Lou Tseng Tsiang

Lou TsengTsiang was a Chinese diplomat and a Roman Catholic monk. He was twice Premier of the Republic of China and led his countrys delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He sometimes used the French name Ren Lou in earlier life, and his monastic name was PierreClestin, O.S.B..

Lou was born onJune 1871 in Zhejiang Province, and was raised a Protestant in religion and a Confucianist in philosophy. His father, Lou Yong Fong, was lay catechist for a Protestant mission in Shanghai. He studied at home until the age of thirteen, when he entered the School of Foreign Language in Shanghai, specializing in French. He continued his education at the school for interpreters attached to the Foreign Ministry, and in 1893 he was posted to St Petersburg as interpreter to the Chinese embassy. At that time the diplomatic international language was French, but Lou also gained fluency in Russian. The ambassador, the reformminded Xu Jingcheng, took an interest in his career. Lou married a Belgian citizen, Berthe Bovy, in St Petersburg onFebruary 1899, and eventually converted to Roman Catholicism. The couple had no children.

Source: Wikipedia