Since three brave young pioneers ventured 12,000 miles from home to enroll at Monson (Mass.) Academy in 1847, some 10,000 Chinese students have journeyed eastward to acquire a U.S. education. The pilgrimage has been interrupted by war, but 1,700 war-stranded students remain in the U.S. Primarily as a meeting place for them, their postwar successors, and their U.S. friends present & to come, a four-story, red brick mansion on Manhattan's East 65th Street was dedicated last week as China House. Gift of the Henry Luce Foundation to the China Institute of America, it is a memorial to the late Dr. Henry Winters Luce, longtime missionary and educator in China, father of TIME'S Editor Henry Robinson Luce.
Equipped with library, game room, study rooms and cinema, China House is designed to give Chinese students a touch of home, U.S. visitors a taste of China. It will house a display of Chinese art, have a Chinese garden in the rear.
Two uniquely distinguished representatives of China's culture, both U.S.-edu-cated, were present at the dedication. Ex-officio director of China House, as director of the China Institute, is Dr. Meng Chih, 44, onetime student at North Carolina's Davidson College and a Columbia A.M. An astute and affable patriot and educator, Dr. Meng is a descendant of China's great philosopher of democracy. Mencius (372-289 [?] B.C.). As honorary president of China Institute, the speech of acceptance at the dedication was made by famed Dr. H. H. Kung (A.B. Oberlin; A.M. Yale), Vice Premier and Finance Minister of China, 75th lineal descendant of Confucius (from K'ung Futse meaning "Master Kung").
From Chungking for the occasion came a scroll which, inscribed in President Chiang Kai-shek's own hand, bore a happy token for the future of China House and U.S.-Chinese friendship. Wrote the Generalissimo: "The way is one and the winds blow together."