Esperanto in China

If you have only just begun to take an interest in Esperanto and wish to know some basic information about this fascinating subject, please start your reading at the first article of this series. Having already completed 68 articles, I am now at the stage of writing articles for those readers who have learned quite a lot about the Esperanto language and movement already, and who are now wanting to find out more than just the basic introductory information. To get to the beginning of this series, please just click here:

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/espe...

After you have read the first article, click on the link at the top of the page which says "Articles" to find the rest of the series, which is listed in reverse chronological order. ________________________________________________________

For convenience, I am going to divide the history of the Esperanto movement in China into four separate periods, the first taking place between 1900 and 1931.

It is believed that Russian merchants from Vladivostock, trading with Chinese traders in Harbin, first introduced Esperanto to China. Just over 100 years ago, Harbin was a small fishing town but during the late 19th and early 20th century, China, Japan and Russia all struggled for control over Manchuria and when in the 1900s, Russia was permitted to build a railway track connecting Manchuria with Vladivostock, Harbin became an important railway town.

Today Harbin has a population of 4 million and is the capital city of the province of Heilongjiang.

The most famous trading city in modern Chinese history is, of course, Shanghai http://www.shanghai.gov.cn/english/index... and it is there that Lu Shiqing and others learned Esperanto, also from a Russian trader. Lu Shiqing learned it well enough to begin teaching it himself and Shanghai has, I think, had an Esperanto presence since the very early days of the 20th century.

Esperanto was also brought back to China by some students who had learned it while studying in Japan. Their teacher was Oosugi Sakae, a Japanese anarchist, and so it is not surprising that the title of the journals which they produced were Egaleco and Justeco. In 1908, some of these students (among them Liu Shipei) returned to China and they also began to teach Esperanto in Shanghai.

Young Chinese studied in other countries than Japan,of course, and several learned Esperanto in France, one of them returned to Canton and began to teach Esperanto there, while another learned Esperanto in England and sent textbooks back to China from that country.

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