My wife, Wan Zhen Hua, Born in Wuxi, Jiang Su Province on April 13, 1920 came to know me as a distance cousin in 1930. We became playmates while our families vacationed in Lushan, a mountain resort in Jiang Xi Province. Later we became reacquainted in a series of family events and became attracted to each other. I remember once in 1934, she introduced me to her grandfather, and he was pleased to meet me.

We had a grand engagement party in 1937, although I was still in my sophomore year in college and was not able to attend. My grandmother was very pleased with her future granddaughter-in-law, and later was under Wan Zhen’s meticulous care till my grandmother became senile.

Then the Japanese aggression turned the war toward Wuhan, where my father managed some industries. Facing an imminent threat of war, he was considering moving the factories to more interior parts of China.

At that time, one of my motherís relatives, Mr. Hsieh, a Wuxi silk merchant, offered to take me along with his family to go to the United States to continue my college studies. My father urged me to go, and I eventually graduated from M.I.T. in 1941. While I was in graduate school, the war in the Pacific broke out in Pearl Harbor. This led to the closure of civilian oversea travel for years. Wan Zhen endured a lot of hardship and even dangers while traveling overland from Shanghai, city where her parents lived, to Baoji, where my parents were. She hoped then either to get a visa to visit me in the States or to welcome me back in Baoji, should I come back. To her frustration, none of this happened for the entire period of World War II.

Eventually the War ended, and I came back to Shanghai aboard the second cargo ship sailing to Asia from New York, which arrived on January 7, 1946. It was a long voyage of 51 days, sleeping on a bunk bed formerly used by the anti-air craft gun crew during the war. On January 11, we got married in a gala post-war wedding.

Since then we have lived a full life of mutual support, caring for our parents and our young siblings, and also raising our children. She gave me great support in the relocation of my work site and in moving our home from Shanghai to Beijing in 1956, willingly taking our furnishings and the children to set up the new home all by herself while I went to construction sites. She also went to join me with our second daughter, Ming Lin, to see what it would be like to relocate to a home in Dantung, a frontier city along Yalu River bordering North Korea. The story of a real wolf peeking into our window was told many times in our family. To our daughter, the wolf was coming!

In the late 1950ís and early 60ís she was a good teacher and known as Teacher Hua by her students in a local class aimed to eliminate illiteracy. She also was kind to everyone and never said anything mean to hurt anyone’s feelings.

During the turmoil of Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when I was to receive "re-education," she always comforted me in enduring the hardship even when she herself was humiliated. She was always friendly to young people; her optimistic attitude during the difficult time inspired the people around her to overcome the misfortune. At that time, all of our daughters were working in the remote farming areas. She always told them and their friends and schoolmates that life would get better and a better future would be assured as long as one had hope and faith. All of our children remembered, and some of Ming Langís schoolmates still come to visit her often "because Ming Langís mother had given us hope at that time."

At her suggestion, I retired from my work at age 65 and moved to San Francisco and lived there from 1984 till 1999. We attended many family and class reunions (M.I.T. 45^th and 50^{th )}. In addition, we two enjoyed many tours of the States and Europe together. After Ming Lang and Ming Xian relocated to East Coast, we felt there was a need to be near them, so we moved to live with Ming Lang in McLean, Virginia.

We celebrated our 50^th Anniversary on January 11, 1996 in our daughterís home in McLean, Virginia with our family members. It was the day after the "Snow Storm of ë96". From then, we returned to Beijing for a few months at a time. In September 2002, we decided to stay in Beijing because our age had caught up with us and we might need more care from our children. In Beijing, Ming Lin is retired and can live with us during weekdays, Ming Qiu with us for the weekends, and Ming Chin comes to drive us around from time to time when needed.

At last, time really caught us unprepared. At 06:37 in the morning of May 15, 2004, Wan Zhen stopped breathing while I was holding her hand. She was hospitalized for only three days with heart and kidney complications, but she had suffered a fall three weeks earlier that broke her shoulder and put her in a cast. Later she developed lung and heart failure that ended her life.

Wo-hu-ai-zai ! She left; she left five fine children and me with so many of the finest memories. She was a great wife, a great mother and really did her part well in our big family as well as the complicated world around us. Wo-hu !

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2004/05/18 Zhi Fang Li