Powerful original gelatin silver print unmounted 8" X 10 12", depicting the graduating class of Peking Union Medical College, Peking (Beijing), China, dated June 1, 1921. This striking group portrait captures a large assembly of Chinese women graduates in academic regalia, holding diplomas and posed in formal rows alongside foreign faculty in full academic dress. The students, likely among the earliest Chinese women trained in Western medicine, stand proudly in front of a stately brick building with arched entryway and architectural ornamentation.

Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), founded in 1906 by American missionaries and later reorganized under the direction of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1917, became the leading institution for modern medical education in China. It was especially significant for pioneering women’s medical education during a time when female physicians were exceedingly rare in both China and the West.

Photographs of early PUMC graduating classes—particularly showing such a strong presence of Chinese women—are historically important and rarely seen in this level of clarity and composition. A vital record of early 20th-century cross-cultural education, women's advancement in science, and one of China's most elite medical institutions at a transformative moment in its history.