THE ELKHART TRUTH
Obituaries
TSING YING TSANG LIM
May 12, 1910 - May 24, 2005
GOSHEN -- Tsing Ying Tsang Lim, longtime Elkhart resident, died on May 24, 2005, at Greencroft Nursing Facility. She was 95 years old.
Tsing Ying Tsang Lim was born in Paris in 1910, the daughter of Yau King-Sou and Chang Chin-Kiang. Her father was a revolutionary who was involved in the attempt to overthrow the last Empress of China.
Tsing Ying was the youngest of five girls. In 1916, as the clouds of World War I gathered over Europe, she, her mother and sisters left Paris for New York City where her father, who was in China, owned an art gallery located on Fifth Avenue.
In 1923, following her mother's death, she and her sisters rejoined their father in China, remaining there until 1927, when she once again returned to New York and enrolled in Parsons School of Design. After graduation she returned to China and opened a very successful, exclusive fashion design shop in Shanghai. The Japanese began strafing Shanghai in 1936.
Once again, she was forced to leave and move into the interior of the country. In 1939 the family left China once again for New York City. Besides Tsing Ying, there was her father, stepmother and seven half brothers and half sisters.
Tsing Ying, dubbed the "Shiaparelli of Shanghai," was an instant hit in New York. She threw herself into raising money to aid war sufferers in her homeland. She held elegant shows in the Metropolitan Museum, in chic hotels and department stores, and she gave lectures in museums and universities. She worked in the famous Stage Door Canteen during World War II. Her designs were displayed in most major eastern U.S. cities and Paris.
In 1946, she abandoned her career to return to China to marry Robert K.S. Lim, a distinguished scientist and the Surgeon General of the Chinese Nationalist Army. She became invaluable in helping him establish hospitals and medical units in China. During World War II he served under Gen. Stillwell in Asia and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Franklin Roosevelt and the United States Government for his outstanding service to humanity. The Communists swept into Shanghai in 1949, and Tsing Ying was displaced by war for the third time. She and Dr. Lim fled to Taiwan, where he once again began to organize hospitals.
Shortly after they moved to Taiwan, Tsing Ying and her husband returned to the United States. Dr. Lim was anxious to get back to his first love, research. In 1953 he was persuaded by Walter Compton to join Miles Laboratories in Elkhart. Dr. Lim died in 1969. Tsing Ying lived in Elkhart until 1996, when she moved to Greencroft in Goshen.
She is survived by two sisters, Nai Lee Smith and Mimi Chong, both of New Mexico; a brother, Tommy Chong of New Mexico; six grandchildren, Didi Edwards Grieg of Edinburgh, Scotland, Vivien Whittal of Ross-on-Wye, Great Britain, Robin Lumsdem, Lesley Lim, Shawn Mottley and Mirah Lim, all of Jamaica; and scores of nephews and nieces and friends who loved her dearly.