Tianjin Nankai High School

Tianjin Nankai High School is a college-preparatory high school in Tianjin, China. This is the original Nankai High School, and it is often referred to as Nankai High School in Tianjin to differentiate it from Chongqing Nankai Middle School, its sister school in Chongqing. Nankai is notable as one of the first modern secondary schools in China, and boasts several of the most notable men in modern Chinese history as its alumni. The main campus is located at 22 Nankai 4th Rd in Nankai District. The other two campuses are in Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city and Haihe Jiaoyu Yuanqu, Tianjin. History Nankai High School was founded in 1904 by Yan Xiu (also known as Yan Fansun). Nankai was originally a private school, featuring a western-style college-preparatory curricula instead of a traditional Confucian curriculum. It was the first school in the Nankai Family of Schools. This system would latter be expanded to include Nankai University in 1919. Nankai University would become one of China's most prestigious universities. Establishment Before his work at Nankai, Yan Xiu was an intellectual with a strong understanding of traditional Chinese culture who had held positions at the prestigious Hanlin Academy earlier in his career, and in both China's provincial and central governments. The difficulties that confronted China in the late nineteenth century led Yan to become interested in Western and Japanese models of education, to which he attributed the contemporary strength of the West and Japan. Yan's experiences working within the Chinese bureaucracy led him to believe that only the most progressive reforms could save China from further decline.