The first Chinese national to graduate from a U.S. university lived a life that was full of disappointments. At the time, Yung Wing was perhaps simply too much of a rarity. As the Chinese proverb says: "It is difficult to clap with only one palm."

But he was a kind of Forrest Gump of Chinese history, turning up at many of the key moments in the second half of the 19th century and into the first years of the 20th.

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