This year they will celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary, they married in 1949. His daughter is coming home and he can’t wait to see little Li Fu who will be turning 12 soon. It is too long between visits and his heart aches to hold them both. He wonders if the nearly teenage boy will still want to spend time with him. He is now 77 and has not seen his grandson for almost a year.

Li Fu lives in Sydney. Ta Hun doesn’t mind this so much when he thinks about the education Li Fu is receiving and the opportunities this creates for his future, but he misses them. He appreciates Li Li’s commitment to teaching Li Fu about his Chinese heritage and making the annual pilgrimage back home to ensure his grandson remains connected to his Chinese family. Li Fu can speak Chinese and these visits are important for him to practice his second language.

His daughter Li Li, or Lily as she is known in Australia, was always adventurous and determined. Ta Hun believes she inherited this from her mother, Li Mei, as she did a number of her positive characteristics.

He remembers the day he spotted Mei on the hill, sitting under the willow tree suckling the child and crying gently. He was 17 and he had loved Mei for at least 3 years. He had never told her of his love for her, in fact he had never spoken to her. She was the prettiest girl in the village. She was confident and poised, a good scholar and she played a mean game of Mahjong. Her father was the chief administrator and a member of the emerging communist party. Some say he was friends with Chairman Mao. Ta Hun didn’t know about these things at the time. He was a peasant boy and his family struggled to pay the taxes owed to Li Mei’s father. He knew he had no chance of wooing Mei, her father would never allow her to marry a farmer.

He would watch her as she skipped through the town with her girl friends. She always had a cheeky grin and the other girls followed her basking in her charm. Mei was popular for all the right reasons, not just because her father was the administrator and everyone wanted to be on the right side of him. She was quick witted, funny and smart and well out of his reach. This just made her so much more interesting to him. So he was shocked to see her there, with the tiny bundle pressed to her breast, sobbing. He approached her tentatively and asked if he she was alright.