Uncle David, M
ui’s de facto
godfather, died this week. He’d been fighting cancer.
ui’s de facto
godfather, died this week. He’d been fighting cancer.
In the forward to our book The Girl Behind The Face, David writes
of us as a family: “I
am an admiring friend.”
Well, we’ve admired David since
the very first day we met him; the day he changed one vile act of
discrimination, into something very, very good. The day he changed our lives.
When Mui began at international
school, she had to go by bus. Tina booked a seat for the coming term. The first
evening, Tina received a phone call from a woman from the bus company.
‘I saw your daughter, today,’ the woman spat down the phone, ‘your
daughter looks like a monster… She’ll scare all children… She will never go to school on my bus…’
No one offered help; people looked
the other way. Unstable health meant Mui’s life hung in
the balance then and Tina and
I were coping together alone; no time to fight vile
discrimination.
Mui was banned from the school bus and
there was nothing we could do. It was a devastating moment. We shielded her
from the truth and moved on.
Three years later, Tina received a
phone call from a man we’d never met. An eloquent
English voice asked: ‘Is that Tina?’
Tina answered, ‘Yes.’
‘I’m David Tang. I’ve heard about you and your family. I’d like to
meet you, Roger and Mui. Can you come to the China Club on Wednesday?’
On Wednesday we made our way to David’s private club.
David’s humour was immediate, outrageous and fun and he had Mui in a
fit of giggles and Tina and me laughing out loud from the off. And he wasted
nobody’s time:
‘What’s this about a school bus…? Right, let me sort something out…
How about a taxi back and forth to school…? You find a driver… I’ll pay…’
The following Monday, taxi driver, Mr Lee, became Mui’s twice-daily
chauffeur.
One reader of our book wrote after reading the chapter in full: “Sickening
to read these hurtful, ignorant comments but how good was D. Tang! Fantastic.”
And that same evening David did a second fantastic thing for us. Trips, parties, lunches, dinners, a medical conference in Seattle and so much more... down
the years, David and Lucy, his wife, have done so many huge and big and small “fantastic”
things for us.
On Mui’s 21st birthday, a day doctors said she’d never
see and we would never celebrate, we celebrated together with David and Lucy,
on Sir David’s boat. It created another magical memory on such a special family
day. Later in the afternoon as Mui opened presents and David told funny and
mischievous stories, we sailed past the hospital on Hong Kong Island where Rog
and I first met Mui and where we’d celebrated Mui’s second birthday – our first
together. The distance travelled between both birthdays was lost on neither
Tina nor me.
David has been a larger than life figure in a great many people’s
lives and it has been a privilege to be called a friend by him and to call him our
friend, too. So please keep Lucy (Lady Tang) in your thoughts and prayers,
right now.
So many happy, funny and fun afternoons and evenings. We shall miss
David greatly.
Thank you, David.
Our website: http://www.thegirlbehindtheface.com/media.html
Pretty remarkable, but I suspect not that unusual...
ReplyDeleteYes indeed. David has helped people galore.
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