Obituary for my mother Chan Hong Lan (d. 05/21/2026 age 99)

Everyone knows my mother as Chan Hong Lan (陳香蘭) or, in the English manner, Hong-Lan Chan. Hong Lan (香蘭) means "fragrant orchid." Here is the first surprise; it is not her given name at birth. She took up the moniker when she left her family in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam, to go to school in China. It was a popular name in the Mainland. A famous singer-actress at the time was Li Hsiang-lan (李香蘭), also "fragrant orchid." But the Chinese celebrity would turn out to be a Japanese named Yoshiko Yamaguchi (山口淑子). Her amazing story would later be told in a television docudrama (Episode 1 and Episode 2), accompanied by a beautiful title song (Ikanaide, or Don't go) composed and sung by Kōji Tamaki (玉置浩二), later made popular in Hong Kong by Cantopop star Jacky Cheung (張學友) as Lei Heong Laan (李香蘭). My mother's real name is Chan Oi Sun or Chen Aixin (陳愛新). She was named Aixin, meaning "love new," based on a family naming manual. Ai, "love," indicates the female offspring's generation. For example, Mom had a younger sister named Ai'e (愛娥), "love maiden"; and a first cousin named Aiqin (愛琴), "love piano." I'll try to tell my mother's life story to the best of my knowledge.

My mother was born in 1926, the Year of the Tiger. In those days, no one issued birth certificates. But we know her zodiac sign was the tiger, and her date of birth, based on the Chinese calendar, lands on August 30th of the Western calendar. As the oldest child of her family, my mother drew her first breath in a small village named Shuitie (水鐵), meaning "water iron," in Wenchang County (now City) of Hainan Island (now a province). The village is located next to the eponymously named Shuitie Reservoir (水鐵水庫). Wenchang (文昌), meaning "culture flourish," is famous for several products, not least the Wenchang chicken and the Hainanese chicken rice. More importantly, the ancestral home of the Song sisters, three of the most prominent and influential women of China during the twentieth century, is in Wenchang, about five kilometres, as the crow flies, south of Shuitie. They were practically neighbours.

Shuitie is merely one of numerous small, insignificant and forgettable villages in China. No one would have heard of it or remembered it unless one came from the place. From what I know, two families, the Chan (陳) and the Fu (符), probably linked by marriage between their ancestors, settled at the location and shared the land. It was not ideal, as the village was inland and did not enjoy the bounties of the South China Sea, except when fishing boats loaded with fresh fish docked, and some of the fish were transported to the inland villages, arriving around midnight. My mother remembered being roused from sleep to consume the freshly prepared seafood dishes. The Chan family name has a significant presence in Hainan. According to my mother, who heard the tales from her father, their branch had migrated over centuries from Fujian on the east coast of China. The Fujian Chan clan is also significant and well known. 

My mother's father, my grandfather, known to everyone as Chan Kei Man or Chen Qiwen (陳企文), was said to be well educated. He had left the village to do business in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, operating two restaurants in partnership with his best friend from school. Qiwen means "established literature/culture/words." However, it is not his given name at birth. He was named Youmou (有謀), meaning "have plans," based on a family naming manual.

In those days, when the men went abroad to make a living, the women would visit once every other year, staying for a year each time. When the wife was not in town, the man would take a mistress, usually a Vietnamese. When the husband, such as my grandfather, managed the situation well, the family would not be affected. Others would mess up, and families would be broken up. If the wife got pregnant, she would have to travel home to give birth, ensuring the offspring would be unequivocally Chinese. Hence, my mother was born in Shuitie but grew up in Saigon.

​When my mother was born, her mother, my grandmother, named Ying Mui (邢妹), or "little sister Ying," was already thirty-one. In those days of high infant mortality, my mom's older siblings did not survive. Seven years later, the family would welcome another girl, Chen Ai'e (陳愛娥), my aunt, and three years after her, a son, Tran Van Giam (陳文鑫), or in Chinese pinyin, Chen Wenxin, my uncle. One need not be overly bothered by Chan, Chen or Tran; they are simply different ways to spell the same name. Chan is Hong Kong English, Tran is Vietnamese French, and Chen is Chinese pinyin (phonetics). My grandmother was said to have come from a line of strong-willed, long-lived women. She lived to a hundred, and her mother lived to ninety-nine. My mother, passing only a few months from reaching a hundred, certainly continued the tradition.

My grandfather, being a learned man, read the newspapers every day. My mother adopted the habit and did not stop until Sing Tao Daily ceased printing in Toronto and Ming Pao Daily terminated its North American operations. For her, during those salad days in Saigon, old newspapers were material for self-learning and a ready supply of paper for practising calligraphy. My mother's handwriting is flamboyantly expressive, suggestive of coming from an ambitious man's hand. However, growing up in the patriarchal society of her day, my mother was not expected to receive an education beyond primary schooling, if at all. Indeed, female illiteracy was considered a virtue in some quarters. Therefore, after graduating from primary school, she was told to stay home and help look after her younger sister and baby brother.

At the time, my grandfather was operating a French or Western-style restaurant by a dock in Cholon, a district known to the large Chinese population in the area as Di'an (堤岸), meaning "embankment," on a strip my mother remembered as Sailor Street (水手街), catering mostly to foreigners and sailors. It may be similar to Wan Chai during British colonial rule in Hong Kong. His partner and best friend from school operated a local-style restaurant, but lost the business after becoming addicted to opium. When the Japanese occupied Saigon, they confiscated my grandfather's restaurant, and the Chan family's fortunes went into decline.

​Given the circumstances, my mother did not receive any support from her father when she expressed her desire to receive further education. Fortunately, her strong-willed mother sold her jewellery and sent my mother, at the age of fourteen, on a one-way trip to Guilin, where she attended the prestigious National Hanmin Middle School. The "Middle School" here actually refers to Secondary School and includes high school, probably leading to further studies. I have told the story in an earlier post. I will not repeat it here.

In 1948, the school permitted expatriate students, who had been separated from their families for ages, ​to return home for one year. My mother was on her way back to the school in 1949 when the government of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek collapsed, and she was stranded in Hong Kong. 

I believe my mother always wanted to pursue a career in education because she had only sought employment in teaching jobs. One of her first posts was the home teacher to the kids of a newspaper editor. The newspaper was Hong Kong's New Evening Post (新晚報). She met my father at the editor's home. At the time, my father was a dashing and talented young man, a promising contract actor at the Great Wall Movie Enterprises studio, later moving to Shaw Brothers, and a budding writer, all ingredients to capture a young girl's heart. Be that as it may, my mother's path to marriage was supposed to be exclusively paved by her parents. Being independent and headstrong, my mother eventually did it her way. The times, they were a-changing.

By early 1953, when my elder sister Selina was born, life was a box of chocolates for my mother. But by the end of 1954, when I was born, circumstances had taken a precipitous dive. My father's contract with the movie studio was discontinued. His acting career never blossomed, and he would only act in bit parts or commercials, which did not generate a steady income. My mother, in charge of two babies with no resources or backup, could only earn pennies from taking on handicraft work at home and barely had enough food for herself. She considered the survival of her babies a miracle from heaven. My father was a Bohemian artist with a free spirit who refused to be tied down by a desk job and showed up when he showed up. My mother was basically left to her own devices, keeping her babies alive by receiving milk powder and noodles from the Catholic Church.

For a while, father would take the babies to the studios to act in small roles for milk money. Selina was cast in a major film Madam Butterfly (蝴蝶夫人)* starring Li Lihua (李麗華), a superstar in Hong Kong moviedom in those days. I remember taking a bit part as a boy in a fake bus interacting with Ko Lan (葛蘭). However, the movie studio was no place for babies. People working on a skimpy budget and tight schedule under the thumb of unforgiving investors, while having to cater to the whims of the movie stars, had no sympathy for hungry babies needing sleep. My mother hated those people and swore she would rather die starving than let her children work in the movie business. When I got into television in Hong Kong and Canada, I did so, at first, without her approval, though she would, over time, grudgingly assent to my career choice.

* Click the YouTube link and check out Selina's scene at 1 hour 9 minutes. 

My mother had a problem finding work as a teacher. Her educational credentials were in China and inaccessible, even if they were not lost or destroyed. Her other problem was having to take care of two young babies. So, what was one to do?

At the time, the Hong Kong government began moving mainland migrants from temporary settlements to government housing projects known as Resettlement Estates (徙置區). Moving into her first apartment in Hong Kong at the Jordan Valley Estate*, which was a simple room with no kitchen, toilet or shower, my mother no longer had to worry about having a roof over the family's collective heads.

*Clicking the YouTube video, at 59 seconds, the basketball court can be seen diagonally from our fourth-floor apartment across a wide water channel. I used to practise shooting hoops at the court until I realized I was too short to play basketball. At 1:43, this water channel used to carry excess water from the hilltop reservoir to the sea, occasionally along with unfortunate kids adventuring in the mountains. I was one of the more fortunate ones. Our apartment looked right over the channel. 

As luck would have it, the large number of migrant children in the estates did not have regular schools to attend, and some make-shift rooftop schools sprang up, solving an urgent problem. Teachers were in short supply, forget about certified ones. Hence, my mother, without being asked for credentials, taught at one of those schools for both the morning and afternoon classes, which was the same as taking two jobs. The teachers, many of whom had young children, set up an ad hoc daycare at the school and took turns babysitting each other's babies during their breaks. Problem solved! And my mother took home HKD 160 a month for working two shifts, paying HKD 40 in rent, leaving barely enough to buy food and pay off debt. Getting sick or having an accident was not an option. To supplement her income, she would take a third job in the evening, crocheting knitwear fabric at home for a garment factory, sometimes earning more income than from her teacher's job. 

Things were slowly improving. During the early sixties, probably when I was about eight or nine, my mother's mother, our grandmother, came to live with us. She had been widowed since the fifties, when Grandfather died from a heart attack. Grandmother would prepare food for the kids and do housework, allowing Mom to pursue her teaching career with more vigour. My mother's younger sister, Chen Ai'e (陳愛娥), our aunt, came to Hong Kong earlier and married our uncle, Kwong Gwong (鄺光), the second son of a movie studio's owner. The studio was known as the National Studio or Kwokar Film Studio (國家片場) and produced many Cantonese movies during its heyday. Meanwhile, my mother's younger brother, Tran Van Giam (陳文鑫), having reached military age in Saigon, dodged the draft and absconded to Vientiane, Laos, where he got married. When the Pathet Lao approached the capital, my uncle skedaddled with his wife and kids, transited through Hong Kong, leaving his family there for a while, scouted Paris as a future home for the family, survived an existential year-long adventure at sea outside the waters of Singapore, and eventually reunited and settled with his family in Houston, Texas. Grandfather's younger brother had a son, Chen Wenrang (陳文讓), known to me as Ah Young, who ended up in Hong Kong, while a younger daughter, Chen Aiqin (陳愛琴), known to me as Ah Kum, settled in Edmonton, Alberta, with her family.

I know of two other families from Shuitie. One is also a Chan family, headed by Ge Biao (according to Mom, Ge Biao means Brother Biao). Another is the Fu (符) family, headed by Ge Gai. Both families, working in South Vietnam in the food business, became wealthy during the Vietnam War, taking advantage of the unlimited war budgets of America. Ge Gai owned the well-known Marseille Restaurant (馬賽餐廳) near Hanoi Road in Hong Kong's Tsim Sha Tsui district, which was usurped by the manager whom he had trusted as a son. His own son, Ge Gam, would open up the New Marseille. After the fall of Saigon, both families settled in Los Angeles.

Getting back to how my mother progressed in her teaching career, she realized the rooftop schools were a stopgap and would eventually go by the wayside. She needed to find a more long-term employment. She started trying her luck applying for jobs at legitimate private schools, which would require credentials. At one of these job interviews, the principal appeared interested in her story and kept asking questions about Hanmin, the school she attended. It turned out the principal's son was a Hanmin alumnus, and his letters describing the school matched what my mom said. She was hired on the spot. Later, the principal would sponsor her (without any credentials, she needed a licensed educator to vouch for her) to take the Teacher's Certificate exam, and she passed on the first try. The principal's wife took the exam ten times in ten years, finally passing it on the last try.

With the Teacher's Certificate, my mother became a government employee and taught the primary classes at St. John Bosco School (聖鮑思高天主教學校) in Tsz Wan Shan. She was able to maintain close relationships with many students through the years, some lasting over half a century. Though she was supposed to retire when she reached the age of sixty-five, another school hired her because she held a Physical Education licence, which had become mandatory, and few teachers in Hong Kong at the time had such a licence. Thus, my mother worked until she was seventy-five, when she finally retired. As we know by now, her actual retirement age was closer to seventy-eight.

During her earlier struggles, burdened with two babies, and later adding a girl, Pauline, my mother, despite our less-than-desirable social and economic condition, aspired to put her kids through prestigious schools. It was rather preposterous, to say the least, and, for all practical purposes, seemed an impossible dream. However, Selina would enter St. Paul's Secondary School, and later St. Paul's Convent for Form 6 and 7, matriculating with three distinctions. She was an exceptional student and helped our younger sister, Pauline, attend St. Paul's (Lam Tin) as well.

When I was ready to attend primary school, my mother had saved up barely enough money to submit one application, and she chose La Salle Primary School. She placed the wild bet with her last dollar and hoped for the best. It was a million-to-one shot, and she had no Plan B. I remember having to complete a jigsaw puzzle for the entrance exam. I almost finished it, leaving three pieces at a corner, while most kids did not know where to begin. By mysterious and miraculous providence, I was accepted. And I spent a total of thirteen years at the school, six years under Brother Henry at La Salle Primary School and seven years at La Salle College across La Salle Road, under Brother Casimir and Brother Raphael, guided by Brother Thomas and Brother Michael, among many others, graduating from Form 7 in 1973 to further my studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I am probably one of the small percentage of students who have studied at La Salle from Primary 1 to Form 7. Selina would attend York University and later Princeton, and is married to a prominent Princeton professor, my brother-in-law Peter Ramadge from Newcastle, Australia. What a far cry from our humble beginnings of penury and want! We do have our mother to thank for her tenacious drive to improve our lives.

Shortly after receiving her Teacher's Certificate, which made the future much more promising, my mother was advised our family had won a government lottery to be relocated to a larger apartment in a better-developed estate, Choi Hung Estate. The rent would be tripled, however, and she would not have been able to afford it if not for the prospect of teaching at government-funded schools. Our new home was much roomier with our own kitchen, bathroom and balcony. It was simply amazing! Good fortunes seemed to follow us. My mother was brave, and fortune favours the brave.

After the kids had flown the coop, my mother would spend most of her summer holidays travelling the world. During the early 1980s, when she was visiting her younger brother's family in Houston, a car accident almost took her life. On a trip through Galveston, the car flipped on the highway, throwing my mother onto the road. By the time Selina and I arrived from Toronto in the evening, we found her in a coma in the ICU, suffering from multiple fractures and internal bleeding. Our uncle's wife, our aunt from Vientiane, who was thrown onto the lawns at the roadside, suffered broken legs but no life-threatening injuries. Unfortunately, she contracted a superbug and passed away within a couple of weeks. My mother, on the other hand, woke up shortly after Selina and I arrived and slowly recovered to live another forty-odd years, reaching almost a hundred years of age, during which she enjoyed a never-ending adventure of travelling to the four corners of the world on her own, as well as cruising across the seven seas.

It would be impossible to recollect all her travel stories. She went to so many places her memory of them became mixed up. But she loved to recount the time she visited the small towns and cities all over America on a two-month Greyhound pass. She practically hopped on a bus and went to the next town without planning or knowing where she would end up. The year she visited Jerusalem, it snowed. She also went to Tehran, despite dire travel warnings about dangerous social upheaval, only to return home convinced she had been lied to by the Western media. She found Tehran as peaceful as a sleeping babe, and she concluded Iranians were the nicest people in the world. She crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific around the southern tip of South America, timed by the cruise to occur exactly upon the countdown to a new year on New Year's Eve, and she had the certificate to prove it. She visited Antarctica and the Arctic, sporting with penguins and seals. Once, she got bored in Hong Kong and, without notice or advising anyone, not even booking a hotel room, took an impromptu flight to Paris and spent a month living in the centre of the City of Light.

In her eighties, she joined a Green Tortoise bus camping trip around America. People at Green Tortoise were mortified and begged us every day to convince Mom not to go. No such luck. She enjoyed the trip tremendously, bussing around America with a busload of young adventurers, sleeping on hammocks or in tents, frolicking in streams and lakes, while never entering the cities. She boarded the bus in San Francisco, arriving at New York a month later in one piece and none the worse for wear.

As my mother reached her late eighties, it became apparent her faculties were declining and her independent adventuring days were coming to a close. I marked the end of an era by taking her on a mother-and-son trip across Europe, during which I bumped into a friend and his wife at Frankfurt am Main (they were on a stopover; what are the chances?), took a detour to Tübingen on the invitation of a Mercedes Benz VP (who said everyone hated Stuttgart and wouldn't be found dead in the city), introduced Mom to Wiener schnitzel and apple strudel in Munich (her first experience of Austrian cuisine), landed in Brussels on the day King Philippe was crowned (another coincidence), stayed at a friend's vineyard in southern France, and lost our phones on the same day in Paris, mine in the metro and hers in the Musée Rodin. These are but a snippet of Mom's adventures. 

While my mother could no longer wander around the world on her own, she went on many cruises, mostly accompanied by Selina, and once by her eldest grandson, Darcy. Even last year, she went on two cruises with Selina, one from Vancouver to Alaska and the other from New York to the Caribbean. My mother lived on her own in an apartment in Toronto's Chinatown near College and Spadina, right across the driveway from a large Chinese supermarket and steps away from her favourite Burger King, where everyone called her Mama. As her faculties continued to decline, my strong-willed and independent mother finally accepted help from Personal Support Workers, attended a seniors' activities centre, which she had refused to join, relenting after many gentle persuasions, and eventually loving it (when the staff, Chelsea and Wendy, came to visit Mom on the day before she passed away, they brought a smile to her face when they promised to save a big piece of her favourite pork for her when she could return to the centre), and having me push her around town in a wheelchair. However, whenever I suggested the inevitability of her moving out of her beloved apartment to live under long-term care, she swore it would never happen as long as she was alive.

My mother had a morbid fear of long-term care or a senior's nursing home. She acquired the phobia by witnessing her childhood friend shrivel and waste away in such an establishment while still young and healthy in her sixties. This friend, whom we called Aunt Tao Xiuzhen (陶秀珍), according to Mom, came from the wealthiest Hainanese family in Vietnam. Her father used to own so much land birds couldn't cross it without resting. The family also owned half the commercial properties in the centre of Cholon, cornered the gold and jewellery markets, and operated a lucrative bottling business known as Fangquan (芳泉), "fragrant spring," producing popular carbonated drinks. Since I cannot verify any of these, I can only report what I heard. However, I do remember Aunt Xiuzhen's family in Hong Kong as incredibly wealthy while we were scraping by in Jordan Valley. Her husband, Mr. Yip, would pick us up in their black luxury sedan, a privilege the kids in our neighbourhood could only dream of. Aunt Xiuzhen also owned and operated a private school in Causeway Bay, occupying an entire flat in Hong Kong's prime commercial district. 

Mom said she had been friends with Xiuzhen since they were kids in Vietnam. In fact, they had taken the trip to Guilin to attend Hanmin together. But Xiuzhen, growing up a princess in a wealthy family, could not withstand the rigours and strict discipline at the school and dropped out within a week. While the two were separated for many years, both ended up in Hong Kong under different circumstances. When Aunt Xiuzhen heard my mother was in town, she searched high and low and finally found us scarcely surviving in a migrants' estate. After the withdrawal of America from the Vietnam War, Aunt Xiuzhen returned to Saigon to get involved in the distribution of her family's considerable assets, which her father's younger brother was managing, as her father had died suddenly during the Second Sino-Japanese War. However, it was all for naught, as the North Vietnamese tanks rolled through the city gates in 1975. When Aunt Xiuzhen returned to Hong Kong, she discovered her bank accounts had been emptied, and her husband was nowhere in sight. It turned out Mr. Yip had lost all their savings to gold speculation and had gone into hiding from loan sharks. 

Fortunately for Aunt Xiuzhen, both her children were high achievers. Her son became a successful doctor in America. Her daughter, who married an American and moved to New York, is a respected member of the Buddhist faith, an accomplished Guqin musician and an author. Aunt Xiuzhen, however, could not adapt to American life and soon found herself living in a Buddhist senior's home in Hong Kong that served only vegetarian food. My mother said whenever she visited Aunt Xiuzhen, she would smuggle Hainanese chicken into her room, prepared by my grandmother in the traditional manner. As she enjoyed her hometown food, Aunt Xiuzhen would shed a few tears, bemoaning the vicissitude of human fortunes. Mom said it did not take long to notice the decline of Aunt Xiuzhen's memories. Following another one of her adventures, travelling to some far corner of the world, my mother returned to Hong Kong and went to the nursing home, only to discover Aunt Xiuzhen had sadly passed away. While for some, a long-term care establishment could be a godsend, for my Mom, it was something she would try to avoid at all costs, and I have helped her postpone the inevitable as much as possible.

On Friday, May 1, I arrived at Mom's apartment to take her out for another wheelchair adventure. Mom did not have an appetite and wanted to stay in bed. I went and bought her favourite pork, but she kept saying she was full. That night, I monitored her and saw her getting out of bed to use the washroom. However, the next day, May 2, the PSW called me and said Mom refused to get out of bed or eat. I immediately got over to her apartment and called an ambulance. At the hospital, the nurses quickly discovered she had accumulated a litre of urine in her bladder. They inserted a catheter to bring her relief. At first, the doctors guessed it was an infection. But after drawing a lot of blood for testing, they concluded it was not. By Tuesday, May 5, Mom appeared to be recovering from the trauma of the past few days. However, she did not eat much, and she slept through most of the day. 

During the following days, the doctors gave Mom a CT and an MRI scan. The diagnosis was a shock. It appeared Mom had developed terminal cancer, which had already metastasized to other parts. They suspected it had originated from her thyroid, but it was not for sure unless one conducted a biopsy. The prognosis was Mom had a few months at best. Given Mom's age and the late stage of the cancer, it was agreed to let Mom live as comfortably as possible. Before releasing Mom, the doctors suggested, and I agreed, to let her have a dose of radiation, which might reduce the size of the tumour and provide some physical relief. The day after the radiation, May 9, I was surprised to see Mom alert and complaining about the hospital food. However, I was told if the radiation had any effect, it would take at least two weeks to take hold. On May 10, Mother's Day, Mom was still alert and woke up when I arrived at her bedside. I brought lovely orchids from Selina and Peter Ramadge. I brought her favourite Ferrero Rocher chocolate, but she could hardly eat anything. In the following days, Mom returned to her lethargic state. 

I decided it was best for Mom to leave the hospital, as she was not getting any comfort at all with the constant removal and reinsertion of the catheter. At first, the hospital suggested Mom could go directly to hospice. As I had promised to keep Mom in her apartment for as long as possible, I decided to take her home to receive palliative care in an environment she would feel most comfortable. In fact, after returning home on Thursday, the 14th, Mom got out of bed and even walked a few steps. Afterwards, she finished a bit of porridge with shredded pork I had prepared for her. I kept telling her if she would eat and get stronger, I would take her out in the wheelchair and mosey around town. Unfortunately, she became more lethargic as the days passed. By Monday, the 18th, Victoria's Day, Mom was hardly drinking and didn't open her eyes even though she was responding to questions. Although she did not complain of pain, she was obviously uncomfortable, and I started administering small doses of Hydromorphone, a potent analgesic, to let her rest better. The doctor came in the morning of the 19th and immediately suggested hospice. I called up Kensington Hospice, which was a stone's throw away on the other side of College Street. Things seemed to be coming to a head.

I sent out a message to Selina, who had recently returned from a cruise celebrating Peter Ramadge's retirement, to get over posthaste. Darcy, Mom's eldest grandson, got the message and flew over from Portland. Bliss, my elder daughter, also dropped by. Pauline, our younger sister, was absent because she had passed away in 2022 from pancreatic cancer. We never told Mom. She might have suspected it, but we never discussed it. 

On Wednesday the 20th, the hospice said a room would be available the next day, and I should book a private ambulance to transfer Mom before 1 p.m. Given such short notice, I was able to find one for 12:30 p.m. On Thursday the 21st, Darcy and I were in Mom's apartment. Selina got stuck in Newark in another historic air travel disruption. By 12:30 p.m., moments before the ambulance arrived, I told Mom we were taking her to a beautiful hotel. She opened her eyes, the first time in days her eyes were opened. I asked her if she recognized Darcy. She nodded, and shortly after, she fell asleep again, this time for good. She said she would not leave her apartment as long as she was alive, and she made good her promise. She had to do it her way.

My mother, who wanted to be remembered as Chan Hong Lan, came from Shuitie, water and iron. Water means adaptability, and iron denotes strength. Both are essential for success in life. Water, though soft, can turn an iron rod into a needle if one persists, so says an ancient Chinese proverb. Though my mother was no saint, neither are any of us, and, in the course of her long life, she made her share of mistakes, and we would all do the same. Let us remember her tenacity, the sacrifices she made for her family, her adventurous spirit, her world travels, and the character of water and iron coursing through the veins of all of us who have learned something from her life story.

Selina is the custodian of the ashes of our mother, our father, and our sister Pauline. We will plan a trip to sprinkle their earthly remains all over Hong Kong, where they left their marks. 

Attached is a photo of Chan Hong Lan's immediate family members who had gathered to celebrate her long and storied life.

From the left, my son-in-law, Adam Dunn, my elder daughter, Bliss, and their son Charlie; my younger daughter, Victoria Solana (YouTube @Victoriaman77), whose name I borrowed for the protagonist of the trilogy; yours truly; my brother-in-law, Princeton professor, Peter Ramadge; my elder sister, Selina; their elder son, Darcy; and Sage with his three children Yossi, Noa and Micah.