Saturday 23 April 2016

Chinese Victorians - Dr Wong Fun

Wong Fun (also called Huang Kuan) was the first Chinese student to graduate from Edinburgh University. He may have been the first Chinese student to graduate from any European University. He graduated as an MD in 1855. A plaque commemorates him in Buccleuch Place in Edinburgh.
Most Chinese coming to Britain in the nineteenth century came as seamen. Some of them stayed, mostly in port cities like London and Liverpool, opening restaurants and laundries (and that one opium den in Limehouse that all the newspaper reporters in search of a sensational story went to!).

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