DEKAT DIGITAL 2019 - 2020

After years of popping in at Emma’s for quick conversations that become hours of
gastronomic delight while we solve the world’s problems and reconstruct society,
chopsticks in hands and dipping sauce at the ready, I know Emma has immense joy,
humility and wisdom within her.
She balances her inquisitive, philosophical and sometimes serious nature with wit and
humour. She has an abundant laugh, capturing life in an instant as it ripples to the
surface quickly, like crystal.
“Do not take yourself too seriously,” she always says.
That is her motto in life.
Emma loves animals and calls her two Rottweilers “my boys, my children”.
“I cannot see myself loving two-legged children more than I love my dogs. I grew up with dogs and cats, often quite
a few at a time. When a stray dog or cat followed us home, my sister and I would make up a sad story to persuade
Mom to keep the animal. And once Mom had bathed it, it would be another member of the family.” On a more serious
note, she says, “As a Chinese person, I also feel that I owe the dogs and cats more because of how other Chinese
people treat them.” And that’s the heart of Emma: the soul of caring.
Her fondest food memories are associated with events and time spent with loved ones, from her mother’s dumplings –
“She made them large and flat, without any folds. She said those fancy folds may look pretty, but they were unnecessary
‘dead’ dough” – to a Peruvian ceviche of large crunchy corn, herbs and raw fish in downtown Santiago de Chile, and
Taiwanese cold salty goose and beer at a service station in Taichung on the first trip she took with Colin to Taiwan.
“Braised chicken feet are my favourite nibbles when I watch a film,” she adds. “In Taiwan, chargrilled chicken feet are
sold outside movie houses. My sister and I would buy four each and take them to the movies with us.”
Author of her own book, the popular Emperor Can Wait, which was published in 2009, she loves reading and counts
another Austen novel, Sense and Sensibility, among her favourites. “I will never get tired of reading her novels. The
wit, the characters, the plots and the happy endings make me reach for them again and again.”
When she is homesick, even after 30 years in another country, “I read a few chapters from Romance of the Three
Kingdoms or Journey to the West.
“When I turned 50, I celebrated my big day by watching the entire Alien Quadrilogy for nine hours straight. I dream
of one day reading about the discovery of another life form on another planet.”
If she could invite fictional characters for dinner, it would be Neo from The Matrix and writer Lee Child’s creation Jack
Reacher (not the Tom Cruise version, though, she adds). “I would sit on Keanu’s lap and feed him one noodle string at
a time. Jack and I would walk down a dangerous, dark alley, and after he beats up the baddies, we’ll share burgers,
with a black coffee for him and a latte for me.” She laughs. “Jack doesn’t like Chinese food, but no one is perfect.”
“I can cry whenever I feel like it.”
A mother to many, a sister, daughter, wife and mentor, Emma embraces womanhood with brimming humour.
“I enjoy that I can pretend I know nothing about cars; that I can be a mother to all my staff members; that, as a woman,
I can cry whenever I feel like it.
“In life, the important things for me are health, quality of life when I think of my sickly parents, freedom from poverty
and war when I think of the world, and yet, at the end of the day, perhaps I would say, ‘nothing matters’.
“But from time to time, I like to pause and truly appreciate the happy moments in life.”
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