Ming-Wei Wen, born in Canton, China  in 1893, graduated high school from the Tientsin Anglo-Chinese College 天津新書學院 in 1911 and in 1918 earned a B.A. degree from the same institution according to Who’s Who of Chinese Students in America (1921).

He arrived in the U.S. in January 1919 and, alongside fellow Chinese students Ko Nien Yang, Liang Chao Cha, Pao Shou Kao, Yu Pin Kuo, Kuo Neng Lei, and Wen Chien Feng, that June joined a group of Grinnell students to attend the ten-day YMCA conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Wen attended summer school at the University of Illinois before arriving in Grinnell in late summer 1919.  

But even before the Fall semester started, in August 1919 Wen took a leave from Grinnell to attend to YMCA work in France (GH 08/19/1919). Like many other Christian Chinese students studying in U.S. institutions at the time, Wen was sent as YMCA secretary to help educate Chinese laborers who had provided valuable labor and logistical support in Europe during World War I and were stationed in battalions in Paris at the time. Wen returned to Grinnell in 1920 to complete his coursework and graduated with a B.A. in economics and political science from Grinnell in 1921.  

We do not know much about what Wen did after Grinnell. In 1925-1926 he was seen helping Li Zhaohe 李照鶴, a Stanford-educated Chinese educator, to raise funds in Chicago’s Chinatown for establishing a school in Heshan, Guangdong province. Wen apparently applied for Social Security benefits in 1959 but passed away in Philadelphia on April 21, 1959.