Tien Pao-tai, Fourth Generation Legacy: Memorial Video

 

Sabrina Kentis甘德娜

 

[Sabrina Kentis is Ambassador Tien Pao-Tai's great granddaughter, Judith Lau's granddaughter. She graduated in Computer Science from Wesleyan College and is now pursuing post baccalaureate Pre-medicine at Columbia University. Her hobbies are music (guitar and piano), jiu jitsu(柔術)  and video making and video gaming.]

  

Tien Pao-Tai's Memorial Video (Composed by Sabrinia Kentis)

https://youtu.be/T4V1M9cyCK0

      I was lucky enough to know my great grandparents growing up! It was a truly special occasion when I got to visit my great grandparents on my mother’s, Laura Ginn Lau (劉立璟) side, in Beijing or Los Angeles. 

 

My great grandparents, or Zeng Gong Gong  (曾公公，ZGG) and Zeng Puo Puo (曾婆婆，ZPP ) were Tien Pao Tai(田寳岱) and Liu Shih Lung (劉世綸, also known as Yeh Man, 葉曼). From my earliest memory I felt their love. They would always ply me with treats and push a Red Packet (紅包) into my small hands. Every year on my birthday I would receive a card from them with another red packet. Zeng Gong Gong  would spend time telling me about what Beiping was like when he was a boy, about his boyhood house, his university on an old Beiping map, and especially history of the Tien lineage from Emperor Shun and the Tien Chi kings whom ZGG could proudly trace by generational descent for over 4000 years!

 

In the Chinese culture, virtue and education were of the greatest importance to a human being, as it was to my ZGG. My ZGG was a 3rd generation Beida (Peking University北京大學) graduate who had obtained in 1935 the highest national university entrance score held in the traditional 3 days long exams and said to have broken all previous records.  According to my ZPP, the accomplishment was equivalent to a “Zhuang Yuan” (狀元) status under the millennia old Chinese imperial system. Our family frequently, teased my ZPP that ZGG won her hand because of his scholarship and not by romantic courtship.

 

ZGG had carried on the Tien legacy of academic excellence as ZGG’s father and grandfather had also both graduated from the precursor of Beida and served at the imperial court when Beida was an Imperial Academy 京師大學堂 and 國子監, the highest Chinese educational institution {from very ancient days} under the aegis of the emperor. 

 

ZGG was an economics major who graduated in 1939 from the wartime Xinan Lianda( 西南聯大) during the Japanese occupation of Beiping when Beida, Tsinghua and Nankai Universities fled to Kunming. ZGG was self taught and conversant in English, French, German and Japanese. When I grew older, ZGG would talk about present day politics around the world. ZGG was not only an impeccable Chinese gentleman and scholar, a true “jun zi” (君子), but also a discerning diplomat and world citizen who had lived on 4 continents and travelled to dozens of countries for work. He never gave up on learning about and from the world, in persistent self-improvement and in serving his people and country. Even through a century of devastating wars, immense suffering and great personal loss, ZGG was optimistic about the future for his descendants as the following video shows. 

 

My Zeng Gong Gong will forever be an example of a life abundantly well lived and a legacy I shall cherish!

 

 

              Great Grandfather’s last birthday event at age 99,in Los Angeles,

                         Sept 27, 2014.  Standing rom left to right: Grandma (Judith), me,

                         Mother(Laura), Aunt (Estelle).

Great Grandma's 95th birthday banquet in Beijing,  April 4, 2012.

Tien Pao-tai: A Memoir, published by Institute of History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, in 2015.

Great Grandfather was awarded a Presidential Citation for his dedication and Commitment to the country