She was born into a wealthy Cantonese family who made their fortune trading in gold. She described in great details the compound where each member of the extended family lived with wives and concubines and all the children – a large clan with enough gossip to populate a little town.

She talked of my grandmother’s desire to see her first child, my mother, educated – even if she were a girl – and took great pains to hire the right tutor. My mother was proud of being singled out to be so honored when all the other children of the extended household were bundled off to day school which was more like a large playground.

She was happy reliving those carefree days and we would sit at the kitchen table for hours while she reminisced. But I didn’t share her enthusiasm. The Chinese names of places and people had no spelling and sounded too complicated for me to tell them apart. I became confused at the proper nouns. I had not seen enough old-time Chinese movies to be able to imagine the life she was describing. In America, I had grown up with westerns and action flicks; I didn’t have the sights and sounds in my recall’s disposal to relate to my mother’s memory.

Most of all, I didn’t know what to do with the stories. You have to record it; I advised her and went off to Radio Shack to buy a recorder. But it was complicated and she never managed to use it. Write it down, I next advised but the stories were already on her lips and they would not be stopped. And so day after day, I sat and listened.

After the revolution, the family is scattered and the wealth is gone. Pampered children from imperial days are suddenly left to fend for themselves. My father and mother must start anew. My mother takes a job at the post office where the work is too easy but job security is guaranteed. If I hadn’t taken this job, I might have done something more with my life, my other tells me fifty years later. I run from the regret in her voice, a sadness too great to bear. But slowly the family is rebuilt and life continues the best it can.

Instead of focusing on the plot, my mind would wander. Why is she telling me all this, I wondered. I, whose Chinese name, Kay Sun means love of the new, had lived a life questing for change. I, who have spent a lifetime looking ahead, why would I be looking backward, into a past that held no meaning for my present life?

Among my father’s things was the family tree that he had so painstakingly assembled, going back five generations. He had let it go over the last few years as his health failed. Many of the nieces and nephews names will have to be added. When I mention it to my brother, he seemed uninterested, preferring to talk about more pressing issues like his new project at work. My sister too seemed surprised that I would bother with it, now that my father was no longer around.

But my mother has put it into my hands and there is nothing I can do but to take it. I tell her that I will replicate this oversized chart on the computer, to make it easier for adding and distributing to our immediate clan. But I resent the responsibility. How did it happen that I, the youngest of five, end up being the one in charge of the family record?

We go to Hong Kong, one by one, my mother tells me. First your father, then grandma takes you at three years old, too young really, do you remember? Your sister goes next. And then me and your other sister follow. The brothers come on their own, all at different times. The entire leaving and reuniting would take five years. But finally we are all together, and we set out for America where your grandma’s sister had settled decades earlier.

And the stories continue. The weigh of them depresses me. I don’t want to hear anymore. Should I write them down if my mother cannot? How do I get by all the names? Always the names that I can’t understand.

When we came to America, you might have been too young to know, we had nothing.

I wasn’t too small, I remember. Now her past superimposes on mine. I can recall the first apartment over a honky-tonk bar, with sounds of the drunken brawls waking me up late at night. I remember the used furniture and hand-me-down cloths that our kind relatives amassed for our large group. I remember the tall man who takes his wife’s dress for my mother to hem on her off hours after working all day. How uncomfortable he looked when I tell him she is sick as stands in our doorway, holding his wife’s dress in his hands.

And so in America too, our family rebuilt our life. My oldest brother works instead of studying so the youngest ones can go to school. My married oldest sister sends money when she can. In time, the family buys a house. In more time we sell the house for a profit and buy a bigger house. The younger brother becomes a surgeon, the younger sister becomes a programmer and I come to China. Our family has thrived.

I have heard these stories since I was a child playing at the feet of aunts and uncles as they marveled at how each have survived the loss of the clan’s riches. Like music in the background, the familiar refrains end on the same note each time, the story never varying very far from the original. Yet, this time, I was hearing it in-between stays in China, and the old recognizable plots seem strangely familiar in a way that I had never noticed before.

For it was around the same that that I had sold the companies that I had painstakingly built over the years in China. Many people had asked how I could let them go. I had simply shrugged and told of the need to move on, to start something new and how building from scratch has never been my problem. In the way I tell of my leaving and rebuilding, I found a common theme that echoed with what my mother was recounting now.

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I have read that a culture’s myths and legends tell us a great deal about that culture’s beliefs. The story of Cinderella has created a generation of western women-girls who yearn for her prince charming. China’s “Art of War” has created a merchant class that negotiates like an army at war – complete with faking out and routing the enemy.

But what about the legends in one’s family? What about those stories that run through your childhood, the ones that leave a more tangible legacy than any bank account. The stories that have colored the decisions of those whose genes you inherited. They have surrounded and nourished you like an invisible force until their stories and yours start to blend. By the time you become aware, your story has become an extension of your family’s legend, adding to its weight, and being absorbed so that your personal preferences are overwhelmed.

This year marks the 10th year of my sojourn in China. In those 10 years, I have built and sold four businesses, and I have created and abandoned four lives. Like my family, I create a life complete with work, home and friends. Then submitting to a force greater than myself, I walk away from everything that has been close to me and go somewhere else, start from scratch and rebuild from zero. I am indeed the torch bearer in my family’s stories; stories that have become heavier by the year.

They were meant to inspire, these legends. They were meant to tell of how a family survives after having lost. They were meant to give courage and hope so future generations can carry on even in the worst of times.

But I had misread them to mean a prophecy. I mistook them to imply: never stay long in one place; never continue with anything no matter how worth creating, and one must abandon and start again, as if on a deadline. And so I did, build and rebuild without end.

In the last half of my mother’s life, she had not needed to rebuild. The last house she bought in America, she lives in it still. When I visit, I see the lamp that has been there ever since I can remember. The bed I slept on as a teenager is still there. Photographs of children and grandchildren adorn the walls. But I had not noticed. I had been fed our family’s early stories like it was an adventure to be followed, a blueprint for a quest.

And so to China I quested. Blindly playing out a script I had no part in writing. But this time, sitting at my mother’s table, it was not her voice that I heard. Along the way of coming and leaving, building and rebuilding, my own voice had grown strong, one that called the past into doubt. It told of a different reality; the discovery that some things are worth keeping, some things one must hold on to, and some things one must not let go – not by choice. And that sometimes, it takes more courage to commit then it does to leave. It had taken me a long time to hear this voice.

I thank my mother for telling me of my family’s stories. In her need to talk about her past, she has inspired me with the richness of our survival, the tenacity of our love, the enduringness of our journey. Now I hope she won’t mind, but here I will take my leave of our family story and begin to create a legend of my own. In time, perhaps I will pass on my story too. I will tell of the journeys taken and the roads discovered. I will recount the adventures full of hardships and joys. Most of all, I will tell of the value of a life worth building – and keeping.