This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
904
WHO'S WHO IN CHINA

the Soochow University. After having left school, Mr. Yang taught at the Cheng-chih Middle School, Chekiang. His desire to pursue higher education abroad led him to take an official examination at Nanking in summer of 1907, which was held by then Viceroy Tuan Fang for the purpose of selecting the best educated Chinese youths to send to America to be educated. Mr. Yang passed the examination successfully and was subsequently sent to the United States as a government student. Mr. Yang arrived in America in October 1907. For two years he studied civil engineering at Cornell University. From 1909 to 1911 he attended Purdue University where he graduated with the degree of C. E. During his stay in America, Mr. Yang was once President of the Cosmopolitan Club. He was very popular with both the Chinese and the American students and was twice elected to preside over the Chinese Students' Summer Conferences. Mr. Yang returned to China in September 1911, one month before the outbreak of the Revolution at Wuchang which resulted in the establishment of the Republic. Upon this outbreak, Mr. Yang at once plunged himself into the political whirlpool. He first acted as war correspondent for the China Press and then as the field manager of the Red Cross workers in and near Wuchang. Later he was appointed by Li Yuan-hung, the Revolutionary Commander, Chief Secretary to the Foreign Office at Wuchang. At the request of Chang Chien, the greatest industrial captain in China, Mr. Yang undertook the survey of the Huai River and the Grand Canal in 1912. He spent the year 1913 as Dean of the Civil Engineering Departiment in the Hunan Institute of Technology at Changsha. At the suggestion of Minister Chang Chien of Agriculture and Commerce, the National Conservancy Bureau was founded in Peking in December 1913. The first man Mr. Chang invited to assist him in this new Bureau of which he was the First Director-General was Mr. Yang, whose ability as a river engineer had already been well known to him. Mr. Chang appointed Mr. Yang as the Technical Expert of the Bureau in charge of a Department. In that capacity, Mr. Yang rendered valuable service in connection with the organization of the various conservancy works and survey schemes in the country. He played an important part in the preliminary negotiations of the Grand Canal Project between the Chinese government and the Siems Carey Company which resulted in the signing of a loan contract in 1918. Following the great flood visiting the North China in 1917, Mr. Hsiung Hsi-ling, the Director General of the Flood Relief and Conservancy, selected Mr. Yang as his principal technical assistant. A Commission for the Improvement of the River System of Chihli was organized in March 1918. It is composed of one President and six members, three nominated by the Diplomatic Body and three by the Chinese government. Mr. Yang was representing the National Conservancy Bureau. This position he is still holding. Upon the organization of the Grand Canal Improvement Board in the spring of 1918. Mr. Yang was appointed a i member of the Engineering Department. Mr. Yang is one of the founders of the Association of Chinese and American Engineers which was formally organized in Peking in November 1919. He was its Second Vice-President from November 1919 to April 1922 and its First Vice-President from April 1922 to October 1923. In 1921 Mr. Yang was a Director of Chinese In-