Zung Wei-tsung or Cheng Wanzhen (程婉珍), known after 1926 as Mrs. Chiu, was a Chinese social worker, educator, and journalist in the 1920s. She was interested in child labor and women workers, and involved in leadership 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 ...

at the international level.

Early life and education

Zung Wei-tsung was from

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

. She attended the McTyeire School for Girls in Shanghai, and studied music at the North Carolina College for Women in

Greensboro Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte and Raleigh, the 69th-most populous city in the Un ...

, where she is remembered as the college's "very first international student". She graduated from

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

in 1919, with a degree in history. While in the United States, she was a member of the Chinese Students Christian Association in North America, and chaired the Association's committee on Bible study for women.

Career

Zung was a leader of the YWCA in China and internationally in the 1920s. She worked with British YWCA leader Agatha Harrison. She was also active in the leadership of the National Christian Council of China. With the YWCA, she took particular interest in child labor regulation, and working conditions for women, in the face of rapid industrialization. She was founding president of the Shanghai Business Women's Club, wrote a column in a daily newspaper, and taught English at Pingmin Girls' School and the Laura Haygood Normal School in

Suzhou Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade ...

. She helped to organize the Shanghai Suffrage Association in 1922. In 1921, Zung represented Chinese women as a guest speaker at the Second International Congress of Working Women and the International Labor Conference, both held in Geneva. She also visited and toured factories in England for seven weeks, during that 1921 trip.Porter, Robin Scarland
"The Christian Conscience and Industrial Welfare in China, 1920-1941"
(Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1977): 71-72, 85. "Although industrially China has made a bad beginning," she wrote in 1924, "she is still in the advantageous position of being able to learn from the West." She left the YWCA in 1926, for health and ideological reasons, and to marry W. Y. Chiu that year.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zung, Wei-tsung People from Shanghai Chinese women educators Chinese women journalists YWCA leaders University of North Carolina at Greensboro alumni Smith College alumni