Jennifer Wong isn’t sure she wants to translate her mother’s words, but, dutiful as always, she does what she is asked.
"My mother says that she is very proud of me," the Kapolei High School junior says, quashing the uncomfortable smile creeping from the side of her mouth. "She says I am a good daughter."
Though clearly averse to such discussion, Wong keeps her translations sweetly matter-of-fact.
Wong’s mother, Dan Sia Wong, remains similarly composed, emotions revealed only in her eyes.
Dan Sia and her husband, Ming Yuen, emigrated from China in the early 1990s.
Ming Yuen, who found work at a tofu factory, wanted Jennifer and her older brother, Henry, to have a Western education but also retain their native language and culture, sending them to Chinese school and exposing them to Chinese prose and poetry.
In 2006 a routine checkup revealed that Ming Yuen had liver cancer. Although subsequent surgery to remove the tumor was successful, he soon succumbed to complications. And less than a year later, Henry, just 25, died in a motorcycle crash on Nimitz Highway.
"It was very difficult," says Dan Sia, who works at a Chinese restaurant to support the family. "I didn’t know how to handle all of it. I only had Jennifer left to support me."
Jennifer worked through her grief by immersing herself in art and music, learning dedication and discipline from piano instructor Rosie Wong and creative expression from art teacher Daryle Mishina. She excelled at both, winning national competitions and a free trip to Disneyland.
But it is Jennifer’s latest accomplishment that has brought the most joy to her mother’s heart: first place at the Leeward District science fair with a project that identified a potential precursor to liver cancer. That could prevent others from dying as her father did.
"Especially with what happened with my father, I want to be a doctor and to be someone in whom people can put their trust," Jennifer says. "To me that would be an honor."
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Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
