Pui Liu Look

Pui Kam Liu Look grew up in the large Liu Family village of Fu Tou Yeang near Guangzhou, China. She attended the elementary school located in her village, helped care for her four younger brothers, and kept a sharp eye on things. Her brother, Ho, once remarked that his sister loved to study and always had her nose in a book, while the rest of them ran amok.

Born in 1937, at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, Pui was the third daughter of peasant farmers. Her two older sisters were victims of infanticide because they were not male. Her life was spared, she said, because the mid-wife had told her mother that her third daughter would bring her “son luck” and many brothers would be born if she were allowed to live. Indeed, four sons followed, and Pui, only a child herself, was put in charge of them.

By the sixth grade, Pui was a student in Guangzhou, where she failed to test into middle school and her formal education came to an abrupt end. She lived with her father in Guangzhou and helped him in his shoe shop near Hoi Gì Bak Lu. Later, she followed him to Hong Kong, where she was able to enroll in a local high school. There, she met her life-long friend, Louise, who said that Pui always had her nose in a book, and never budged from her desk even during snack breaks.

In 1960 she met the man of her dreams, Wah Look, an American who had returned to Hong Kong in search of a wife. They met through a relative, and were married within a week. Pui emigrated to Seattle the following year, and began a new life.

She became the mother of three feisty children in the 1960s, and by 1970, she was so tired she went to work. She found a job at the Thaw Corporation in downtown Seattle, sewing jackets and sleeping bags for REI. Her first paycheck showed that she earned $1.17 an hour, though minimum wage was $1.45 at the time. She had no sewing experience or skills when she started, but proved to be a fast learner and became an extremely talented seamstress that her employer depended on to train new hires. She worked at many different jobs in the factory, and ended up staying thirty years.

In her retirement, Pui enjoyed travelling. She and her husband often headed to their favorite destination — China. They marvelled at stepping into the Forbidden City, descending into the Ming Tombs, walking among the terracotta soldiers and strolling along the Bund. Growing up in the debilitating poverty of their villages, they never dreamed that some day they’d walk into rooms where emperors once sat. They also enjoyed going back to their rural villages and catching up with relatives that knew them as children. After she was widowed in 2014, she traveled less.

The year she turned 80, Pui celebrated by taking her daughter back to the street where she used to live in Guangzhou, Hoi Gi Bak Lu, near the famous Daxin Lu. It was a quiet residential street with a couple of car repair shops tucked in among the two-storied French colonial homes. Her house, No. 68, was still there, boarded up and abandoned. She stood under the tree in front and said that her friends used to come by every morning to pick her up for school, yelling, “Pui Kam, come down!” After mimicking their shouts, she smiled quietly and stood there for a long time.

Pui is survived by two brothers, Tommy Liu of Seattle, and Siu Liu of Hong Kong; her three children, Lenore, Arthur, and Johnny; two granddaughters, Charity and Madison; two great-granddaughters, Riley and Emilia; three grandbirds, Sarah, Quaker and Crash of Kent, and many nieces, nephews, and cousins throughout the world.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared below for the family.