After returning to the United States and the death of her husband, Pike Conger wrote a recollection of her time in China and a children's book about Chinese culture.

In January 1894 Pike Conger joined the Church of Christ, Scientist and was a frequent correspondent of its founder Mary Baker Eddy.

[3][4] Edwin Conger was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Great Qing Empire (China) in January 1898, and the family moved to Beijing (then known as Peking), arriving that summer.

[1][2] Pike Conger developed an interest in the everyday lives of Chinese people and, in particular, their women who were by Confucian custom largely kept out of public view inside their houses and courtyards.

[4] Pike Conger adopted some Chinese customs such as the keeping of a Buddha statue and trees decorated with auspicious symbols in the ministry.

On June 18, 1900, the Chinese government ordered the foreign ministries to leave the city, but the diplomats decided to remain and endured a lengthy siege.

She was held in distrust by many of the diplomats, but Pike Conger and other foreign women disobeyed their husbands to attend a formal audience on February 1, 1902.

[2][4] Pike Conger was the only woman present who had endured the siege, and in a speech made during the audience she asked for "more frank, more trustful, and more friendly relations with foreign people".

The pair remained frequent correspondents and, before her 1908 death, Cixi sent Pike Conger gifts for her granddaughter and also a significant financial donation for the rebuilding of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

Pike Conger's personal papers and surviving ethnographic artifacts were donated by her granddaughter to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in 1991.