More than 100 fans attended a conversation between Chinese actress Liu Xiaoqing and former actress Lily Chen Foster (Chen Ye) at the Baker Institute at Rice University.

Liu and Foster became good friends through filming the 1980's blockbuster movie The Burning of Yuanmingyuan Garden. While Liu continued to make films in China, Foster came to Houston to study drama at the University of Houston. In 1985 she married Charles Foster, a lawyer and chairman of the Asia Society Texas Center.

Foster played a couple of minor roles in movies and TV shows during her early married life, and then devoted herself to raising her two sons. Foster's younger son, Zachery, who is attending Rice University, said he attended the event on Thursday at the university to hear his "two moms" talk.

Liu, who came to Houston to perform in the play A Legend: Sai Jin Hua, was happy to meet with Foster for the second time in Houston since her first visit to the city in the mid-1990s.

Foster gave Liu a framed black and white photo of herself and Liu. "Look at us then, Black Rose and White Rose," said Foster, and then she took out a bag of jalapenos.

"I heard someone was looking for hot peppers for you in the middle of the night when you were filming in Paris, and I remember you had to have pepper for all your meals back then," Foster said.

Besides remembering their time together filming, Foster expressed her admiration at Liu's resilience and her achievement as an actress in the past 20 years.

Liu recalled the photos that she received from Chen each year that showed her sons growing from babies to young men.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 04/14/2014 page2)