About the Program
Leil Leibovitz recounts the visit of 120 boys from China's Qing Empire to America in 1872. The boys, enlisted as members of the Chinese Educational Mission, were sent to the United States to learn of the innovations of the West and return to China with new ideas. The group was welcomed as cultural ambassadors and befriended by the likes of Ulysses S. Grant and Mark Twain. The author reports on the groups American education and their return to their home country, where they were met with suspicion and lost amongst Chinese cultural traditions they had forgotten. Although, most of the boys were assigned to low-ranking assignments in the military, several achieved reform in the fields of diplomacy, engineering, and construction. Leil Leibovitz discusses his book at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in New York City.