Mr. Wing Po Tse’s Life Story
Mr. Wing Po Tse was born in the Hok Shan Province of Kwangtung, China, on 4th day of the 10th lunar month in the 7th year of the Chinese Republic. His father was working overseas in the US. Thus Mr. Tse was raised in a family well provided financially. Mr. Tse was an intelligent child, excelling himself in school and often assisted the teachers in teaching. Mr. Tse liked fine arts since childhood. He entered the Fine Arts Institute of Canton as a teenager to study Chinese art painting, oil painting and human portraits. During the Second World War, he explored around his shattered country to engage in operating small businesses with his friends until he met his future wife, Miss Siu Tong Wong, and married her at the age of 23. Immediately after, he returned to his birth place of Hok Shan Province to be nominated as the first division chief officer and court judge, until Mainland China’s political change.
During late 1949, Mr. Tse brought his wife and two young children to try making a living in Hong Kong. He used his limited amount of money to invest in business endeavors and operating a farm. Unfortunately, the money was exhausted to leave him and his family in a financial limbo. Nevertheless, he did not succumb to adverse circumstances. He worked 12 hours a day as a factory worker, a job he maintained until his children became independent and had their own professions. It was during this period of difficult time that our Heavenly Father gave Mr. Tse and his family members opportunities to hear the gospel and receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. It was amazing for Mr. Tse, too, that from 1970 on, he could take a turn to start a new career as a professional oil painting artist, an endowed talent from above to sustain him and his family members to settle down well financially.
In 1982, the elderly Mr. Tse and his wife joined their eldest son’s family in Hawaii. The eldest son’s family had migrated to the US in late 1979. By that time Mr. Tse needed not worry about earning a living. So he made daily visits to Chinatown to have dim sum and participate in various social functions, acted as a “bus tour guide” for seniors of his age. Most importantly, he had the opportunity to receive spiritual nurturing beginning with his baptism at the Church. In Hawaii, Mr. Tse had wide acclaims of his talents in art painting, especially among the celebrities in Chinatown and later on in the city as well, making him a celebrity himself once when the Governor of Hawaii invited him to a banquet to honor him for painting a highly-praised personal portrait for the Mayor of Honolulu. This episode, together with his many delightful activities, gave him much satisfaction in life, and fond memories that lasted during his life time. Mr. Tse spent around twenty years in Hawaii, witnessing the regretful passing away of many of his good friends. He started to slow down, and moved to Seattle in 2002 to make his new home there.
Mr. Tse had been in good health all along. At age 83, he often took his wife for sight-seeing and pleasure trips on bus rides across scenic spots of Seattle, until his wife grew weak in health. Mr. Tse continued to frequent Jack in the Box and QFC by himself to enjoy coffee and to shop around. He loved to gather with his family members, from old to young, every Sunday for a warm family dinner. Toward the end of his life, he was still active in using the computer, spending most of his waking hours to go online, browsing websites of his interests in Chinese, such as Chinese personalities and social issues, and getting connected with his relatives, distant and close through MSN.
Toward the end of 2009, Mr. Tse’s health started to deteriorate, gradually losing appetite and weight. Between April to July of 2011, Mr. Tse had lung problems which required him to be hospitalized 3 times. During his ill health, the loving relatives of Mr. Tse took turn to care for him and to console him in Christian love, waiting on and serving him faithfully at his bedside day and night. Finally the elderly Mr. Tse rested peacefully in the bosom of his Heavenly Father of loving kindness after more than 90 years on earth.
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. John 11:25