Helen D. Ling

She married chemist and physician Tien Gi Ling in 1928 after which they moved to Shanghai, where she opened a "famous" antiques shop.

[4] She met Tien Gi Ling at a picnic organised by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in 1925.

[6] By October 1937, she had been appointed the English-language secretary of the Shanghai Chinese Women's Club, a war relief organisation.

Although she was born in the United States, she was not interned at a concentration camp during the Japanese occupation as her US citizenship had already been revoked, though it was restored following the end of the war.

By the 1940s, she had also become an acquaintance of antiques dealer Edward T. Chow, with whom she spent two years cataloguing the collection of Melchior, who had died by the time they had finished in 1945.

[6] As a result of the Communist takeover, the Tien Gi left for Hong Kong in 1950 in hopes of moving the family there.

She left for Hong Kong aboard the SS General Gordon, the last ship evacuating citizens of the United States in China on 1 May.

[6] Brothers and businessmen Stephen and Gilbert Zuellig began acquiring Chinese artworks through Ling, who introduced them to Chow, in 1950s.

[8] Ling began running the antiques section of a then newly-established interior decoration firm in July 1967.

[4] In 1984, Thomas Lawton, the director of the Freer Gallery of Art, visited her home in Bethesda, Maryland, which housed her personal collection.

[1] In January 1995, 98 pieces from her collection, with the oldest originating in the Eastern Zhou and the newest being from the late Qing dynasty, went on display at the University of Maryland, College Park.

John Dorsey of The Baltimore Sun wrote that the exhibition demonstrated that Ling "was not attracted by the largest or flashiest objects" and that she "selected pieces that reflected their periods of creation and were distinguished by their rarity, integrity of form and restrained beauty.

[8] The couple owned the Moonlight bungalow in the Cameron Highlands and frequently invited guests, including Mangskau and Thompson, to the property.