A web page on Sa JunLu and the Overseas Chinese Association in Beijing.
Yeo Cheow Kaw's message on the magazine of the Overseas Chinese Association in Beijing on its inauguration.
A page from an address book of Yeo Kheamp Joo, son of Yeo Cheow Kaw.
Bin Xin and her mother, a sister-in-law of Sa JunLu.
Sa JunLu
Sa Junlu (1878-1955)，from Fuzhou of Fujian province, was a prominent intellectual figure in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China. He devoted himself to education and overseas Chinese affairs for a long time. In 1911, he investigated the education of Chinese in Myanmar, strived for scholarships from the Qing government, and stimulated the enthusiasm of overseas Chinese to run schools.
Back home, he founded the “Fujian Overseas Chinese School” in Fuzhou, to cultivate overseas Chinese students. In 1919, he took the lead in establishing the Overseas Chinese Association in Beijing to help overseas Chinese education and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.
Encounter with Yeo Cheow Kaw
It was our Grandfather Yeo Cheow Kaw who received him when he visited Rangoon in 1911. That started a lasting friendship between them. Grandfather sent a congratulatory message to the establishment of Overseas Chinese Association in Beijing in 1919. The message was published in the August issue, in the same year, of the Overseas Chinese Studies Magazine.
A page from the addressbook of Yeo Kheamp Joo
A page of our father Yeo Kheamp Joo’s Address Book shows an entry of a Beijing address of Mdm Sa Benxiang. Sa Benxiang was the eldest daughter of Sa Junlu. She was then living with her youngest son Yang Fusheng (1926-2016) in Tsinghua University. Yang Fusheng was highly renowned in the field of biomedical engineering in China. His brother Yang Nansheng (1921-2013) was the first generation of rocket experts in China. Their father, i.e the husband of Sa Benxiang, was a descendant of Xiayang Yeo, named Yeo Oon Siew.
Yang Nansheng was born in Rangoon.
A precious link
A well-known Chinese female author from the last century, Bing Xin, was a niece of Sa Junlu, her mother and Sa Junlu’s wife being sisters from a Fuzhou Yang family. One of her proses on Mother Love was on our Secondary One Chinese textbook. The open passage reads,
“Once, when I was a little child, I suddenly walked up to my mother and asked her with upturned face, “Mom, why do you love me?” My mother put down her needlework, pressed her cheek against my forehead, and said gently and without hesitation, “For no particular reason—just because you are my daughter!”