A painting by Ruth V Hemenway featuring Chongqing's riverbanks. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Century-long connection

Although decades of silence severed the ties between the doctor's families in China and the US, they were independently driven to preserve her legacy.

In China, Huang Yao set out to find Dr Hemenway's descendants while translating the doctor's memoir into Chinese to heal her grandmother's lifelong yearning.

Across the Pacific, Thomas Hemenway was on a parallel quest. While Dr Hemenway's original manuscripts were preserved at Smith College, Thomas gathered multifaceted information to build a family history website and reconstruct her life.

In 2024, they were finally connected through Zhang Hong, whose grandfather — Hua Sing's cousin — had introduced the infant Hua Sing to Dr Hemenway decades ago.

However, as their communication grew, the family experienced a profound loss when Hua Sing passed away peacefully in Fuzhou in March 2025.

Four months later, in July 2025, Thomas traveled to Fuzhou for the first time. Though too late to meet Hua Sing, he embraced Huang Yao tightly at the historic Enlan Building, a landmark structure Dr Hemenway had overseen the construction of in the 1920s. Beneath a century-old lychee tree Dr Hemenway had personally planted, the relatives tasted its fruit together.

"The deeper story is that for so many people here, friendship became a relationship, and a relationship became family," notes Elyn MacInnis, founder of the Friends of Kuliang organization, reflecting on the century-long connection.

"People arrived as strangers. They became friends. Eventually, they became part of one another's lives — they became an extended family."