Ho Miu-ling (1847–1937) was a philanthropist in

British Hong Kong Hong Kong was a colony and later a dependent territory of the British Empire from 1841 to 1997, apart from a period of occupation under the Japanese Empire from 1941 to 1945 during the Pacific War. The colonial period began with the Briti ...

. Her influential family included her brother, barrister

Kai Ho Sir Kai Ho, CMG, JP, MRCS (; 21 March 1859 – 21 July 1914), better known as Sir Kai Ho Kai, born Ho Shan-kai (), was a Hong Kong barrister, physician and essayist in Colonial Hong Kong. He played a key role in the relationship between ...

, her husband, diplomat

Wu Tingfang Wu Ting-fang (; 30 July 184223 June 1922) was a diplomat and politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and briefly as Acting Premier during the early years of the Republic of China. He was also known as Ng Choy or Ng Achoy (). Ed ...

, and her son, diplomat

Wu Chaoshu Wu Chao-shu (Traditional Chinese: 伍朝樞; Simplified Chinese: 伍朝枢; 23 May 1887 – 3 January 1934), also known as C.C. Wu, and romanized as Wu Chaoshu, was Foreign Minister of the Republic of China in 1927–8, and was Minister to the U ...

. The

Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital (AHNH) is an acute district general hospital managed under the New Territories East Cluster of the Hospital Authority in Hong Kong. Established by the former London Missionary Society in 1887, it was the fir ...

is named for her and for her sister-in-law, Alice Walkden.

Early life

Ho Miu-ling was one of the eleven children of Rev. Hoh Fuk Tong (1818-1871), a Chinese Christian preacher and writer in Hong Kong. Her brother was Sir Kai Ho.Gerald Hugh Choa
''The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai: A Prominent Figure in Nineteenth-century Hong Kong''
(Chinese University Press 2000): 14-17, 60.

Diplomacy and philanthropy

Ho Miu-ling married at age 17, and supported her husband through his legal studies in London. She traveled with him and performed the duties of an official hostess when he was a Minister of Imperial China from 1896 to 1910, serving in the United States, England, Peru, Mexico, Spain, Cuba, and Japan. He was also a government minister of the Republic of China, from 1910 to 1922. She was reported to have bound feet, but to be against the practice of

foot binding Foot binding, or footbinding, was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls in order to change their shape and size. Feet altered by footbinding were known as lotus feet, and the shoes made for these feet were kno ...

as a result of her travels. She also pointed out the health-damaging effects of

corsets A corset is a support garment commonly worn to hold and train the torso into a desired shape, traditionally a smaller waist or larger bottom, for aesthetic or medical purposes (either for the duration of wearing it or with a more lasting effe ...

for Western women: "While I am exceedingly fond of America and enjoy many of its privileges and ways," she explained, "yet I prefer having small feet to a little waist. My vital organs are not affected in any way or injured by the confinement of my feet in childhood, but the health of many an American woman is ruined by the constriction of her waist." In widowhood Ho Miu-ling returned to Hong Kong, where she was a major donor to charities, including building funds for churches and scholarships. Ho Miu Ling Hospital opened in 1906, funded by Ho Miu-ling and operated under the auspices of the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational miss ...

; it eventually merged with two others to form the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital.

Personal life

Ho Miu-ling married Wu Tingfang (1842–1922) in 1864. Their son Wu Chaoshu (1887–1934) was born in

Tientsin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

, educated in American schools,"Chinese Minister's Son a Public School Boy"
''The Western Advocate'' (August 2, 1901): 6. via

Newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. In November 2018, ...

and followed his father into a career in diplomacy. She survived both her husband and her son, and died in 1937, aged 91 years. United States District Court judge George H. Wu is her great-grandson.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ho Miuling 1847 births 1937 deaths Chinese women philanthropists Hong Kong philanthropists 20th-century women philanthropists 19th-century women philanthropists Wu family