I met Jinbao in 1993 when I was a sophomore of Nanjing Univeristy in China. All I wanted to do in college was to prepare for graduate studies in the U.S. In the summer of 1993, I enrolled a training course for GRE test (similar to the Kaplan program), and Jinbao was my instructor. For about a year after that, we had frequently bumped into each other at the English corner near GuLou, Nanjing. It was a trendy place back then for the oversea-bound young and aspiring gathering once a week to practice English conversation.

Jinbao was seven years my senior and was truly like a big brother. He was applying to U.S. graduate schools that year and we talked a lot about his progress and setbacks. I shared his excitement, anxiety, and depression. Despite many years’ efforts and failure to secure a scholarship, he was always cheerful and hopeful. In 1994, I knew he was destined to succeed, and he did. Both Duke and Harvard, indisputably the very top league of his interest of study, offered him scholarships. Jinbao had a very humble upbringing, even by Chinese standard. He grew up as a village boy in poor rural Jiangsu Province, went to small college in Suzhou, and held a mundane job as a staff at a historical archive largely forgotten by the modern society. However, a guy like him harbored a grand dream — obtaining a Ph.D. in history from a leading U.S. university and becoming a epoch defining historian.

Upon his departure for Harvard, I visited him in his tiny dorm in a colorless building. As far as I can remember, it was a mess with books and clothing scattering around the floor. I was about to enter my senior year, and he wished me good luck for my application to US graduate schools in the following year. Then he gave me the personal statement and essays that he used in his application. Language barriers were a big problem for most Chinese students when preparing application package, despite all the impressive standard test scores. Jinbao’s application materials were so full of passion and well crafted that I later modeled almost everything after him. They were then being circulated among my friends, and then friends’ friends. When I told him about it later on, he just laughed.

I came to the U.S. on August 15, 1995, exactly this day, 10 years ago. At the age of 21, I was tireless, fearless, and aimless. Jinbao called me a month later, again like a big brother, advising with his own experiences. We kept contact for a number of years. Regretfully, we never met again, despite that I later moved to nearby New Haven to attend Yale, and had been to Boston many times. We talked about getting together, but always star crossed. Last time I heard from him, he was preparing a field study to Asia to investigate the life of Wang Jingwei (汪精卫), one of the most controversial figures in modern Chinese history. Being a history fan myself, I was very interested in his studies and looked forward to reading his work.

Although we had not contacted each other for a long time, I always took the comfort that he was just around the corner, and we shall meet again sooner or later. But it was just too late. I searched for him out of curiosity recently, and was taken completely by sadness upon reading the internet sites remembering him. He passed us at a tragic young age, full of hope and as passion. I always regard historians as the conscience of our age, telling us where we come from, and where we are heading. In my home country, China, historians have taken a much further backseat in an era marked almost solely by economic prosperity and materialistic abundance. One would be hard pressed to find many people who would commit ten years of youth to complete a Ph.D. in history with a financially unrewarding career. Jinbao was very unique and had a mission that was beyond our times. Tragically, it was a mission incomplete, and a true loss to our age. In Chinese, his name can be literally translated as Money (Qian 钱) – Gold (Jin金) – Bao (Security保). I joked that he would be very well-off with this name. He said, to the contrary, he would have to live a very simple life as a humble historian.

Jinbao will always be in my fond memory, as a big brother, a good friend, a kind teacher, and as part of my conscience.

lingfeng.li@aya.yale.edu