PERIOD COVERED: ;1920s;-;1979 RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979 [summer] SUMMARY: Came to Canada in 1965; lived in Hong Kong most of her life; was born in China; fathers was a businessman and she traveled all over the world with him when she was three or four years old; lived in a boarding school most of her youth because her mother died; studied geography and history because she wished to understand her country better because of the colonization and subjection by other countries on China; speaks of her progressive thinking father who believed the need for education over the importance of marriage; married at 28, her husband died three years later during the Japanese bombings; her father's older brother also died with him and left her with two of his children; raised all four children alone; returned after the Sino-Japanese war to reclaim her husband's property; was forced to flee because the relatives were going to sell her; women had no rights then; she and her children egged on the street because as an educated woman, she could not make a living. After the 1949 ;civil war, she returned to Hong Kong with her children; she sent her children to Canada as students, later they received their citizenship and they sent for her; people in Vancouver's Chinatown have old-fashioned country/farm attitudes, i.e. dress "proper" and well, and they have even accused her of being a prostitute; some people accuse her of being a Communist spy because she purchased a Communist newspaper; talks of Canada's democracy and social assistant programs; discusses unionism and the below minimum wages workers in Chinatown still receive; discusses her views on current provincial and federal politics as it relates to social services. Talks of the polarities of the Nationalist KMT government and Communist government in China and that both sides did not give women rights; avoids ;organized groups in Chinatown because of the gossip; talks of other current world affairs; and firmly believes that if one has children, one must look after them.