Tuesday, 15, July, 2014

Before the 9:30 class in the morning, I went to Sterling Memorial Library. We pass it every day on the way to our classroom in Williams & Harkness Hall, but until today I walked inside. The following is the information I got from the net about the library.

Sterling Memorial Library is one of Yale's most prominent buildings, as well as being the largest of all the Yale libraries. Completed in 1930, it was designed by architect James Gamble Rogers (Yale Class of 1889) and later named for its benefactor, John William Sterling (Yale Class of 1864).It currently houses approximately 4 million volumes on 16 floors of book stacks. It was built in the Collegiate Gothic style, resembling a European Gothic cathedral, with its 60-foot ceiling, cloisters, clerestory windows, side chapels, and a circulation desk altar. The stained glass windows throughout the building, 3,300 in all, were designed by artist G. Owen Bonawit. SML houses the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, added in 1998, as well as numerous reading rooms and departments.  From early June 2013 until the fall of 2014, the nave area of SML will be undergoing a major renovation. 

The architecture is amazing, with every detail so delicate. And I found some Chinese elements, those screens and wood carving are so familiar to me. Soon I got a clue on the cloister to the international room , where a statue of a Chinese man is standing.

It turned out that he was Rong Wing(容闳) , the first Chinese ever to have graduated from an American university. In 1847, sponsored by some Americans and Englishmen then living in Hong Kong, he went to the United States and entered Monson Academy in Massachusetts. After he graduated from Monson, he took the entrance examinations and enrolled in the famous Yale University where he worked very hard, overcoming difficulties in mathematics and shortage of funds and, finally, he got his bachelor degree with honors. Later he went back and contributed so much to China.

Oh, I’ve heard and read a lot about him before, and now I am standing before and showing my respect to the pioneer.

History remembers people who have devoted to the improvement and change of the world no matter which nations they were from.