Yau Tsit Law (1888-1961) was a Chinese Christian educator, and one of the first Chinese women to graduate from

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. ...

Early life and education

Yau Tsit Law attended the True Light Seminary in Canton, where her mother was the principal. In 1912 she traveled to the United States for college, one of the first women sent by the Chinese government for an American college education. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1916, and pursued graduate studies at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Career

After she returned to China, Yau Tsit Law taught and was principal of the

True Light Middle School of Hong Kong The True Light Middle School of Hong Kong (TLMSHK) () is a well-known girls' school located at Tai Hang, Hong Kong Island. The school consists of a secondary, a primary and a kindergarten section, located at the same premises. While the secondar ...

. Beyond school work, she was the general secretary of the

YWCA The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

. In that capacity, she attended the first

Institute of Pacific Relations The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was an international NGO established in 1925 to provide a forum for discussion of problems and relations between nations of the Pacific Rim. The International Secretariat, the center of most IPR activity ov ...

conference in July 1925, held in

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...

. She gave a talk there, on "Canton Women in Business and the Professions". In 1927 she was appointed dean of women at

Lingnan University Lingnan University (LN/LU), formerly called Lingnan College, is a public liberal arts university in Hong Kong. It aims to provide students with an education in the liberal arts tradition and has joined the Global Liberal Arts Alliance since ...

. Yau Tsit Law was awarded an honorary doctorate by Mount Holyoke College in 1937, at its centennial celebration. One of Law's students at True Light Seminary, Jane Kwong Lee, served as coordinator of the Chinese YWCA in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, from 1935 to 1944.Judy Yung
''Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco''
(University of California press 1999): 229.

References

External links

Another photograph of Yau Tsit Law
taken in 1913 during her time at Mount Holyoke College, from the Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections. {{authority control Educators from Guangdong Mount Holyoke College alumni 1888 births 1961 deaths 20th-century Chinese educators 20th-century Chinese women 20th-century Chinese women educators