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