Lily Leung

Hello! My name is (Leung) Hafong alias Lily Leung. You always say the last name first….that is the Chinese way. That is my partner lurking behind me. Since this is my blog, I won’t mention his name. But this is a rather cool picture. You see me and yet you don’t…sort of the way I feel about myself most of my life. So this blog is a self-exploration, an archeology dig of some sort. My tools…..words of a thousand or so at a sitting. I will try for that.

I was born in China. My parents’ marriage was arranged. My father left for America (Canada) when I was two. And I didn’t see him again till I was eight, when my mother and I joined him in Hong Kong. I lived in a matriarch environment for those first years, since my paternal grandfather was also overseas. I am certain that has important impact of who I am today.

My father stayed with us in Hong Kong for over a year. And my sister was born. He returned to Canada shortly and my mother, sister and I followed at a later time. By then, my sister was two. We settled in Maidstone, Saskatchewan….a small community of 600 people. My father and his cousin ran the Rex Cafe. There was one other Chinese family in town. They had the Star Cafe, which was directly across the street. And so our life in Canada began, with my brother being born a couple of years later.