My wife recently went to Florida for a business trip, and her destination happened to be the city where Dr. Lee currently lives, so she contacted Dr. Lee and planned to visit him. Dr. Lee said that he had a fall and was in the hospital. He heard that he was full of energy on the phone and thought that he would go home to recuperate soon. Unexpectedly, not long after, the news of his sudden death came.
Dr. Lee's real name is Lee Hwa-Wei, and he is a well-known figure in the Chinese library community in the United States. He served as the dean of the Ohio University Library for more than twenty years and achieved remarkable results, raising the ranking of the library from an unknown small library to one of the top 70 libraries in North America. After his retirement at the end of the last century, the school established an information center named after him.
He originally thought he would spend his remaining years in peace, but unexpectedly, the U.S. Library of Congress approached him and asked him to serve as the director of the Asia Department of the Library of Congress. He was already old and healthy, and the high-tech bubble caused a severe decline in the stock market, which caused his retirement fund to shrink. So, he moved east to Washington, where he worked for another eight years before completely retiring and choosing to settle down in the warm Florida.
I met him three times in total. The first time was when I went to Ohio University to visit him; the second time was when he stopped by to visit us; and the third time was when I went to Florida to visit him in retirement.
Every time I see Dr. Lee, I sincerely believe that he is a model for foreign Chinese. He always maintained the traditional Eastern humility and always had a smile on his face. Walking with him in the nursing home, whenever he saw passers-by, he would always say hello in a friendly way and ask: "How are you?" "I think his career success is not only due to his depth, but also his special approachability.
Easterners are often reserved in Western social circles, and in the eyes of others, reserve is sometimes seen as a kind of indifference and alienation. What makes Dr. Lee outstanding is that he is neither humble nor arrogant, gentle, courteous and thrifty. He uses respect to package his confidence.
Dr. Lee is so prosperous in his career that his family business has not been delayed. When he came to the United States from Taiwan to study, he met and fell in love with his classmate Mary at the University of Pittsburgh. The two souls from different races became one and spent a long life together. Mary gave up her career as a teacher and became a housewife, raising six children for him. Sixty-five years later, he and Mary have more than thirty descendants.
Generally speaking, Chinese people who marry Westerners may have a more obvious tendency to Westernize, but Dr. Lee is different. Most of his friends are Chinese, and he never speaks in English when talking to Chinese people. Even when Mary is present, he speaks Chinese to us. I asked Mary: "We are chatting in Chinese, do you understand?" She said: "I don't understand at all, but I am used to it." She is indeed used to it. As soon as she entered their home, Eastern culture came to her face. The calligraphy and paintings hanging on the walls, the various small furnishings on the bookshelves and on the table are almost all purely Eastern elements. Only Mary's high nose and deep eyes are Western.
Eastern culture is not only used to highlight Dr. Lee's home environment, but also penetrates his spiritual world. At the dinner table, he said that there was a lot of evidence that the Chinese might have discovered the United States earlier than Columbus, and that the maps Columbus used for navigation might have been based on Chinese maps. Dr. Lee also mentioned that the genes of the Mayans are close to those of the Chinese. Mary shook her head and expressed her dissent. Dr. Lee did not raise his voice and continued his argument. Mary was so angry that she called out softly: "Hwa-Wei" and couldn't help but hit him with her hands.
Even though they have been loving each other for decades, the confrontation between China and the West still exists between Dr. Lee and Mary. Dr. Lee’s love for his homeland and culture is so soft and solid.
From Dr. Lee's obituary, we know that he left this world peacefully. In his ninety years of life, he had a successful career, a loving wife, and a prosperous family just like Dr. Lee. This should be a perfect life.