Ying Mei Chun Explained

Ying Mei Chun
Native Name:	陳英梅
Birth Date:	about 1890
Birth Place:	Hong Kong
Death Date:	August 17, 1938
Death Place:	Canton, China
Native Name Lang:	ch
Other Names:	Ying Mei Chen, Ying Mei Lin, Chen Yingmei
Occupation:	Educator
Relatives:	Meyer Kupferman (son-in-law)

Ying Mei Chun (; – August 17, 1938) was a Chinese physical educator, based in Shanghai.

Early life and education

Chun was from Hong Kong. She attended the McTyeire School in Shanghai, and graduated from Wellesley College in 1913.^{[1] [2]} She took additional certification training in physical education in New York.^{[3] [4]} Chun was chair of the woman's department of the Chinese Student Christian Association in North America in 1911.^[5] She was secretary of the Wellesley Alumnae Association chapter in Shanghai.^[6]

Career

After graduating from college in the United States, Chun was director of the physical department of the Shanghai YWCA.^{[7] [8]} She taught in the physical education program at Ginling College.^{[9] [10]} and at "eight or ten girls' schools" in Shanghai,^[11] working as co-teacher and translator with American missionary educators Henrietta Thomson and Abby Shaw Mayhew.^{[12] [13]} "Never have I seen such a living dynamo of energy as Miss Chun in the class-room," wrote fellow Wellesley College alumna Sophie Chantal Hart in 1919. "Her girls worked so joyously with such concentration and zest that it set your blood racing to watch them."^[14] She used dances and games to organize exercise activities, according to former students.^[15] She left teaching to marry.^[16]

While in the United States for school, Chun attended the Silver Bay conference of the YWCA. In 1915, she attended an international YWCA conference in Los Angeles.^[17] Another Wellesley alumna, Edith Stratton Platt, visited Chun and her family in 1922.^[18]

Publications

• "A Wedding in South China" (1912)^[19]

Personal life

In 1918, Chun married Dao Dan Yang Lin, a forestry professor at Nanking University. They had three children, including daughter Lin Peifen (also known as Peifen Kupferman or Peggy Lin), a choreographer and dance educator who married American composer Meyer Kupferman.^[20] Chun died in 1938, in Canton, in her late forties.

External links

• Ying Mei Chun in her academic cap and gown, in the frontispiece of the September 1915 issue of Woman's Work in the Far East, a quarterly publication of the Presbyterian Mission Press in Shanghai

Notes and References

1. Wellesley College, Legenda (1913 yearbook): 69.
2. Book: Ye, Weili . Seeking Modernity in China's Name: Chinese Students in the United States, 1900-1927 . 2002-04-01 . Stanford University Press . 978-0-8047-8041-4 . en.
3. Littell-Lamb, Elizabeth A. "Gospel of the Body, Temple of the Nation: The YWCA Movement and Women's Physical Culture in China, 1915-1925" (December 2007): 180.
4. Liu . Zhiqiang . Zhang . Xiaolin . 2023-01-02 . Journey to the West: Research on the Chinese Studying Physical Education in the United States during the Republic of China (1912–1949) . Asian Journal of Sport History & Culture . en . 2 . 1 . 86–105 . 10.1080/27690148.2023.2200754 . 259795204 . 2769-0148.
5. Book: Monthly report of the Chinese Student Christian Association in North America . October 1911 . 32, 45–46.
6. Wellesley College . 1916–1917 . Local Associations . Calendar . 190.
7. Alumnae Notes . The Wellesley Alumnae Quarterly . 1917 . 2 . 123.
8. October 24, 1919 . Why a Physical Training School in China . Blue Triangle News . 78 . 2.
9. https://divinity-adhoc.library.yale.edu/UnitedBoard/Ginling_College/Box%20127/RG011-127-2619.pdf "Minutes of the Board of Directors of Ginling College"
10. Book: Feng, Jin . The Making of a Family Saga: Ginling College . 2010-07-02 . State University of New York Press . 978-1-4384-2914-4 . 77–78, 95 . en.
11. Book: Montgomery, H. B. . The King's highway . 1915 . Рипол Классик . 978-5-87083-168-8 . 167 . en.
12. Mayhew . Abby Shaw . December 1916 . Physical Education in China . The Association Monthly . 10 . 11 . 490–492.
13. August 1916 . With Our Secretaries Abroad: From Restless China . The Association Monthly . 10 . 7.
14. Hart . Sophie C. . July 1919 . Wellesley Women in China . Wellesley Alumnae Quarterly . 3 . 4 . 293.
15. Book: Gao, Yunxiang . Sporting Gender: Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making during China?s National Crisis, 1931-45 . 2013-05-06 . UBC Press . 978-0-7748-2483-5 . 35 . en.
16. Mayhew . Abby Shaw . November 1918 . A Normal School of Physical Education and Hygiene for Chinese Women . American Physical Education Review . 23 . 8 . 498.
17. July 1914 . National Board News . Association Monthly . 8 . 6 . 224.
18. Platt . Edith Stratton . April 5, 1922 . The Gate Into the City . The Friend: A Religious and Literary Journal . 95 . 495.
19. Chun . Ying-Mei . January 1912 . A Wedding in South China . The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science . en . 39 . 1 . 71–73 . 10.1177/000271621203900108 . 144845566 . 0002-7162.
20. Web site: Lin Pei-fen (Peggy Lin) smiling happily after the dance recital she both choreographed and directed . 2023-11-10 . Yale University Library . en.