Peking, Pechili province, China: a mission school. Photograph by John Thomson, 1869.

A large group of poorly-dressed children and adults sitting eating in the sunny courtyard of a mission school. Modern education did not begin in China until 1905. Although in Beijing, as well as in some coastal areas, there were already a number of privately run missionary schools, with a few exceptions (for instance, those run by Jesuits), the majority of these were at elementary level and devoted entirely to instruction in religion and the Chinese classics. This situation only began to change after 1877. During the Protestant general conference that year, it was agreed that China s mission schools were to provide a secular education, although text-books with secular contents did not appear until as late as 1890. This change made it possible for a number of ordinary Chinese to receive a Western secular education