Tan Liok Ee
She is 文庆婶 to me and my sib... · 23 Jan 2019
I have known 文庆婶 since I was a child as our families always met at Chinese festivities like CNY. 文庆淑 was a wonderful man, a very loyal friend of my father's who never failed to advise him against bad decisions. They worked well together and were very smart businessmen. But both 文庆淑 and my father were men of their generation, very domineering, very stubborn, very bad-tempered, very male chauvinist - in other words difficult husbands who expected complete loyalty and obedience from their wives. My mother always said that she and her friend shared the same fate as wives. But they both remained faithful, loyal and devoted wives - true to the values of their generation.
I remember 文庆婶 as a really soft and gentle person, soft spoken, considerate and tolerant - never a bad word to be said about anyone. She was the epitome of all the traditional virtues expected of a Chinese woman - expressed in the phrase 贤妻良母. I will leave it to her own children to remember what a good mother she was.
Looking at her obituary in Chinese, the most striking feature is how perfectly complete it is - for a traditional Chinese family. She has lived to see 四代同堂 - 4 generations under one roof; she has in every generation both male and female descendants; and there are professionals and highly educated children and grandchildren of BOTH genders in every generation - this is the dream of every traditional Chinese parent. In her quiet way, she would have been very proud of the family she has raised. The Chinese phrase, 一门俊秀, fittingly describes her family tree. She is blessed and is hopefully truly at rest and at peace now, having lived a full life of 94 years.