These days, if you offered any student a stint at the prestigious Yale University, they'd be on the Airport Express before you had time to turn your head. But during the Qing dynasty, things were very different. International travel was a frightening prospect.
So it was to some surprise that, in 1843, a visiting American missionary threw out that invitation to one young Chinese man.
Yung Wing would go on to become the first Chinese to gain a Bachelor of Arts in America. And when he later became a senior Qing official, Yung encouraged a shift towards foreign education. His story - and those of other famous individuals who studied abroad - are featured in a new exhibition, Boundless Learning: Foreign-Educated Students of Modern China, being held at the Hong Kong Museum of History until February 9.
Yung blazed a trail for other students. From 1872, he helped start a programme that sent about 120 students to the US in batches of 30.
Osmond Chan, organiser of the exhibition, says: 'When Yung Wing recruited 120 students to go abroad, many of them came from Hong Kong because families here were more open-minded.'
The 'before' photos shown in the exhibition portray young men with traditional queues, long robes and serious expressions. But once in America, some of them became dashing young men in suits, bowler hats and short hair. Not only were they taking new knowledge on board in the academic sense, they were also adopting new cultural and religious ideas.
'Inside the Chinese government there were a lot of conservative officials,' says Mr Chan. 'When they saw that the students had cut their queues, were dressing in the western style and found faith in Christianity, then the Qing government began to recall the students back to China [in 1881].' Only two of the original 120 came home with degrees. One was engineer Jeme Tien Yow, who became known as the father of China's railways. Shouson Chow was one who returned without a degree, but went on to become Hong Kong's first Chinese executive councillor.
