How former Hong Kong court translator became China’s top diplomat in US at a crucial time
- Wu Tingfang helped end a war, put himself about in Washington and assisted the US in Boxer Rebellion. But he fell foul of the American press
When Wu Tingfang, the first English-speaking Chinese minister to the United States (serving 1897-1902), arrived in Washington, the stakes could not have been higher.
China’s existence as a state was in play, and Wu’s diplomacy and careful cultivation of a bilateral relationship with the US would play a key role in ensuring his country’s survival.
A key element of Wu’s background that enabled him to play such a pivotal role in US-China relations was the unconventional diplomat’s combination of bicultural education and experience.
Wu Tingfang was actually an official name, bestowed by the Chinese imperial government on Ng Choy, born in 1842 to a forward-thinking merchant in the Malacca Strait.
As a boy, Ng received a blended education of “native” schooling in mainland China until he was 13, followed by the Christian middle school of St Paul’s in Hong Kong.
Upon graduation, he dabbled in journalism for a few years then spent more than a decade as a translator in Hong Kong’s colonial police courts, wading through the muck of East-West relations.