David Z. T. Yui

When the school was evacuated to Shanghai in 1900 from fear of Boxer Rebellion, the students were transferred to St. John's College, where Yui's classmates included the future diplomat Wellington Koo.

However, before he could carry out plans, word of his younger brother's illness called him back to Wuhan, where he became head of the Boone School.

The 1911 Revolution broke out in the city of Wuhan, and Yui briefly worked for Li Yuanhong, the head of the new revolutionary government.

Upon his return to China, he organized a drive to raise forty million Chinese dollars, which paid off the debt.

[1] Bays notes Yui was a leader in a group that included such men and women as Cheng Jingyi, James Yen, and missionaries such as Frank Rawlinson who took practical steps to produce a Christianity that was Chinese, not simply an extension of Western Christianity, and to make the Chinese church independent of foreign control, as the YMCA had done.

Yet, while membership in city chapters doubled, some Christians perceived that this caused a decline in spiritual values in favor of social improvement.

[5] The Western rejection of China's claims for equal treatment at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 undercut these favorable views and fostered populist nationalism in the early 1920s.

He served in that position as well as heading the YMCA, becoming an officer in the World Student Christian Federation, and founding the Chinese Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, which he led to the 1927 meetings in Honolulu.