BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

third wife and came from a rich family. Her elder brother was a teacher, the second oldest a
farmer, and the third oldest a surgeon. In her memoirs, Yang recounts disliking visits to her
mother’s family when she was young because of all the “cumbersome formalities.” She much
preferred the poor family of her second eldest brother’s wife, where she felt much more freedom.
In the “foggy recollections” of her youth, she felt the dissonance between rich and poor early
on. 310
Yang’s educational opportunities were remarkable because of her intelligence and her
family background. When Yang was four or five years old, she started learning Chinese
characters at home with the use of flash cards and books. After an interlude at a local primary
school beginning at age seven, Yang entered grade school in Beijing at age 13 and then went on
to high school there. She graduated from Women’s Union Medical College (a precursor to
PUMC) in 1917 and went to Shandong province and to Tianjin to work as a general practitioner.
She returned to PUMC in 1920 with the intention of taking one year each of surgery, OB/GYN,
and ophthalmology, but after only six months of research in OB/GYN, PUMC offered her the
opportunity to specialize in this field. As part of her training, she worked in a small urban clinic
where she gave prenatal care to pregnant factory workers and introduced them to a hospital
where they could give birth. She then helped to establish a small prenatal clinic at
Qihuamenwai, Yang’s first seed of community maternal and child health work.
By that time, PUMC’s public health program had just started (in 1921) and was in its
infancy. Yang lamented that no one at that time had a clear idea of how to go about improving
maternal and child health, but a few experiences solidified her commitment to community
maternal and child health work. The first incident occurred when a pregnant woman came to her
310 Yang, “Wo de Zizhuan,” 143.
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