Sabrina Popo wasn’t like other grandmas. She was my grandma. She lived on her own and juggled a bustling circuit of dim sum outings, senior ballroom dancing, and mahjong with her circle of girlfriends. If I wanted to spend time with her, I had to squeeze into a calendar that was perpetually booked.
Even after spending forty-five years in the United States, Sabrina Popo didn’t need to pick up English, thanks to her life in the predominantly Chinese enclave of San Gabriel. Yet there were moments when she’d catch me off guard with phrases like “se-do-be-ley”—her Cantonese take on strawberry—and “Roshi,” her attempt at my childhood dog’s name, Yoshi.
Sabrina Popo adored beauty: delicate pink garden roses, appealing people, flawless complexions, and those who shared their beauty. I’d find her wearing a large visor, almost like an Asian Darth Vader, while tending to her garden. Typically she cared deeply about her public appearance, but when protecting her porcelain skin was the priority, she would bend the rules. She’d fetch me from school in a car whose windows were utterly blacked out, wearing elbow‑length white gloves. She always appeared a decade younger than her age, and she received marriage proposals from a rotating cast of older men. She carried herself with a quiet grace, a dash of vanity, and we adored her for it.
During Lunar New Year, Sabrina Popo’s home blossomed with bowls of kumquats and mandarin oranges, chocolate “gold coins,” sesame brittle, and white chunks of candied winter melon—reserved just for me.
The withdrawal of affection that defined both my parents’ childhoods was a common story in Chinese culture….Tough love was the only love.
Steph and I would chant every Cantonese proverb we’d memorized that year, trying to impress the adults enough to collect as many red envelopes of lucky money as possible.
“Sum seung si sing 心想事成,” we’d say, saving the best for last.
“Sum seung si sing 心想事成,” Sabrina Popo would repeat as she handed me a red envelope with both hands and a wink. May all your wishes come true.
While Sabrina Popo occasionally surprised us with herbal broths simmering on her back burner, a batch of salted‑cabbage‑and‑pork dumplings, or Kraft macaroni and cheese with evaporated milk, she had been far more of a social butterfly than a domestic genius when she was raising my mom and had relied on her own mother to help out. Yet when my great‑grandmother died from a heart attack while triumphantly shouting “Pong!” at the mahjong table, Sabrina Popo told my then‑teenage mom that she was the new family cook. My mom didn’t know how to boil water. But someone had to step up and shoulder the responsibility. So she ventured into an open‑air market and timidly pointed at random cuts of meat from a smoking butcher wearing a bloody apron. Crowds of people cried out for her to hurry as she fumbled through the negotiations. She returned home to stir‑fry the mysterious meat with unfamiliar vegetables and served it to the family.
“Your famous cardboard with rubber bands!” Phillip Gong Gong, my grandfather, teased her, chewing the tough meat and the slightly raw cabbage chunks. Yet he ate it with a smile, my mom says, and called it utterly delicious. It mattered little how it tasted. They needed to be fed. By age fourteen, she’d grown up.
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Phillip Gong Gong was a charming man with a sharp jawline and meticulously styled hair. The eldest son among sixteen siblings, he watched as nearly all his sisters were married off at birth except the youngest, whom he raised as his own while he was still a teenager. A self‑taught musician able to play nearly every instrument, he juggled roles as a music teacher, bartender, and a Ricky Ricardo–style big band leader, until he achieved fame as a conductor in Hong Kong with his own variety show on television—a career he later gave up to move to America, trading a household name for a discreet pianist presence in San Francisco’s lounges. And he was a romantic—something I inherited—thriving on the rush of falling in love.
Sabrina Popo had also dreamed of finding love since she was a girl.
My grandparents had met when they were about eighteen. Sabrina came from a family of scholars with status, while Phillip—a struggling musician and the son of butchers—could not meet their expectations. Sabrina’s identical twin sister, Virginia, was arranged to marry a Chinese American man in the United States who spoke no Cantonese, but Sabrina would not let her parents stand in the way of their love—or stop her from conceiving. In a culture that valued saving face, they eloped and wed before anyone could notice the truth.
Yet even after giving birth to my mom, and later to three more children, Sabrina never quite embraced motherhood. She’d roam the streets of Hong Kong, flaunting her finest outfits while shooing away her children, who trailed several steps behind. When they were out in public, Sabrina’s best friend often held my mother’s hand, acting as a stand‑in for a parent.
The withdrawal of affection that shaped both of my parents’ childhoods was a familiar pattern in Chinese culture. Praising and hugging your children was seen as spoiling them. Rigid rules and high expectations molded children into responsible, disciplined individuals. Tough love remained the prevailing form of love.
And by my mom’s teenage years, my grandparents’ marriage had begun to unravel. My grandpa had fallen for a woman at the nightclub where he worked. In a last‑ditch bid to salvage their marriage, Sabrina announced that she and the kids were moving to America. I have no idea how this would resurrect a faltering union, but she pulled up stakes, sending my sixteen‑year‑old mom and her three siblings across the Pacific to Hollywood, with almost no command of English.
They squeezed into a one‑bedroom apartment above Franklin Avenue, sharing bunks and dreams. My mom enrolled as a junior at Hollywood High and took charge of the house—reheating frozen chicken pot pies, tidying up, and ensuring everyone did their homework. Even with limited English, she found work wrapping wontons at a nearby frozen food plant to help cover the rent.
Divorce wasn’t common in the 1960s, and it carried enormous stigma in our culture—Chinese communities have no shortage of harsh judgments for women when marriages fail. Yet Sabrina Popo, fearless in the face of that shame, filed for divorce. Newly independent, she found employment as a bank teller in the mostly white San Fernando Valley. She began leaving my mom and her siblings for weeks at a time to visit her new boyfriend in Boston, Teddy, whom she would eventually marry. My sixteen‑year‑old mom was left to care for three children under fifteen on her own.
My mom and I discuss it openly now: Sabrina Popo admitted that she never really wanted to be a mother. Both she and my grandfather wrestled with the expectations of their culture while trying to follow their own desires. Phillip pursued his music, and Sabrina pursued what brought her happiness—sometimes at odds, sometimes in harmony.
It’s hard to imagine my mom navigating life on her own at such a young age, acting as a caregiver to her siblings. I feel protective of teenage Alice, who was thrust into adulthood far earlier than her peers. Yet my mom carries it with grace. She’s always had a glass‑half‑full outlook and understands that Sabrina did what she could. Sabrina chased what made her happy, and in a way, she modeled freedom.
Motherhood may not have been Sabrina Popo’s calling, but she was a loving and affectionate grandmother. She spent afternoons with us while my parents were at work, driving us around, blasting Chinese opera. She’d stop by to buy a bag of oranges from the roadside stall, and would return home complaining they had holes, unaware that my sister and I were poking them with toothpicks in the back seat. At her house, we’d play hide‑and‑seek inside her closet, brushing our fingers along cool silk slips, beads, and fur coats. Steph and I would wrap ourselves in her white feather boas and strike poses, giggling. We’d spin around her vanity lined with photos of Sabrina’s travels, choosing lipstick shades and admiring the neat rows of nail polish. But the best part of all was discovering her collection of wigs. I’d try one on and strut down an imaginary runway until she caught me.
The paradox of my dad is that he could unconsciously say the most hurtful, unfiltered things to your face, but he was also honorable and generous.
Because Sabrina Popo spoke only Cantonese, our shared language was food. When she and Teddy Gong Gong treated us to ice cream at Thrifty’s, each of us ordered a tall cone in a sugar‑free cone—classic butter pecan for Teddy Gong Gong, pistachio for Sabrina Popo. I’d chase the rainbow sherbet—the hot mess of colors and sweetness. Popo would glide her cone with perfect poise, never dripping onto her magenta lipstick. Somehow, her ice cream always seemed flawless, just like her.
Yet the strongest tradition we shared was dim sum—the heartbeat of our family. Every Saturday we’d head to Sabrina Popo’s favorite restaurant in the SGV. From the outside, the building looked weathered, but upon reaching the top floor, we’d be hit by the roar of hundreds of voices. The banquet hall was chaos incarnate, filled with families elbowing their way to the front, bribing the hostess for a table with red envelopes. Our parents would drop Sabrina Popo’s name, and we’d be seated in a hurry.
To call a dim sum house loud would be an understatement: voices overlapped, plates and teapots clanged, elderly ladies commanded carts that swarmed between tables, and customers cried out for their favorites. The tables wore salmon‑pink cloths and red chairs, each plate arriving with a napkin folded into a swan. Chandeliers spread their glow overhead.
Before my aunt and two uncles arrived, my mom dictated the seating arrangements. My preferred spot was at the edge of the table, closest to the dim sum carts as they rolled by. I settled in and gazed at the egg tarts and baked pork buns, their tops glossy and golden. Some carts were stacked high with metal steamers, while others held boiling water to blanch tender gai lan. I listened for the crackle of turnip cakes. The cart lady would flip them on a griddle until each side was perfectly crisp, then load them onto a plate. I relished the sweet, caramelized bits of Chinese sausage and dried shrimp tucked inside each bite.
My mom’s siblings often arrived with grumpy expressions and short fuses. Their moods would lift only when Sabrina Popo made her entrance. This particular Saturday, she swaggered in wearing a leopard‑print tracksuit and rose‑tinted sunglasses, circulating to greet friends at every table. Her arrivals always carried a certain vibe. When she finally reached us, she insisted on sitting on the outside of the table, right in the thick of the action.
Sabrina Popo called to the server with a small, knowing smile. The server stooped to listen to her.
“Guk fa cha, mm goi 菊花茶,唔該,” she said, asking for her usual chrysanthemum tea in a voice that blended Chinese opera with gentleness.
A white teapot appeared at the table, and my sister began pouring the tea into a line of little porcelain cups. Steph passed one to each person, turning the lazy Susan in the middle of the table. She finished pouring tea for my dad, who was busy exchanging shouted Cantonese jibes, yet tapping two fingers on the table to show his appreciation.
“Har gow 蝦餃! Siu mai 燒賣! Char siu bao 叉燒包!” a woman announced, pushing her steaming cart straight to my eye line.
Two metal steamers landed on the table, one on top of the other. My sister split the buns between us, giving me the other half of hers. The pork glazed with a sweet, sticky sauce oozed from the center of the fluffy bun. For a child, char siu bao felt as thrilling as a bag of candy. The lazy Susan quickly filled with favorites: sticky rice with abalone wrapped in lotus leaves, spare ribs with fermented black bean, curried honeycomb tripe.
While my aunt and uncles bickered over the best pieces, monopolizing the best bites for themselves, I caught Sabrina Popo’s eye. She nudged me toward her favorite dish, offering a braised chicken foot on a pair of chopsticks. I teased her with a puckered fish face and a laugh. She winked and smiled back.
Sabrina Popo ate slowly and deliberately, and I often joined her in the patient, methodical pace as the rest of the family impatiently waited for us. After we’d finished the entire lazy Susan, the delicate dance for the check began. It was a social ritual, a test of manners and upbringing, a display of who you were—and more often than not, a display of who could win the social game. It could turn fierce quickly—I’ve seen aunties and uncles slam their fists on the table, and checks torn in half. Kids sometimes played the role of scouts to hunt down the bill.
My dad was the first to grab the bill, ready to spar for it. But my mom’s brother pretended to need the restroom, while another aunt and uncle turned to chat with one another.
Sabrina Popo reached for her purse.
“Please, Lou Ma Zi 老媽子”—he addressed her as his own mother—“don’t even think about it. My treat!” my dad said, lifting a hand to stop her. There was no way he’d let an honored elder pay. A good man pays for the bill, and the paradox of my dad is that he could utter the harshest, most unfiltered remarks to your face, yet he also behaved with integrity and generosity—and he’d certainly look after the family at the dim sum table.
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From The Girl Who Became King by Melissa King. Copyright © 2026 by Melissa King. Published by The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
