Meet: Uncle Zhaohua

Uncle Zhaohua is the second oldest of my grandparents’ eight children and the oldest son. That latter status meant he had extra responsibilities while growing up. For instance, when the family moved from Shilong to Guangzhou in the 1950s, my grandfather moved to Guangzhou about a year before the rest of the family did to begin his job, and he didn’t go back to Shilong at all during their move as Uncle Zhaohua, about 20 at the time, took care of all everything from hiring movers to getting the paperwork for his younger siblings’ school transfer.

Like his older sister, Aunt Peici, Uncle Zhaohua followed in my grandfather’s footsteps and became a doctor (though like Peici, he also went into Western medicine instead of Chinese medicine). He has been working as a gastroenterologist for decades. Early in his career, he did a stint in Hainan Island, the southernmost province of China. In the early 90s, he spent a few years at Yale. I still remember the 13-hour drives we made to visit him. These days, Uncle Zhaohua is doing a little bit of practice, a little bit of teaching, and a lot of traveling around China and other parts of the world to satisfy his newly discovered passion for photography (he caught it from one of his younger brothers, and given my shutterbug tendencies, I can’t help but wonder if it runs in the family).

Uncle Zhaohua and his wife, Aunt Yuping, both doctors and both alumni of Sun Yat-sen Medical College, where my grandfather worked.