This series of 11 datasets is drawn from Rhoads, Edward J. M. Stepping Forth into the World: The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States, 1872-81. Hong Kong University Press, 2011. They document the 120 young Chinese who participated in the pioneering Chinese Educational Mission (CEM) in the United States (1872-1881). The first 8 files are drawn directly from the tables in Rhoads: Table 2.1 CEM students, by detachment (p.14-17) Table 5.1. Initial host family assignments (p.51-54) Table 7.1. CEM students in middle schools (by state and locality) (p. 90-94) Table 7.2 CEM students in public high schools (by state and locality) (p.96-99) Table 7.3 CEM students in private academies (by state and locality) (p.99-100) Table 8.1 CEM students in colleges (by academic year of enrollment) (p.116-118) Table 9.1 Deaths, dismissals, and withdrawals from the CEM (by date) (p.136) Table 9.2 CEM students in the June 1880 census (p.138-142) Based on these tables, I created three synthetic datasets which can be used for statistical and network analyses: cem_attributes: students' vital attributes, including their multiple names and transliteration, date and place of birth, and other attribute data (one row for each individual). cem_host: students' host families in the United States cem_education: students' educational curricula Each file contains two tabs, one for the data (data), one for the description of variables (key). Grey columns refer to the unstructured information given in the original source.

This research has been funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (Project n° RG004-U-21).