II Education in China and America
When she was old enough, King Eng became a pupil in the Foochow Boarding School for Girls, where she did good work as a student. No musical teaching was given in the school at that time, but King Eng was so eager to learn to play that the wife of one of the missionaries gave her lessons on her own organ. Her ability to play may have been one of the causes which led to the framing of a remarkable and eloquent appeal for the higher education of the Chinese girls, which should include music and English, sent in 1883 by the native pastors of Foochow and vicinity to the General Executive Committee of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, under whose auspices this school was carried on.
To the same committee there came at the same time another remarkable request, this one from Dr. Trask, then in charge of the Foochow Woman’s Hospital. After leaving boarding school King Eng had been a student in the hospital, and Dr. Trask had become so much impressed with her adaptability to medical work, and her sympathetic spirit toward the suffering, that she longed to have her receive the advantages of a more thorough education than could be given her in Foochow. She accordingly wrote to the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, speaking in the highest terms of Hü King Eng’s ability and character, and urging that arrangements be made to bring her to America, to remain ten years if necessary, “that she might go back qualified to lift the womanhood of China to a higher plane, and able to superintend the medical work.” She assured the committee that they would find that the results would justify them in doing this, and that none knew King Eng but to love her. Arrangements were soon made, largely through Mrs. Keen, secretary of the Philadelphia branch of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, and word was sent to Foochow that Dr. Trask’s request had been approved.
This word found Hü King Eng ready to accept the opportunity which it offered her. It had not been easy for this young girl, only eighteen years old, to decide to leave her home and her country and take the long journey to a foreign land, whose language she could not speak, and whose customs were utterly strange to her, to remain there long enough to receive the college and medical education which would enable her to do the work planned for her on her return to China. So far as she knew she was the only Chinese young woman who had ever left China to seek an education in another country; and indeed she was the second, the only one who had preceded her being Dr. You Mé King, the adopted daughter of Dr. and Mrs. McCartee, of Ningpo, who had gone to America with them a few years before. King Eng’s parents did not oppose her going, but neither did they encourage it. They told her fully of the loneliness she would experience in a foreign country; the dangers and unpleasantness of the long ocean voyage she would have to take; and the unparalleled situation in which she would find herself on her return ten years later, unmarried at twenty-eight. But with a quiet faith and purpose, and a courage nothing short of heroic, King Eng answered, “If the Lord opens the way and the cablegram says ‘Come,’ I shall surely go; but if otherwise I shall do as best I can and labour at home.”
Years afterward, when two other girls from the Foochow Boarding School were leaving China for a period of study in America, a farewell meeting was held for them in the school, at which Dr. Hü told how she had reached her decision to go. She said: “I was the first Fuhkien province girl to go to America.... My father told me, ‘I cannot decide for you; you must pray to God. If you are to go, God will show you.’ Then I felt God’s word come to me, ‘Fear not, for I will go with you wherever you go.’ At that time the school girls were seldom with the missionary ladies and I could not speak any English, therefore I did not know any American politeness; and all my clothes and other daily-need-things were not proper to use in the western country. Although everything could not be according to my will, I trusted God with all my life, so nothing could change my heart.”
In the spring of 1884, in charge of some missionaries going home on furlough, Hü King Eng left China for America. The journey was a long and rough one, and a steamer near theirs was wrecked. One of the missionaries, wondering how her faith was standing the test of these new and terrifying experiences, asked if she wanted to go back home. But she answered, “No, I do not think of going home at all.” She felt that it was right for her to go to America, and although when she met her friends at the journey’s end she confessed that sea-sickness and home-sickness had brought the tears many a night, she never faltered in her decision.
Upon landing in New York she went at once to Mrs. Keen in Philadelphia, and there met Dr. and Mrs. Sites, of Foochow, whom she had known from childhood, and who were then in Philadelphia attending the General Conference of the Methodist Church. She spent the summer with them, learning to read, write, and speak English, and in the autumn went with them to Delaware, Ohio, and entered Ohio Wesleyan University. Miss Martin, who was then preceptress of Monnett Hall, recalls King Eng’s efforts to master English. “She was an apt pupil,” she says, “yet she had many struggles with the language.” A friend in Cleveland, with whom she spent a few weeks during her vacation, promised her that some day they would go around the square to see the reservoir. King Eng seemed much interested in this proposition and several times asked when they were to go. When they finally went, her friend was somewhat surprised to see that King Eng manifested very little interest in the reservoir; but when they reached home again it was evident that she had been interested, not in the reservoir, but in the proposed method of reaching it. “How can you go ‘round’ a ‘square’?” she asked.
When she entered college she set herself the task of learning ten new words a day; but Miss Martin says that she sometimes had to unlearn several of them, owing to the fondness of her fellow students for slang. However, she was persevering, and in time learned to use the language easily. One of the teachers, who had returned a plate to her with an orange on it, still treasures a half sheet of paper which appeared on a returned plate of hers, on which King Eng had written:
“You taught me a lesson not long ago,
Which I have learned, as I’ll try to show.
When you would return a plate to its owner,
Of something upon it you must be the donor.
One orange you put on that plate of mine,
Two oranges find on this plate of thine.”
She was a great favourite with both faculty and students. One of her fellow students shall tell of the impression she made: “Those who were at Monnett Hall at any time from 1884 to 1887 will remember a dainty little foreign lady, a sort of exotic blossom, whose silk-embroidered costumes, constructed in Chinese fashion, made her an object of interest to every girl in college. This was Dr. Hü King Eng, who came to prepare for her life work. Gentle, modest, winning, her heart fixed on a goal far ahead, she was an example to the earnest Christian girl and a rebuke to any who had self-seeking aims.”
Another, looking back to her college days, and to the college life of Hü King Eng, “or, as she was familiarly and lovingly called, King Eng,” writes, “She was so sweet and gracious, so simple in her faith and life, so charitable, that you felt it everywhere. I shall never forget standing in the hall one day with her and another girl, when a young man delivered some books. I asked his name. The young lady gave it, a well known name, and added that he had very little principle, or character. King Eng spoke up at once, and calling the other girl by name said, ‘Yes, but his parents are fine people.’”
The King’s Daughters’ Society was organized during King Eng’s stay at Ohio Wesleyan, and ten groups, of ten girls each, were formed among the students of Monnett Hall. King Eng, who was the leader of one of these groups, proposed that each girl in it should earn enough money to buy one of the King’s Daughters’ badges, and that they should be sent to some of the girls in the Foochow school, that they too might organize a society. She was eager that the girls should not only give the badges, but should earn them by their own efforts, that they might thus show the Chinese girls that American students did not consider any kind of work beneath them, but counted it an honour to serve their Master in any way possible.
During the April of King Eng’s first year at Ohio Wesleyan University, special meetings were held in connection with the Day of Prayer for Colleges, one of them a large chapel service at which the president of the college and the preceptress spoke. The report of this meeting shows that King Eng did not wait until her return to China to begin active efforts to win others to the Christian life. “At the close of an address by Miss Martin, the preceptress, there stepped forward upon the rostrum our little Chinese student, Miss Hü King Eng, who, dressed in her full native costume, stood gracefully before these six hundred young men and women while she witnessed to the saving power of Christ.... The following evening, at our earnest revival service in the chapel of the ladies’ boarding hall, there knelt the Chinese girl at the side of her American sister, helping her to find the Saviour; and the smile of gladness on her countenance at the closing of the meeting told the joy in her heart because her friend was converted. The faith of many has been made stronger by hearing the testimony of Miss Hü.”
The statement of one of her fellow students is impressive: “She had a great influence over the girls, and during our revival seasons she usually led more to Christ than any other girl in the school. One mother, when she came to visit the school after such a meeting during which her own daughter had been converted, exclaimed, ‘Little did I think when I was giving money for the work in China, that a Chinese girl would come to this country and be the means of leading my daughter to Christ.’”
Miss Martin tells of one student who had long resisted all appeals, but who would listen to King Eng when she would not hear any one else; and who was finally led by her to such a complete consecration that she afterward gave her life to missionary service in Japan.
During her vacation periods King Eng often addressed missionary meetings with marked success, winning such testimonies as these: “We are thanking God for that grand missionary meeting. It would have done your heart good to have heard the references to it in our Wednesday night prayer meeting,” or, “One gentleman said to me, ‘That was the best missionary meeting we ever had in Third Avenue.’” It was probably while doing such work as this that she had the experiences which led her to realize so keenly the blessing of the unbound feet which had caused her so many tribulations as a child, for she says that when she was running for trains in America she always remembered “Those feet,” “Those feet,” and was glad that she had them.
In the summer of 1886 she attended a meeting of the International Missionary Union, and there met Mrs. Baldwin, who had known her as a child in Foochow. Mrs. Baldwin wrote of the impression she made at this time: “Our dear little Chinese girl, Hü King Eng, won all hearts, as usual, by her sweet, gentle, trustful Christian character. To us who have known her from her infancy up, the meeting was of peculiar pleasure; and as she grasped my hand and in low, earnest, glad tones exclaimed in our Foochow dialect, ‘Teacheress, all the same as seeing my own house people,’ I could heartily respond, ‘All the same.’”
At the same time she was making rapid progress in her studies. At the annual meeting of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society in 1886, “the marvellous progress of Hü King Eng was reported... and tears of gladness filled many eyes as her implicit faith, her sturdy industry, and her untiring devotion were described.”
She completed her course in Ohio Wesleyan University in four years, and in the autumn of 1888 entered the Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia, doing the regular class work, and making her home with her friend Mrs. Keen. After two years of work there, she was very ill with a fever for many weeks. When her strength began to come back, it was decided that she should stop studying for a time and go to China for the following year, as she was very eager to visit her home, especially as her father was ill. Her lifelong friend, Miss Ruth Sites, was also returning to Foochow at that time. So after securing a passport for Hü King Eng, in order that she might be able to return to America, the two girls made the trip together, spending Christmas in Yokohama, and enjoying a short visit to Tokio. The steamer stopped for a day at Kobe, and there Miss Hü had the pleasure of visiting Dr. You Mé King, then practising medicine under the Southern Methodist Mission. Dr. You was the only Chinese woman who had ever left China for study up to the time of her own going. They had a day at Nagasaki also, where several college mates from Ohio Wesleyan were working; and two days were spent in Shanghai, during which Miss Hü visited Dr. Reifsnyder’s splendid hospital. The trip from Shanghai to Foochow was the last part of the long journey, and they were soon in the quiet waters of the Min River. Miss Sites, writing back to America, said that she could never forget King Eng’s look as she exclaimed, “The last wave is past. Now we are almost home.” A brother and a brother-in-law came several miles down the river in a launch to meet her, and sedan chairs were waiting at the landing to take her to her home, where her parents were eagerly awaiting her. A reception of welcome was given for her and Miss Sites a few days later, which was for her father and mother one of the proudest occasions of their lives.
Some of the missionaries had wondered whether so many years of residence in America would not have changed King Eng, and whether some of the luxuries she had enjoyed there might not have become a necessity to her. With this in mind many little comforts unusual in a Chinese home had been put into her room. “But,” one of them writes, “this was needless.” King Eng was unchanged and all the attention she had received in America had left her unspoiled. This was doubtless largely due to the purity of her purpose in going. In bidding good-bye, a few years later, to some girls who were going to America for the first time, she said: “Some people do not want girls to go to America to study because they think when the girls are educated they will be proud. I think really we have nothing to be proud of. We Chinese girls have such a good opportunity to go to another country to study, not because God loves us better than any other persons, but because He loves all our people in China. Therefore He sends us to learn all the good things first, so that we may help our people. The more favour we receive the more debt we owe the Chinese women and girls. So wherever we go we must think how to benefit our people, and not do as we please, and then how can we be proud?”
The only cloud in this happy home-coming, after eight years of absence, was the illness of her father, who was suffering from consumption. But even this cloud was lightened by the help and cheer which King Eng was enabled to bring to him. Miss Sites wrote: “It is an unspeakable comfort to him to have King Eng with him, while she, with skill and wisdom learned in Philadelphia, attends to all his wants as no other Chinese could.” Soon after King Eng’s return her father was prostrated with a severe attack of grippe, which in his already weakened state, made his condition almost hopeless. Even the missionary doctor who attended him had no expectation that he would recover. “But,” reads a letter from Mrs. Sites, “through the knowledge King Eng had acquired of caring for the sick, and her devotion to her father, with work unfaltering, and prayer unceasing, he was brought back to us.”
For many years Rev. Hü Yong Mi had been planning to build a house, wherein he and his family might live after he was too feeble to preach, and which his family might have if he should be taken from them. At this time he had laid by enough money to carry out his plan, but his weakness was such that he could have done little, had it not been for the energy and vigour of his wide-awake daughter. She helped make the plans for the house, and afterward urged forward the building, so that a few months after her return the family moved out of the parsonage into a comfortable little home, built in Chinese style, but with glass windows and board floors.
In addition to the care of her father and the superintendence of the building of the new house, King Eng was kept very busy in the hospital, interpreting for the physicians in the daily clinics, and working among the in-patients. This experience was invaluable to her at this time in giving her a clearer knowledge of the especial preparation needed in her future work. She saw and learned much of the prevalent diseases among the women for whom she was preparing herself to work. She also taught a class of young women medical students, which gave her valuable experience in that line of work.
One of the missionaries has written of the impression she made during this stay in Foochow: “She was kept very busy in the hospital and her home, but she was always cheerful and helpful. Her Christian love and natural kindness drew to her the hearts of hundreds of suffering native women, who felt that there was sympathy for them in her every look and touch. Moreover, the affectionate regard in which she had been held by her missionary associates in Foochow has been vastly increased by her unassuming manner, and the meek and quiet spirit in which she mingled with us in work and prayer through the months.”
The new home was beautifully situated, overlooking the river and receiving constant south breezes, which made it cool and comfortable in summer. It was hoped that in its quiet Mr. Hü might live for a number of years, and it was therefore decided that King Eng should return to America, to re-enter the Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia in the fall of 1892. On the return trip she said to Mrs. Sites, who was with her, “I have learned to trust God fully, else how could I be going away from my sick father whose every move and cough I had learned to hear so quickly through all the hours of the night, and still my heart be at rest?” Mrs. Sites adds, “Personally, her companionship on the voyage was a continual joy to me, notwithstanding my alarming and wearisome struggle while in Montreal to get permission for her to re-enter this alarmingly exclusive country.”
Hü King Eng re-entered the Medical College in the autumn of 1892, graduating with honour the eighth of May, 1894. She spent the following year in hospital work, being fortunate enough to be chosen as surgeon’s assistant in the Philadelphia Polyclinic, which gave her the privilege of attending all the clinics and lectures there.