Mona Locke, Dad Visit Family Home Father’s Childhood Mansion Now Run-Down Apartments

Larry Lee’s childhood home - a three-story stone mansion with 11 bathrooms, two living rooms, 30 servants and, flanking the main entrance, two lion’s head sculptures - has all but disappeared.

In its place stands a decrepit and divided building, home to dingy, two-room flats for retired state transportation department workers.

He probably wouldn’t have stopped by the house Thursday night if it weren’t for some gentle prodding by Mona Lee Locke, his daughter and wife of Washington Gov. Gary Locke. She had never been to Shanghai and had only heard bits and pieces of the Lees’ dramatic, politically charged story as she grew up in the San Francisco Bay area.

Father and daughter arrived together at 360 Xiangyang Road.

When the Lees were forced out of cosmopolitan Shanghai, they were stripped not only of their comfortable life of privilege and private property. There was a much more profound loss.

After helping his wife and children set up house in Sichuan province, Lee’s father, T.K. Lee, a politically active Nationalist and general manager of the Central Bank of China, returned to Shanghai. Father and son never met again.

“He was captured by the Communists,” Lee said. “We think he was executed. He never came back.”

Larry Lee’s return to the house of his childhood caused something of a stir for the elderly ex-transit workers who now occupy the run-down apartments. They asked if Lee had come to take their house away.

“I don’t need a big house like that anymore,” said Lee, who had planned a simple, unemotional business trip to China but instead spent an evening with his daughter and the governor, awash in memories. “They just let it get so run-down. Before it was such a beautiful house.”

Mona Locke’s presence on this trip has changed its tenor, reinforcing its personal nature.

Her father later expressed gratitude.

“I’m kind of glad I did it,” he said. “I needed somebody to share my history.”