Login to View Recording

Handout

Shee’s 氏 Heirlooms

Join us as we explore the role of women in Chinese history. In our 2021 webinar, “Who Is Shee 氏?”, Zack Wilske and Marisa Louie Lee highlighted the less known experiences of women in immigration. These unknown, often nameless, women were left behind in China to shoulder family caregiving responsibilities, while their men/husbands worked overseas. This inspired our Chinese Family History Group member, Kitty Lew, to discover her foremothers’ stories. 

Her maternal grandmother was a real estate syndicator in Hong Kong with many other sojourner single mothers from her village. She survived WWII as a seamstress, hand sewing cheongsams and outfits without printed patterns.

Kitty’s mother, Wai-Ling Lew, was one of the first women to secure a construction loan to build an apartment structure when women weren’t allowed to borrow. She learned to save money by sewing dresses for her three daughters.  

Kitty inherited her grandmother’s intuitive tailoring as a child using scraps for Barbie doll dresses. With a recent family wedding, Kitty discovered the intrinsic cultural heritage of family heirlooms from her mother’s hope chest. Kitty will share her research on the Cantonese two-piece traditional wedding attire (qun kwa 裙褂) and Guangdong mud silk fabric (xiang yun shā 香雲衣).