陈兰彬作为中国首任留学生监督和第一任驻美国公使,属清政府少数较早走向世界的官员之一。其出国感受和受美国社会文化浸染后的思想文化观念变化,在晚清出洋官员中具有典型性。陈兰彬到美国后,一方面为美国发达的经济、现代化的建筑和优美的环境赞叹,精彩之情深藏于日记和其他书信、报告之中;一方面又不适应美国的生活,甚觉无聊,尤其是面对自由、民主、发达的美国比专制、独裁、落后的清廷优越的客观现实,又不敢直抒己见,只能无可奈何地去维护清廷的封建主义。加之,陈兰彬生性谨慎、胆小,惧怕出事丢官,出洋的数年中始终在精彩与无奈的两难中煎熬。这看似个人的悲剧,其实是近代中国畸形社会变迁过程中两难选择的一种反映。 Chen Lanbin, as the first Chinese student oversight and the first U.S. ambassador to the United States, is one of the few officials of the Qing government who went to the world earlier. His overseas experience and changes in his ideology and culture after being infiltrated by American society and culture have their typical features in the late Qing Dynasty. After Chen Lanbin came to the United States, he admired the developed economy, modern architecture and beautiful environment of the United States. His passion was hidden in diaries and other correspondences and reports. On the one hand, he did not feel comfortable adapting to the American life, In the face of the superior objective reality of autocracy, dictatorship and backward Qing, especially in the face of the objective reality of freedom, democracy and developedness, the United States can not directly express its own opinions and can only help the Qing feudalism without any alternative. In addition, Chen Lan-bin cautious, timid, afraid of losing an officer, leaving the country for several years has always been in the wonderful and helpless dilemma in the torment. This seemingly personal tragedy is actually a reflection of the dilemma of the vicissitudes of social changes in modern China.