Susan Tong Ting

As a thick snow fell on an unusually bright night, Susan Tong Ting passed peacefully from this world, wrapped in the love of her family.

She was born in Leshan, Sichuan, China, on January 3, 1944, delivered into this world by her father, her mother telling him what to do every step of the way. 

In 1950, her family made their way to Hong Kong. She never quite escaped the long shadows of her two brothers’ brilliance in school, but she worked hard, she cared for the family, she loved to dance. Some years later her mother had a brief encounter with the Mormon church, and that’s how a mink farmer sponsored the family’s travel to America. She was 15.

At Penn State, she studied to be a math teacher and met her future husband who (on their first date—a walk through the woods) dazzled her with his botanical knowledge, introducing her to some berries that she promptly had an allergic reaction to. He rushed her to the hospital, and watched over her the rest of the day as she slept.

They married in Philadelphia, honeymooned in the Poconos, and moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he taught geology at the local university. For much of her youth, her hair was long, luxurious, and black. Then she had her first child—a son—who tugged relentlessly at it. She cut it short and never went back.

North Dakota was cold. So they eventually settled in Morgantown, West Virginia, first in faculty housing where lasting friendships were made; and—with a daughter on the way—they built a house on a hill with two orange doors and a porch with a view of the sunset. By any account, it was a home (and a life) to be envied. 

But she was restless just raising kids at home. So in 1981, they bought the old East Garden Restaurant on University Avenue and renamed it the Chinese Gourmet. Through the restaurant, they were able to sponsor family from Taiwan and China to come to the States, many of whom stayed and made families of their own. After a lifetime as a daughter, a wife, a mother, it was something just for her; and she poured everything she was into it. In a way, she was like the food she served—dependable, light, a bit salty, a bit sweet, with no MSG. Open, funny, opinionated, she was what you saw, with arms as wide as the extraordinary table she set for you.

She was 45 when her husband passed. 

In this moment, if not before, she came into her true power. She held her children close, refusing to let them give in to the Great Unmooring. Guiding them along the sudden pivot from childhood to adulthood, she taught them resilience and grace and perseverance and the deep sort of love that they would carry with them always. She held them close, but not so close that she couldn’t let them go when their own stories called—one to art, the other to healing.

Something was liberated in her as well. And the call of the potter’s wheel felt finally in reach. Still, for all the doors she opened throughout her life, she never forgot to hold them open for friends and strangers too. One wheel became eight. Her community joined her to build tables and shelves which filled the room that was once a laundromat—a brick kiln rose in the parking lot. She wanted the name to be something of the earth, but also of the heart: ZENCLAY was born. And through it, her passion for the ceramic arts inspired countless others old and young to fill that room and those shelves with things of their own making. In that way, the things she made were lasting, like the porcelain ginkgo leaves she carved, the family she made, and the family she chose. 

It was in the fashion of children becoming parents that—when her parents could no longer care for themselves—she took them in, cared for them as she did when she was a girl, much as her mother cared for her grandmother. Her children eventually married and had children of their own, and she wore the garment of grandmother with joy and a wry sense of service. When her parents passed, she began to travel. Oh did she travel! All across Europe to all corners of China. Morocco to Abu Dhabi, Cuba to the Caribbean, Sri Lanka to Singapore to Alaska, and across the seas. She rarely traveled alone, accompanied by her brother, her daughter, her son, or her friends; and no matter where she went, she always sought out the comfort of a Chinese restaurant. All those years inviting strangers to her table made her a beacon for good company, striking up conversations with complete strangers, once starting a sing-along of Take Me Home, Country Roads in an airport on the way home from Iceland.

As she got older, nothing fazed her. She practiced yoga, line-danced, and focused on her grandchildren, charting enough miles between Morgantown, her daughter’s home in Cincinnati, and her son’s home in Berkeley to circle the earth. When her eyes and hands began to fail her, undaunted, she started painting, and telling her daughters how to cook. Her last trip was to visit her 103-year-old uncle in Wuhan, China, Christmas of last year.

She was humble. But she had an opinion about everything.

She’d ask you what you thought. And then make the opposite choice.

She liked to micromanage her staff and sometimes her family.

She never met a spice she didn’t like, and nothing was too hot.

She survived three serious car accidents, each one in a Subaru.

She never learned to swim and maybe the water scared her a bit, which perhaps explains the almost militant commitment to making her children attend practices and swim meets.

She cut our hair.

The final chapter of a life spent caring for others was not uneventful. Pandemic, social revolution, and a valiant battle with cancer meant it was her turn to be cared for. The circumstances of the day afforded her family and friends the opportunity to rally around her, lifting her up as she’d lifted them, through the radiation and the chemo and the physical therapy. And amidst all the turmoil, her house was filled with birthdays and cardboard forts, with the laughter of children and delicious food, and quiet moments of respite on her porch listening to cicadas and the sway of trees. 

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Susan is preceded in death by her husband, Francis Ting; her parents, Yuk Shu Tong and Shiu Yu Feng; and her brother, David Tong. She is survived by her son, Eric Ting (Meiyin Wang, spouse), and her daughter, Tracy Ting (Shanaka Peiris, spouse); her brother, Peter Tong; her grandchildren, Kina and Colin Peiris and Frances Ting; and her “German daughter,” Angela Reh.

In lieu of flowers, we invite you to make a donation to the Susan T Ting Family Foundation, established by our mother to—among other things—support scholarships for rural youth to take pottery classes at the studio she founded, Zenclay. 

We have decided to wait until we can all gather once more in person to celebrate our mother’s life. At that still to be determined time, we’ll invite you all to join us at our mom’s home on the hill with two orange doors for a Potluck-To-End-All-Potlucks. There will be music. There will be dancing. There will be laughter. And fond, fond memories.

Until then, please share your own memories and photos of our beloved mother here.