Jane Han Chen

She passed after a brief illness and was supported by family and professional caregivers so that she could remain at home.

Jane was born in 1926 in Liuzhou, China to a father who was a general in Chiang Kai-Shek’s army and a mother who survived her husband’s many years away at war by laundering towels. Jane was predeceased by two older brothers and a younger sister and is survived by a younger brother. She weathered the 1930s Japanese invasion of China by living in caves and walking hundreds of miles from her home in Guangzhou Province to Yunnan Province.

Although unusual at the time, Jane was educated alongside her brothers and later attended Guangzhou University, where she studied banking and met her husband, Donald Chen. When the Communist Army neared victory, she left China with her father and other high-ranking military families on one of the last boats to Taiwan in early October, 1949.

Jane and her husband became high school teachers and lived for 20 years in rural communities along the southeast coast of Taiwan near Taitung, where they became parents to five daughters: Yvonne, Catherine, Donna (deceased), Susan, and Elizabeth.

The family emigrated from Taitung, Taiwan to Boston in 1971. In the 50 years that followed, Jane became a key punch operator at Shawmut Bank, learned new technologies as the computer age evolved, and retired as a data entry operator under Fleet Bank. She was the matriarch of a family of five daughters and a niece, their spouses, nine grandchildren and a grand-niece and nephew, and four great-grandchildren. A devout Catholic, she was an active participant of the Chinese congregation at the Holy Trinity Church on Shawmut Avenue in the South End, and later attended St. James the Greater Church on Harrison Avenue in Chinatown.

A funeral mass will be offered on Monday, May 23rd at 10:00 a.m. at St. James the Greater Church followed by burial at Mt. Benedict. In lieu of flowers, please send a donation in her memory to South Cove Manor in Quincy or to St. James the Greater Church.