The attached graphs show the distribution of Chinese Rotarians' year of birth and examine at what age they joined the two clubs (the original Rotary Club of Shanghai estbalished in 1919 and the Chinese-speaking Rotary Club of shanghai West established in 1948). To compute their age, we simply compared their year of birth with the year they joined the club.

Membership data (year of joining) comes from rosters available in the Archives of Rotary International, Evanston, Ill. Birth data comes from the series of Who's Who available through the Integrated Information System on Modern and Contemporary Characters (IISMCC) hosted by the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History. The tables used for building the graphs are available in the "Tables" Section. 

The graphs reveal that the majority of Chinese Rotarians in Shanghai was born between 1880 and 1896 (31, 53%), with two peaks in 1884 and 1896 (5 members each year) (cf. table/graph). Seven Rotarians were born before 1880 (12%) and the seventeen remaining between 1897 and 1912. To sum up, the majority was born before the Revolution and the establishment of the Republic (1911-2). They grew up in the late 1890s-early 1900s and were in their twenties or thirties when Rotary was introduced in China. The oldest member was fifty-nine and the youngest was barely seven years-old when the first club was established in Shanghai in 1919. The distribution of birth dates further suggests that most of them received their education after the imperial examination system was abolished in 1905, which means that they were likely to attend Western-style universities in China or abroad in order to earn their academic credentials, as we will elaborate later.

The age distribution graph confirms that most new members were in their thirties or forties when they joined the club (43 members, 78%). Four members joined in their twenties, twenty-one in their thirties (35%) and twenty-two in their forties (37%). Only seven members were over fifty, among whom three were older than sixty. In other words, Chinese Rotarians in Shanghai formed a young, active population made up of mature men at the height of their professional life. 

Although the Rotary Club of Shanghai West was established some thirty-one years later than the pioneering one, its members were not much younger than their predecessors. In fact, they belonged to the same generation. Among the eight members we identified, three were born in the 1890s, two in 1902, one in 1904 and one in 1906 (cf. table/graph). Overall, they joined the club a slightly later age than their counterparts of the foreign-speaking club. All members were over 40 when they joined, three being over 50 (but no one over 60).