as Vice Provost for International Relations, argued that: “Dean Lung is making this available to the university so that people in this country can better understand and know more about China. It’s not always because a high fine academic or a very wealthy benefactor had a bright idea. It can be because someone of vision and will decided that something should happen.”
In 2018, China Central Television (CCTV) made a documentary entitled Searching for Dean Lung. But there was still not much information about Dean Lung himself. On June 13, 2019, “Searching for Dean Lung”, a public talk and panel discussion was held in Beijing, which was hosted by Columbia Global Centers in Beijing together with CCTV. It wasn’t until 2020 that Dean Lung’s descendants were eventually found and the details about his life surfaced.
Dean Lung’s original name was Ma Wanchang. He was born in Guangdong Province in 1857 and was trafficked to the US at the age of 18. When Dean Lung went to the US, he temporarily changed his name to Ma Jinlong. And because Jinlong is pronounced the same as Dean Lung in the Taishan dialect of Guangdong, his registration information in the US was always the phonetic translation of the letters Dean Lung. Later, researchers have translated the English letters into Chinese as Ding Long (丁龙), so that people have always thought his surname was Ding.
After leaving Carpentier, Dean Lung lived in the Guangdong countryside where he had houses built for his sons and brothers. And influenced by his old companion Carpentier, he was also a keen philanthropist, building roads, ancestral halls, and schoolhouses for his village. According to the information provided by Dean Lung’s descendants, before Carpentier’s death, the two men often corresponded with each other, but they never met again after 1905. In October 1936, Dean Lung passed away.
Dean Lung and Carpentier opened a window of cultural exchange between China and the US based on a friendship that transcended nationality, race, class, and age for the benefit of future generations.
Famed filmmaker John Woo is developing a historical drama under the working title Dean Lung. While attending the Fantasia Film Festival in Montréal in July 2022, at which he picked up his Career Achievement Award, Woo told Variety, “I hope I can make it before I retire. I really want to do it… It’s a very human story. These days, there are so many misunderstandings between the people in the West and the people in the East. I think we need to work on it more, work on understanding each other. I want to make a movie that would serve as a bridge between two different cultures. We can be friends – I really believe that.”
Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Lü Weitao, translator Du Guodong, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.