Yiqing Zhou, 61, of Porter Ranch, California passed away peacefully on the evening of Thursday, April 16, 2020, surrounded by comfort and love from her husband and two daughters. Her untimely passing followed a courageous battle with stage IV lung cancer that ended one year and one day after her initial diagnosis.

Yiqing was born and raised in Shanghai, China. She developed a love of the arts and the outdoors from a young age. One of her favorite hobbies as a child was Chinese landscape painting. Beautiful scenes of mountains and rivers would flow from her watercolor brush.

As a teenager, her world was upended during China’s Cultural Revolution. She and many of China’s youth were sent to work in rural villages as part of the Rustification Movement and denied the right to a higher education. Although those years were intensely difficult, she would instead tell her daughters stories about how fun it was to grow watermelons from scratch.

She survived this tumultuous period with grace and resilience, and developed a lifelong passion for education and social justice. When the universities re-opened in 1978, she took entrance exams in an applicant pool ten times the usual size and gained admission to East China Normal University, majoring in mathematics and eventually becoming a teacher. Serendipitously, her future son-in-law would also enroll at the same university 20 years later as part of a study abroad program.

Shortly after graduating from university, Yiqing was set up on a date by one of her colleagues. The lucky man was her eventual husband of 37 years, Richard. They fell in love immediately and were married 1 month after their first date. There were many reasons that he was a keeper, but she always joked that the real reason was that he always gave her the last bite of dessert. In 1985, when Richard started pursuing a PhD degree in the United States, Yiqing left everything in Shanghai to join him, flying to America with 30 dollars in her pocket and a heart full of hope for a bright future.

Yiqing worked first as a nanny, living by her personal mantra to try the hardest at whatever she did, no matter how seemingly small the task; she loved the children she cared for like her own. She later became a math tutor and was the most patient, compassionate teacher, believing all her students had potential.

Her understanding and kind spirit was most evident in the way she raised her two daughters. They enjoyed lovingly prepared breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of their school-age years, whether it was two sunny-side-up eggs and toast, or wonton soup, placed in a tupperware with a makeshift sock cozy. They grew up protected and comfortable in the happiest of homes, never fully aware of the magnitude of their mother’s sacrifice in their formative years.

Yiqing maintained her love of life up until her untimely passing, through countless CT scans and 6 long, difficult cycles of chemotherapy. Prior to her last hospital admission, she was still going on daily hikes with Richard at their favorite local trail, doing at least an hour of Tai-Chi and yoga each day, and cooking up a storm; her daughters each received a massive package of her specialty salt-cured duck and zhong-zi (粽子) via overnight mail a few weeks prior to her sudden decline.

She was a world traveler, visiting over 30 countries in the last 5 years of her life; her favorite was New Zealand, where the views of the mountains were unparalleled. She had impeccable style. She loved to dance and was always in the front row at her local Zumba classes. She loved to garden, whether it was tending her citrus trees or cherry tomatoes or rescuing orchids from grocery stores and nursing them into full blooms. Her daughters luckily inherited her love of cooking and drawing and her penmanship, which was exquisite.

She had the uncanny ability to make friends with anyone, from her much younger, former students to those twenty years her senior. She loved the simple things in life: the smell of the ocean, a hot home-cooked meal, and lazy weekend mornings in the backyard patio. She found much peace and comfort in the view of the mountains from her backyard, curled up with her grand-dog, Boomer, on sunny California mornings during her last year.

Yiqing is survived by her husband, Richard, daughters, Emily and Denise, son-in-law John, sisters Yihong, Yili, and Yiwen, and mother Huizhen Li. She is mourned by her family as well as anyone ever touched by her charisma, kindness, and generosity. Her spirit will continue to flourish as long as there is love and appreciation for life.