4: Marrying Material

Around the time he was making his first business contacts, Gung Gung also married Popo. Popo had lived for the last few years in Nanjing--where her father had gone from Honolulu to be dentist to the missionary teachers--and attended the respected Ginling Girls' Academy. She had come back to the States to study piano as a graduate student at U.S.C., and Gung Gung met her through the Chinese Students Association.

When asked in 1998 if she were pretty, Gung Gung pretended indifference, noting only that she was smart and the only one of the mainland returnees who spoke unaccented English. By the time of Gung Gung's graduation, they had reached "an understanding" and she persuaded him to return to China, promising that her well-connected family would no doubt be able to help him find a good job.

At the same time, New York Metropolitan Life Insurance offered him a job. His boss (was this A.M. Clifford?) told him that within a few years, he'd be earning $25,000 a year, a sum beyond imagining. His greatest ambition so far was to make $6,000 a year. In any case, he turned down the offer in favor of going back to China. He hadn't seen his mother in six and a half years.

Regardless of Gung Gung's exact age when he arrived in the states, 6-1/2 years--if accurate--implies that he had returned to China at some point since leaving in 1910.

Albert and his mother, called "Ah Nin", in the front row

Lily's family was then living in Shanghai, as the Nationalist army was already on the move. Lily had been born in Hawaii. Her grandfather had emigrated there to work on a taro plantation [this fact was revealed as Gung Gung, Lily, Lori and I tucked into rich bowls of mashed taro with gingko nuts at the now defunct East Lake Chiuchow restaurant, which used to be in Ocean Terminal]. He was Hakka from Bo On County, just north of Hong Kong. Popo's father, Ho En Seong (何英祥 He Yingxiang) learned a little dentistry while helping out as an office boy for a an established dentist. He soon picked up enough to open his own practice. He was able to make a good living catering to the local Chinese community.

Lily's mother came, you could say, from a medical background too. Her family, whose last name was Li, lived in Kowloon (possibly also Hakka from Bo On?). She and her brother went to a missionary school (Methodist or some other Christian sect??) and earned some kind of a qualification as nurse and doctor, and through the missionary connection this uncle, Dr. K.F. Li (Li Khai Fai), eventually went to Hawaii. The book Sojourners & Settlers notes that great great uncle Li was a graduate of Canton Medical College who had practiced in Hong Kong before going to Hawaii in 1896. The Sandalwood Mountains notes that both he and his wife, Dr. Kong Tai-Heong, were Western-trained (Rhenish Mission) physicians, who took an active part in efforts to deal with an outbreak of plague in Honolulu in 1899.

According to Albert, this uncle became friends with Lily's father and would borrow money from him to finance his gambling. Finally, this great-grandfather refused to lend any more, and his friend offered his sister Li Kwan Fai as collateral. As told by Lily's brother Guy, she was simply a picture bride, and indeed she looks lovely in the photos that Guy's widow, Auntie Elsie, has of her. When asked in 1998 if she were beautiful, Gung Gung didn’t mention her face, but simply dismissed her as Hakka and [thus] “short and stubby”.

At the time Gung Gung was telling these stories, he had been re-married for about twenty-five years and seemed under no obligation to whitewash his feelings about his former in-laws, who it should be noted he took care of financially for many years. The gambling story seems out of keeping with Dr. Li's reputation as a serious-minded doctor, but then again, Chinese of every stripe have always enjoyed their gambling.

They were married and had five kids, Lily, Ivy, Guy, Ernest, who died relatively young, David, who eventually worked for the UN and was married to a European woman named Rose, and Doris. From old photos, it seems that the family moved back to China when Popo (Lily) was about 4 and Ivy a few months old. Uncle Guy’s account relates that our great-grandmother Li wasn’t used to a life without servants and it was agreed that once the family had saved up $800, they would move to China (living and working at first in Hong Kong and/or Canton?), until he was offered a job at Ginling College in Nanjing as dentist for the missionary community. Uncle Guy’s account says that he became the dentist of choice for all sorts of high government officials. The family eventually lived in (built?) a spacious house, which Uncle Guy visited in the late 70s/early 80s, although by that time the house grounds were divided in two by a major road.

According to Albert, his father-in-law the dentist looked down on the mainland Chinese. Lily attended Ginling Girls' Academy. Among her classmates was Margaret Pan Quon's mother, and Betty Wei Liu’s mother.

The previous section was extensively filled in based on stories told by Lily's sister-in-law Auntie Elsie in March 1998 and by an account of Uncle Guy’s background written up in the USC Dental School Bulletin at the time of a ceremony honoring him in the 1980s.

Read more about Lily and Guy's family in their sections of the website.

5: Ineligible Bachelor