She was born in 1931 in Takao Prefecture (present-day Kaoshiung). She graduated from Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Girls' Senior High School. She was a witness to the February 28 incident in 1947 which killed thousands in Taiwan and resulted in decades of martial law known as the White Terror. During this time, she chose to focus on the study of physics. She attended the University of Tokyo and was awarded a doctorate in physics in 1966. She returned to Taiwan in 1970 and was asked to create a physics department at Soowchow University. She married another academic, Feng Tsuan Hua, around 1972 and they left for a couple of years to work in Massachusetts in the United States at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.