Dr. Hü King Eng
I Childhood in a Christian Home
Among the earliest converts to Christianity in South China was Hü Yong Mi, the son of a military mandarin of Foochow. He had been a very devout Buddhist, whose struggles after spiritual peace, and whose efforts to obtain it through fasting, sacrifice, earnest study, and the most scrupulous obedience to all the forms of Buddhist worship, remind one strongly of the experiences of Saul of Tarsus. Like Saul too, Hü Yong Mi was, before his conversion, a vigorous and sincere opponent of Christianity. When his older brother became a Christian, Hü Yong Mi felt that his casting away of idols and abolishing of ancestral worship were crimes of such magnitude that the entire family “ought all with one heart to beat the drum and drive him from the house.” He tells of finding a copy of the Bible in his father’s bookcase one day, and how, in sudden rage, he tore it to pieces and threw the fragments on the floor, and then, not satisfied with destroying the book, wished that he had some sharp implement with which to cut out “the hated name Ya-su, which stared from the mutilated pages.”
But when, through the efforts of the very brother whom he had persecuted, he too came to recognize the truth of Christianity, he became as devoted and tireless a worker for his Lord as was Paul the apostle, preaching in season and out of season, first as a layman, afterwards as an ordained minister of the Methodist Church. His work often led him to isolated and difficult fields; he was “in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from his countrymen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness.” But, alike in toil and persecution, he remained steadfast.
He was made a presiding elder at the time of the organization of the Foochow Conference in 1877, and from that time until his death, in 1893, he was, in the words of one of the missionaries of that district, “a pillar of strength in the church in China, because of his piety and wisdom and his literary ability, having, withal, an eloquent tongue which in the ardour of pulpit oratory gave to his fine six-foot physique a princely bearing.”
A striking testimony to the power and beauty of this Christian man’s character is a picture, painted by a Chinese artist, an old man over eighty years of age. This man was not a Christian, but after hearing Mr. Hü’s preaching, and watching his consecrated life, he embodied in a painting his conception of the power of the “Cross Doctrine” as he knew it through Hü Yong Mi. The picture, which is five feet long and nearly three wide, and is finely executed in water colours, was presented to Mr. Hü by the artist. At first glance its central figure seems to be a tree, under which is a man reading from a book. Lower down are some rocks. But looking again one sees that the tree is a cross, and that in the rocks are plain semblances of human faces, more or less perfect, all turned toward the cross. The thought which the artist wished to express was that the “Cross Doctrine,” as preached and lived by such as Hü Yong Mi, would turn even rocks into human beings.
The wife of Hü Yong Mi was brought up in a home of wealth and rank in Foochow. Her aristocratic birth was manifested by the size of her tiny embroidered shoe, which measured exactly three inches. When Hü Yong Mi was asked by the missionaries to become a minister, he was somewhat dismayed to learn that in the Methodist Church the minister’s family must frequently move from place to place. In his own words, “The Chinese greatly esteem the place of their birth; if a man goes abroad it is considered a matter of affliction; for a family to move is an almost unheard of calamity.” He replied, however, that although he had not known of the existence of the custom, he was entirely willing, for Christ’s sake, to undertake the work of a minister in spite of it. The missionaries then asked if his wife would be willing to go with him. He answered that he could not tell until he went home and asked her. But when he had talked the matter over with her, this dainty, high-class lady replied, “It matters not to what place; if you are willing to go, I will go with you.”
Within a few weeks they left Foochow to work among their first parishioners, a people who might well have caused the hearts of the young pastor and his wife to fail, for Hü Yong Mi says of them: “In front of their houses I saw piles of refuse, and filthy ditches. Within, all was very dirty—pigs, cattle, fowls, sheep, all together in the one house. Not a chair was there to sit on. All went out to work in the fields. They had no leisure to comb hair or wash faces.... None knew how to read the Chinese characters. Some held their books upside down; some mistook a whole column for one character.” Mrs. Hü and the children were very ill with malarial fever while in this place, but in spite of all their hardships, a good work was done.
Mrs. Hü was as earnest a worker among the women as was her husband among the men, telling the good news to those who had never heard it, and strengthening her fellow-Christians. Many a programme of the Foochow Women’s Conference bears the name of Mrs. Hü Yong Mi, for she could give addresses and read papers which were an inspiration to missionaries and Chinese alike. Her friend, Mrs. Sites, has written especially of her influence on the women whose lives she touched: “In the stations where the Methodist itinerancy sent Rev. Hü Yong Mi, this Christian household was something of a curiosity. The neighbouring women often called ‘to see’ in companies of three to twenty or more, and Mr. Hü expected his wife and children to preach the gospel to them just as faithfully as he did from the pulpit. There are many hundreds of Chinese women to whom this lovely Christian mother and little daughters gave the first knowledge of Christ and heaven.” The same friend says of this wife and mother, “In privations oft, and in persecutions beyond the power of pen to narrate, she has become a model woman among her people.”
In 1865, not long after a period of severe persecution, and while their hearts were saddened by the recent death of their little daughter, Hiong Kwang, another baby girl was born to Mr. and Mrs. Hü, and named Precious Peace, the Chinese for which is King Eng. Born of such parents, and growing up in such an environment, it is perhaps not surprising that unselfishness, steadfastness of purpose, and courage, both physical and moral, should be among the most prominent characteristics of Hü King Eng. One of the clearest memories of her childhood is of lying in bed night after night, listening to the murmur of her father’s voice as he talked to someone who was interested in learning of the “Jesus way,” and hearing the crash of stones and brickbats, the hurling of which through the doors and windows was too frequent an occurrence to interrupt these quiet talks.
Of course little King Eng’s feet were bound, as were the feet of every other little girl of good family. But the binding process had scarcely begun when her father became convinced that this universal and ancient custom was a wrong one. He accordingly made the brave decision, unprecedented in that section of the country, that his daughters should have natural feet, and the bandages were taken off. This proceeding was viewed with great disapproval by his small daughter, for while it freed her from physical pain, her unbound feet were the source of constant comment and ridicule, far more galling to the sensitive child than the tight bandages had been. Now, an ardent advocate of natural feet, she often tells of her trials as a pioneer of the movement in Fuhkien province. “That I have the distinction of being the first girl who did not have her feet bound, is due to no effort of mine,” she says, “for the neighbour women used to say, ‘Rather a nice girl, but those feet!’ ‘Rather a bright girl, but those feet,’ and ‘Those feet,’ ‘Those feet’ was all I heard, until I was ashamed to be seen.”
Finally her mother, who did not wholly share her husband’s view of the matter, took advantage of his absence from home, and replaced the bandages. When she would ask, “Can you stand them a little tighter?” the little devotee to the stern mandates of fashion and custom invariably replied, “Yes, mother, a little tighter”; for was she not going to be a lady and not hear “those feet,” “those feet” any more! But when her father came home he had a long and serious talk with his wife about foot-binding, and off came the bandages again. Later the little girl went on a visit to a relative, who was greatly horrified at her large feet, and took it upon herself to bind them again, to the child’s great delight. It was with an immense sense of her importance that she came hobbling home, supported on each side. Her mother was ill in bed at the time, but greatly to King Eng’s disappointment, instead of being pleased, she bade her take the bandages off and burn them, and never replace them. To the child’s plea that people were all saying “those feet,” “those feet,” until she was ashamed to meet any one, Mrs. Hü replied, “Tell them bound-footed girls never enter the emperor’s palace.” “And that,” says Dr. Hü, “put a quietus on ‘those feet,’ and when I learned that all the world did not have bound feet I became more reconciled.”