USA / China: Ko K'un-hua (1838 - 1882), the first Chinese instructor at Harvard University, 1879 - 1882

In 1879, Ko K'un-hua (pinyin: Ge Kunhua), a scholar from China, was engaged to give a course in the Chinese language. The small collection of books that was bought for this course became Harvard College's first acquisitions in any East Asian language. The few existing photographs of Ko reveal a dignified middle-aged man in the long, high-necked, heavy garments of a scholar-official of the Qing dynasty. His embroidered robes would have been nearly unbearable in a Boston summer, but Ko did not experience many of those: a few months before the end of his three-year contract, he died of pneumonia. Harvard paid for his family’s return to China, and Edward Bangs Drew raised funds to educate his sons.

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