In 1897, the reformer Liang Qichao met Kahn and wrote an essay upholding her as a paragon to be emulated by the new Chinese woman. Liang praised Kahn’s unbound feet, her work ethic, and her love of China. He ignored Kahn’s Christianity and described Gertrude Howe, not as a missionary but as the traveling “daughter of an American scholar-official” who had just happened upon Ida Kahn.
