atherine Young still cooks a mean lunch at 100: pot stickers, dumplings, boiled cabbage with dried shrimp, fish, pork, white rice and tea. As she talks, she arranges dishes and fusses over her granddaughter and one of her guests. Ever encouraging, she presses everyone to finish all their food.
Even at a century, she is experiencing a renaissance.
During a recent visit, Young pulled out an album of friends from her bridge, Mah Jong and rose-garden groups, and as she pointed out and named her friends, she mentioned when and where they died.
"She's outlived everybody," granddaughter Angela Chang said laughing.
"With God's help, I am strong," Young said. But then she added, "It is a choice, longevity."
Young's story is traceable across two continents and several wars, and has been filled with adventures. During all this, the themes of faith and classical music played in the not-too-distant background.
She was born in the Fukien province to a devout Christian family. The youngest of eight ambitious and educated children, Young was no exception. She desperately wanted to attend school. However, at that time, education was not easy to find for women. But Young was determined to learn something besides "embroidery and baby sitting my nephews and nieces."
In 1919, when she was 18 years old, she began school in Nanking where she started in the first grade. She was the only 18-year-old in a classroom of young children. "That takes guts. I don't think too many people at that age would be willing to do that," said Chang. By 1921 she had finished sixth grade. In 1928 she finished high school and moved on the Yenchin University in Peking, where she met her future husband, Timothy Young, at choir practice.
A woman who would have been classified as a feminist had she been born 60 years later, Young chose her own husband and married him in 1931. They had four daughters: Katherine, June, Pauline and May.
As Mao Tse Dung began to rise in power within the Chinese Communist Party and the Japanese continued to exert pressure on China, Young was just trying to raise her children and find a place to live. Then on July 7, 1937, Japan invaded China and the country plunged into war. During the next decade, Young and her family moved 31 times. They began and ended up in Shanghai, also living in such cites as: Huschow, Hong Kong, Haifond, Tali, PooAn and Kun Ming. In her autobiography, she wrote that her family endured long train rides, dangerous sea passages through Burma, malaria, air raids, measles, and living without her husband for long periods of time. However she never lost her faith.
"Look at me!" she said, "I have no wrinkles, because somebody is behind me -- I don't worry."
In August 1945 the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. "Oh, my goodness, how happy we were," Young wrote in a personal memoir.
The Youngs moved several times before coming back to Shanghai and buying a piano. But again their life was upturned when the Communists took over China on Dec. 15, 1947.
Young left her husband in Shanghai and escaped on a ship with 3,000 people on it. The whole family eventually met up in Hong Kong. Her husband decided to remain there with her eldest daughter who was attending college. Young moved to Taipei, Taiwan.
In Taipei, things eventually got a bit better. Young found work at the Young Women's Christian Association where she taught typing and English, and worked as a church secretary and as a choir mother.
Then they applied to immigrate to the United States through the "A Refugee Chinese Intellectual" organization. In 1958 they went to America in one of the first flights of the Pan Am Clipper airplane, arriving with only $400.
In San Carlos, they eventually settled down. Young taught typing, babysat for 75cents per hour, and gardened to make a living. Her husband worked as an accountant.
Nineteen years ago the couple came to Lytton Gardens.
Instead of settling down into a life of leisure and retirement, Young began a whole new array of activities. She set up a rose garden, tends it and joined a Mah Jong group that played for more than 20 years. She also loves to talk about her extraordinary well-educated family: All of her daughters received college degrees; two obtained masters. Then she loves to talk about her 10 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
"With God you have to be very patient," Young said. "I talk to God. I say, 'God, will you give me 10 grandchildren like my 10 fingers?'"
But perhaps her greatest renaissance has been over the past two years. In 1999, at the age of 98, she took a course entitled "Linking Ages," taught by David Lansdale. The course was designed to teach seniors how to use e-mail and surf the Internet. She ended up winning over the teacher and teaching him a thing or two as well.
"She was one of the star students," said Lansdale. "The first day she went home to surf the Internet, she came back to class and said, 'Guess what I found when I surfed the Web: China, Mah Jong, roses.'" Once Young learned how to use the Internet she began to encourage her daughters, who were also seniors, to learn. Soon she had her entire family connected. In fact, for her 100th birthday the festivities were arranged via e-mail. Fifty-seven relatives from around the globe attended on May 5, this year.
At the end of the Linking Ages program, Young was one of the four keynote speakers. She told the audience, " 'Before we were wilting flowers. And now we are thriving roses.' "
The incredible heritage of her life and story and her enthusiasm about sharing it has really impressed Lansdale. The two have become good friends. Lansdale said, "She told me, 'You are the morning star on my sunset life.' "
For this Chinese-American senior, 100 years young, the thirst, drive, quest, passion -- whatever you call it -- for knowledge and growth continues every day.
