Mei Yi-pao (5 November 1900-1997), philosopher and educational administrator who was associated with Yenching University for many years. After 1949 he taught in the United States, becoming chairman of the Chinese and Oriental studies program at the State University of Iowa in 1955.

The fifth son and the second-youngest child in a family of ten children, Mei Yi-pao was born in Tientsin. His father, a sheng-yuan and a minor official in the Tientsin salt administration, was determined, despite limited means, to provide his children with fine educational opportunities. The young Mei received a primary education in the Chinese classics, and a fine secondary education at the Nankai Middle School (see Chang Po-ling). In his early teens, he was converted to Christianity. Upon completion of his studies at the Nankai Middle School, he went to Peking, where he enrolled at Tsinghua University.

After graduation in 1922, he spent a year as a traveling secretary for the national committee of the YMCA in China. He then went to the United States, where he received a B.A. degree from Oberlin College in 1924 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1927. In the course of his doctoral studies he worked under such noted philosophers as John Dewey at Columbia and Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard. He spent 1927-29 in Cologne, Germany, where he was the only Chinese student at the University of Cologne. His advanced studies, which focused on the ancient philosopher Mo Tzu, culminated in the publication of The Ethical and Political Philosophy of Motse (London, 1929) and Motse, the Neglected Rival of Confucius (London, 1934).

On returning to China in 1928 Mei Yi-pao joined the faculty of Yenching University, a Christian institution in Peking. For eight of the next ten years he taught philosophy at Yenching while successively serving as registrar, director of admissions, dean of studies, and dean of the college of arts and letters. In 1934-36 he was acting president of the Ming-hsien School (Oberlin-Shansi Memorial School) at T'aiku, Shansi, a post which he accepted at the behest of H. H. K'ung (q.v.), who was a prominent member of the controlling boards of both the school and the university.

Following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in July 1937, Mei Yi-pao was drawn into the administration of several enterprises which reflected the broadening interests of the National Government and the increasing pressures of the national defense effort. As director of the newly created Kansu Science Education Institute at Lanchow in 1938-39, he administered extensive research and survey operations throughout northwest China as well as the local educational programs.

From 1940 to 1942 he served as secretary general of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, supervising the work of three regional headquarters which, in turn, governed the activities of more than fifteen hundred cooperative societies in eighteen unoccupied provinces. On 8 February 1942, Yenching University having been closed by the Japanese, H. H. K'ung called a meeting of members and former members of the Yenching board of managers at Chungking. In response to the expressed desires of many alumni, this body voted to reopen Yenching University in Free China. Mei Yi-pao was appointed director of the office on preparations for reopening the university. With the assistance of H. H. K'ung and such other important officials as Chang Ch'un (q.v.), the governor of Szechwan, and with the aid of government and relief funds, Mei established cooperative relations with West China Union University at Chengtu, which already was playing host to three other Christian institutions. Yenching was permitted to rent buildings belonging to the Hua Mei Girls School and the Chi Hua Primary School and was given the use of the Confucian Temple of Chengtu. A faculty was assembled, and the refugee university opened its doors in the autumn of 1942.

From 1942 to 1946 Mei Yi-pao served as acting president and acting chancellor of Yenching University in Chengtu. At war's end Mei Yi-pao returned to the Peiping campus of Yenching University to resume teaching and research as a professor of philosophy. In mid-December 1948, as Communist forces reached the outskirts of Peiping, he fled by plane with his family to Shanghai, where he taught for a term at St. John's University. He then accepted an invitation to teach for a year at the University of Chicago. In the United States he also served as a visiting professor at such institutions as Indiana University, Oberlin College, Princeton University, the University of Cincinnati, Wabash College, Bowdoin College, and Purdue University. In 1955 he became professor and chairman of the Chinese and Oriental studies program at the State University of Iowa.

Mei Yi-pao received an honorary LL.D. degree from Oberlin College in 1945 and an L.H.D. from Wabash College in 1951. In addition to his two works on Mo Tzu, he wrote and published more than twenty philosophical papers and made substantial contributions to six chapters in Sources of Chinese Tradition, which was published in 1960 by the Columbia University Press.

Mei married Nyi Yong-kyih in 1929. The daughter of a Hangchow pastor, she was a 1924 graduate of Smith College and a librarian. A son, Tsu-lin, born to them in 1933, studied at Yale University and later taught modern Chinese at Harvard. Mei Yi-pao's elder brother Mei Yi-ch'i (q.v.) for many years was the president of Tsinghua University.