CHINESE WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 239, 8 October 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

CHINESE WOMEN.

So little is known of the real movement which is surging in China and the East that its women are never mentioned, yet their advance has been as remarkable as the emergence of their land from its sleep of centuries. King Eng, or "Precious Peace," is one of these women, and is a doctor.

King Eng was born nearly seventy years ago. Her mother had bound feet which measured only three inches, a great beauty in China. By the time that King Eng was able to go to school, however, her parents had realised that footbinding was cruel anS unnatural. People ridiculed the small child with the big feet, but finally she' was sent to a boarding school in Foochow, where the teachers were foreign missionaries.- When she was eighteen she became a helper in the Foochow Hospital, and was so well adapted to the work that a woman doctor in the hospital managed to have her sent to America to be trained in medicine. She was the first girl to leave China to be educated in another country.

Her task was a tig one. First slie had to learn to read, write, speak and understand English. Having done this, she entered Ohio University, where she studied English further and completed her course in four years. After surmounting the immense difficulties of language and environment, she entered the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia, and graduftt-d there in 1894.

The next year King Eng returned to China, a fully qualified doctor, under the title of Dr. Hu-Kin-Eng, and at once began the wonderful work among Chinese women and children in Fcochow, for which she will be remembered for all time. At first she was an assistant doctor at the hospital there, but before long she was in charge of the whole hospital, and eventually resident physician in a new hospital within the old city. ; King Eng's work grew and grew. Dispensary work, work among hospital patients, visiting work, and the training of medical students all fell to her lot. Being a woman, she had much to put up with, opposition from the Chinese native doctors, for instance, who were formidable rivals. But her sympathy and skill made her beloved of all, and in Foochow she became known as "Great Dr. Hu" among the people who needed her skill, and whom she served untiringly all the working days of her life.