Chinese Educational Mission

With the government's eventual approval, he organized what came to be known as the Chinese Educational Mission, which included 120 students, some under the age of ten, to study in the New England region of the United States beginning in 1872.

When a new supervisory official arrived, he found that they had adopted many American customs, such as playing baseball, and felt they were neglecting their Chinese heritage and becoming "denationalized".

[2] The influential official Huang Zunxian wrote a poem which admitted that the students had lived luxurious lives and become Americanized, but lamented the lost opportunity: Many of the students later returned to China and made significant contributions to China's civil services, engineering, and the sciences.

Among the students who attended Natchaug School in Willimantic, Connecticut and MIT was Sung Mun Wai (宋文翙), who later became a Vice Admiral in the Chinese Navy.

[4][5] Other prominent students on the mission included Liang Cheng, Tang Shaoyi, Cai Tinggan, Zhan Tianyou and Shouson Chow.