Feng Tsai was born into a prestigious official family in China in 1896. His father, Cai Rukai 蔡儒楷 (1869-1923), served as Minister of Education and Governor of Shandong province in the Republic of China. Feng Tsai graduated from Nankai School, where he was once a roommate of Zhou Enlai, who later became the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China. In September 1917 Tsai came to Grinnell together with Nankai President Zhang Boling and fellow Nankai alumni Kuang Chao Lee, Fan Yi Kung, Wen Chien Feng, and Ngai Chen Shih, the first female Chinese student at Grinnell. While on campus he was known for his prowess in tennis as well as for his public speaking and academic performance. 

Barely one month after his arrival did Tsai compete in the annual men’s collegiate tennis tournament, winning two rounds before being shut out of the semi-final (SB 10/13/1917, SB 11/07/1917). He gave a speech at a YMCA meeting alongside Lee, while another Nankai alum, Chuang Liu, presided. Tsai spoke on “The Chinese Peasant,” to whom he attributed the “particular virtue of […] respect of their parents” (GR 11/29/1917). In June 1918 he also joined a cohort of Grinnell students to attend the YMCA conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (SB 09/28/1918), apparently right before he transferred to study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for Fall 1918. However, even after Tsai left Grinnell, his Grinnell Professor in Chemistry, Dr. W. S. Hendrixson, sang high praises of Tsai’s academic performance to the visiting Chinese educators, including Zhang Boling (Chen and Gao 18). 

Tsai earned a B.A. in geology from Wisconsin in 1921 and was admitted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society the same year. He married a wealthy silk businessman’s daughter in 1924; their lavish wedding was covered by a Chinese newspaper. In 1924-1925 he worked as a professor of philosophy at Southeast University in Nanjing and participated in the faculty’s agitation to oust the university president. Tsai was named a defendant in a dispute brought by his father’s concubine over his late father’s estate in 1925. Around the same time Tsai apparently went abroad and lost all contact with family and friends in China, an ominous sign according to a 1927 letter by Zhang Boling.