A young Betty Chan Po-king would spend her school holidays playing in vacated classrooms while her mother worked to create what became a family educational dynasty - the Yew Chung Education Foundation network of international schools in Hong Kong and the mainland.
Dr Chan's mother, Madame Tsang Chor-hang, opened the foundation's first school 70 years ago in Kowloon. She was a 19-year-old education graduate who had a vision to educate young people and help make China strong again after the Japanese invasion.
As a Christian, Ms Tsang, who died three years ago, believed in teaching children about Christianity and that God watched over them. Mother and daughter worked together at the schools until Ms Tsang retired in the 1980s, although she continued to be involved with the foundation, greeting parents and students at the gates each day.
Today, Dr Chan has continued her mother's vision. She is director of the Yew Chung Education Foundation, which oversees four campuses in Hong Kong, and four schools in the mainland, with another on the way. It also operates a child care centre in the United States. Enrolment totals around 4,000, with the organisation catering for students of all ages right up to A-level and International Baccalaureate Diploma.
Yew Chung's international schools in Beijing and Shanghai are limited, under Education Ministry rules, to enrolling foreign passport holders. But it is also extending its philosophy to local students, through its Yew Wah International Education Schools, which follow the mainland curriculum but include strong English elements. So far it has two such schools, in Yantai and Pudong, but more are planned. Also in its long-term plan is opening Chinese-English bilingual schools in California.
Most recently, Yew Chung has been granted a site in Kowloon Tong to build a private independent school, with a capacity for 1,000 students, following problems with the site it had been awarded near Sha Tin. The new school is due to open in 2003 or 2004.