There is one more memory that belongs in this book.

It is not from Taipei.

Or Hong Kong.

Or Canada.

It happened many years later, around a family table, when three generations gathered together with a simple request.

“Ma, tell me how it all began.”

At first, it felt as though we were asking about the past.

Instead, we were given something much more precious.

We were given time together.

As the conversations unfolded, something unexpected happened. The woman we had always known as Ma and 阿嬤 seemed to become, once again, the young girl who walked to school in Taipei, the university student who loved basketball, the young woman whose father waited through the night for examination results, and the wife who built a life one ordinary day at a time.

Stories that had lived quietly inside her for decades returned with remarkable clarity.

She remembered streets and buildings long since changed. She remembered workplaces, classmates and neighbours. She remembered conversations, routines and the small moments that most people assume have been forgotten.

Sometimes one memory would gently lead to another, as though the years between them had quietly disappeared.

What surprised us even more was how willingly she shared them.

Those who know 阿嬤 have always known her as a thoughtful and private person, someone who rarely placed herself at the centre of attention. Yet whenever another question was asked, she answered with warmth and generosity, never appearing reluctant to revisit the many chapters of her life. It was as though she understood that these memories no longer belonged to her alone.

Around the table, the generations met in unexpected ways.

Questions came from children who knew today's 阿嬤 but had never imagined the young woman she had once been. Their curiosity carried the stories forward, while each answer gently shortened the distance between past and present.

The interviews were never simply about preserving family history.

They became another family memory.

One day, there will be children and grandchildren who never had the chance to sit across the table from 阿嬤. They will never hear her laugh at a remembered story or watch her pause as she searched for the name of an old friend before recalling it a moment later. They will never ask her another question.

But perhaps they will read these pages.

Perhaps, as they follow her from the streets of Taipei to the basketball court, from Yanping South Road to New Park, from Taiwan to Hong Kong and Canada, they will come to know her in much the same way that we have.

Not as a name on a family tree.

Not as a list of dates.

But as a daughter.

A wife.

A mother.

A grandmother.

A woman who quietly built a life through love, perseverance and ordinary kindness.

That has always been the purpose of these conversations.

Not simply to remember the past.

But to ensure that, long into the future, someone who never had the privilege of meeting 阿嬤 can still finish this book with the comforting feeling that, somehow, they have spent time with her.

And perhaps, when they close the final page, they will find themselves wanting to ask the same simple question that began it all.

“Ma, tell me how it all began.”