青芒果樂園

Hong-Shan Lee, a retired police officer and a respected father of his family, died unexpectedly of complication renal failure from diabetes Monday in his house at Taipei, Taiwan. He was 77.

“He was an optimistic, humorous, broad-minded person for his whole life,” said his oldest daughter Lin Lee.

Hong-Shan Lee was born July 4, 1910 during the Japanese colonial period of Taiwan. He was the only child in his wealthy family in a small agricultural village. His father was the manager of the market of the village and owned two grocery stores. He used to have the best and fancies toys that his friends could not have in Da Hu village of Miao Li.

He was good at studying. He was recommended to study abroad of medical in Japan at government expense. But his mother was reluctant to be apart with him. He decided to stay with his parents.

Lee obeyed his parents all his life. His father died early, and he took care of and lived with his mother till she died in her 90s, Lin Lee said. When the family had financial difficulties, he prepared special food for his mother. “When the family couldn’t afford everybody to have meat, only grandmother could have it,” Lin Lee said.

After he graduated from high school, Lee married the wife that his mother picked for him at age 18. They had a son and adopted two girls. But they divorced a couple of years later. Then he married his second wife Xiu-Mei Wu and had seven children.

People in the village were surprised with this marriage. Wu was young and pretty and had been studying in school. It was rare for girls to go to school during the Japanese colonization period, especially in the agricultural village. They got married at Taipei, the capital. “People thought it was very special and elegant” Lin said.  

 Hong-Shan was a police officer of the Japanese government. He retired when the Japanese government withdrew and the Republic of China government took over Taiwan after World War II. He changed his track to be a farmer.

Since he only knew how to be a police but never known anything about farming, it was hard for him to be a farmer, his daughter Maggie Cheng said.

Despite of the lack of experience, he still spent a lot of time on his farm land. “He liked to grow fruits. We used to have orange trees, tangerine trees, pear trees on our farm land,” said his son, Jung-Hsien Lee.

Other than spent most of his time to do farm work, Lee also liked to spend time playing with his children. Unlike the traditional Chinese solemn father role, he was kindly and amiable to his children. He would play rubber balls with his children and showed them tricks.

“He used to tickle me with his beard and carried me on his back to pretend an airplane,” Jung-Hsien Lee said.

Lin Lee said that Hong-Shan Lee liked to make jokes to tease his family. He was humorous and liked to tell stories to his children. “He would take all of us to the yard singing folk songs and telling folk tales while we were enjoying watching the moon,” she said.

Hong-Shan loved all of his children Traditionally, Chinese people thought girls were not worthy, only boys were valued. Lin Lee recalled that when Maggie was born, he walked an hour and half out of the village to tell Lin Lee that she got a baby sister. Jung-Hsien was born in the worst time of Hong-Shan’s career, but he was still happy to have another child, in spite of the financial difficulties of the family. He never thought his children were burdens.

He moved to Taipei in his 60s to live with his children and grand children. He enjoyed living with three generations. “I remember that he would take me and my brother to his vegetable garden to play when we were little,” Lily Yi, Hong-Shan’s grand daughter, said.