The Education of Lee Teng Hwee: Building a University and Making a Christian Home, 1887–1907

Abstract Lee Teng Hwee (1872–1947) is well-known as the founder and first president of Fudan University in Shanghai. This article focuses on the turning points in his life before he embarked on that mission. A Peranakan boy from Java educated at the Methodist Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore, Ohio Wesleyan, and Yale, he joined the Straits-Chinese reform movement before being denied entry to the US for graduate study, organizing the World’s Chinese Students’ Federation in Shanghai and starting a Christian home with his Chinese bride. I will apply a micro-historical, inter-actional perspective to the social, cultural, and political context in each turning point to explore what it meant to be a trans-national Chinese Christian with an educational mission. I will also argue that the voices of missionaries, teachers, classmates, reformer colleagues, and especially Chinese Christian women at these turning points reveal the formation and expansion of a non-state social network among Lee’s generation of trans-local Chinese.