Sue Zhang usually does not tell others that she's a daughter of Zhang Zhizhong, who was a high-profile general in China and a well-recognized patriot.

Zhang is the youngest of three daughters and also has two brothers. She was expected to be a boy and was raised like a boy, she says.

"Maybe that's why I'm adventurous," she says, "I learned how to swim when I was 3, horse riding at 10. I was a gymnast on my college team. And, in my 50s, I started to learn to ski and fell in love with it!"

Zhang has been leading several Chinese community groups. In 2007, Zhang was elected chairwoman of the Roundtable, working with more than 60 Chinese-American organizations in southern California to bring the United States and China closer.

Zhang has lived in the US for decades and her home in California is not far from Pasadena, which has been the host of the world-famous annual Rose Parade for more than 100 years.

"The first thing that I worked on was to bring a float representing China to the parade," Zhang says. "At the time, Beijing was preparing for the 2008 Olympics. It was especially meaningful to showcase our Olympics dream in the rose parade."

Avery Dennison, a Fortune 500 company whose products include pressure-sensitive adhesive materials and specialty medical products, also wanted a Chinese-themed float because it has branches in China.

Zhang managed to obtain authorization from the Beijing Olympics Committee for the float. Dennison agreed to provide $150,000 and Zhang needed to raise an additional $200,000.

"The economy was good in 2007," Zhang says. "I called up 10 friends and asked each to donate $20,000. All of them did."

With the money, Zhang and her team encountered other problems.

One is that some anti-China forces tried to sabotage the float. Most people thought the float would not become a reality, but Zhang persisted.

"I was never discouraged," she says. "I believed we would be successful."

After numerous negotiations, on Jan 1, 2008, the China Olympics float passed by the Rose Parade podium. Zhang held hands with her team member from Avery Dennison and said: "We finally made it!"

But Zhang was not finished with floats. After the Beijing Olympics float, she began preparing one for the Shanghai World Expo. With the support of the Shanghai Municipal Government Information Office, she invited several Rose Parade committee members to the 2008 Shanghai Tourism Festival parade. Zhang also brought designers to Shanghai to become familiar with the city's customs and styles.

"As a result, the designers captured the essence of the city of Shanghai, and it became another win-win cooperative effort from the two ends of the Pacific Ocean," she said.

In 2012 when then-Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping visited the US, Zhang delivered a speech representing all Chinese-Americans in southern California at a party for Xi.

Zhang gave Xi a copy of her book, In Memory of My Father: General Zhang Zhizhong, with an introduction written by Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun.

"All overseas Chinese have a common feeling: the further away we're from our motherland, the closer our heart is to it," Zhang says.

While traveling back and forth between China and the US, she established an educational foundation in her father's name to support needy students from Anhui, her father's home province.

Zhang plans to produce a movie of her father in 2015, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

wangjun@chinadailyusa.com

Sue Zhang (second from left) joins a protest with other Chinese community leaders. Wang Jun / China Daily

(China Daily 02/23/2014 page5)