Thank you for being here to remember and celebrate our father’s life. In his 75 years, he nurtured, inspired, and taught many people. As we reflect on his life, many lessons have come into focus that we will remember. Although his journey on this earth has come to an end, his love and values will live on in our own lives.
My father’s journey took him far. Along the way, even well after the age when most people retire, he brimmed with new and exciting ideas. When we gathered at home for holidays, cooking a meal or bao jiaozi, he talked about endless new projects, from integration of environment and energy, to agricultural sustainability, to food safety. We never heard him say that any idea was too big, or too complex or too difficult. My father seemed to understand that big ideas, even if not always immediately practical, inspire, motivate, and excite us. Often where others saw constraints, he saw possibilities. This is an idea that he repeated to me often when he would come home from China over the last few years and I learned from him that it is courageous to dream big.
In my father’s view, the journey was about finding new routes rather than following a roadmap. But finding your own way entails a willingness to be lost, at least for a moment. His life reminded me of our childhood car trips, we would be driving somewhere when my dad would turn left when the map said to turn right. We would say, “Where are you going? We are going to get lost!”, but my father always wanted to have a look around. In my father’s interview for the UC Davis Plant Science oral histories, he encouraged us to not fear taking the wrong direction, because that is how we learn where we are, where we want to go, and how to get there.
He taught us to never fear the apparent difficulty of a path. My brother remembers one of the first nights he stayed up past midnight working on an essay in junior high. He accidently turned off the computer when he was playing with the power cord and before he knew it, the essay was gone. He was frustrated, but quickly resigned himself to the obvious: he would head to bed and turn in his homework late. But my dad said, “no – go back and rewrite it”. My brother was sure he would be too exhausted to finish it, but when he sat down to write it again he found that it wasn’t as difficult as he feared.
My dad’s journey was also defined by his desire to share his excitement. When my brother was in the first grade, my dad went to his school to tell kids about his work. My brother was worried because our dad was a professor and not a firefighter. When our dad showed up at school, he brought a computer, which in those days was a special thing. The kids gathered around. “So”, he said, “who is smarter: you or this computer?” The children happily cried out, “We are!” My dad raised his eyebrows and asked, “Really? But can you do 100 math problems in one second?” Everyone fell silent. “No”, the children quietly admitted. “So, maybe the computer is smarter than you!” But, after a moment of silence, our dad proclaimed, “But the computer can’t do anything except for what you tell it to do - so you are actually smarter!”. Everyone cheered.
Although there are visible academic milestones on my dad’s journey, he frequently acted, almost reflexively, to help those he came across on his path. This week we have heard many such stories that he never mentioned, some of of which changed people’s lives, some of which brought smaller moments of joy. These are acts that have brought many people here today. As a child I saw what seemed like an endless parade of guests at our dinner table, especially on holidays. Many times he had invited them on the spur of the moment after learning they had no holiday plans. He and my mom welcomed them as part of our family. In more intimate settings, he was often plain silly. Once years ago, my daughter was upset and my dad was wearing a funny pair of slippers: there was half of a dog on each foot. He started fooling around, purposely mismatching them, until she laughed. When my father passed last week, this was the first memory that came to my daughter’s mind; she remembered that he could always make her laugh, until she was no longer sad. He could always make me laugh as a kid too. My dad’s ability to make someone feel welcome, or cared for, has taught me the value of responding to others’ needs as we walk along our busy life paths.
Like many of you, we had a hard time believing that our father passed last week. He was very healthy for a 75 year old man. He left us, it seems, mid stride. Did he reach that final mountain top on his journey? Reflecting on what he has done, and the many remembrances that people have offered, it is clear that our father’s goal was never the mountaintop; it was the way he traveled and the people he touched.
I will miss being a part of his journey, getting to be a daughter that is loved by her Baba.
We are so grateful that he was at home with our mom, who walked 50 years with him, on the day he returned to Christ.
