Sai Fang’s Story -

67-year-old Sai Fang is a part-time office cleaner. She spent much of her youth working in factories and construction sites and married when she was only 18.

Although she describes her son, Whye Kee, as a “precious miracle”, having conceived him one month after a workplace accident caused a miscarriage, her marriage to her ex-husband was nothing short of a nightmare.

Her ex-husband was a gambling addict and abandoned his family to flee loan sharks, leaving Sai Fang to raise two children alone. When he returned several years later and she divorced him, he demanded full custody and rights to their marital home.

Whenever she could, Sai Fang would visit the children to give them money and toys. In the meantime, her ex-husband sold their home for gambling money and constantly moved himself and the children between rented rooms.

The lack of family stability and fatherly neglect drove Whye Kee, previously an obedient and creative child, into gang life and drug addiction.

“I knew my son was having trouble in school,” she says, “but I didn’t know how bad things were until he got arrested.”

Sai Fang’s son — already an established gang leader and struggling with severe drug addiction — was arrested when he was only 17, to her dismay. She would visit her son in jail several times a month. “Every time I went to see him, I would come back crying,” she recalls. In the present day, the sad memories of watching her son spend years behind bars are still painful enough to break her stoic disposition, and she begins to cry.

Sai Fang says she would pray unwaveringly for her son’s rehabilitation. It took more than two decades of constant struggle for Sai Fang’s son to get where he is now, as a successful full-time artist and business owner. A pair of cabinets he built and a tea set he sculpted are now among her most prized possessions.

“I feel relieved,” Sai Fang says, “As a mother, all I can hope is for my son to be safe — I don’t dare ask for more.”