Nancy Nai Sien Fong

Nancy Nai Sien Fong (maiden name Wong) was born in Shanghai, China, in the Spring of 1928.
Her exact Lunar New Year birthday (she was a Dragon) was unknown, but her Western birthday
was May 7, 1928. She passed away peacefully on June 25, 2025, at the age of 97.

Her father was the patriarch of the family. He was a wealthy businessman who worked for the
railroad. Her mother was educated and beautiful. She was the only girl in a family of 3. She
graduated from the prestigious McTyeire School in Shanghai in 1946. In China, she taught music
and piano and learned how to arrange flowers, becoming quite proficient, something she
enjoyed doing until her vascular dementia diagnosis in her 90s. She enjoyed singing lyric opera
and Chinese folk songs.

Amidst war and chaos, she immigrated first to Hong Kong, then to the US in 1951 at the age of
23. One of her first American jobs was as an English translator for Radio Free Asia in San
Francisco. She could speak 3 dialects, Mandarin, Cantonese, & Shanghainese.

She met David Fong (the first Asian-American psychoanalyst in Berkeley, CA) through friends
and married and had two daughters, Heather & Celia. Together, David & Nancy built a
beautiful, custom-designed, mid-century modern home in the Berkeley Hills, where she loved
to garden, sing, and play her beloved Steinway baby grand. She enjoyed traveling with family
and went on multiple trips to China, including the Silk Road, Shanghai, and Beijing, as well as
excursions to Hong Kong, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Las Vegas, an Alaskan cruise, Disneyland, and
Disney World (Celia’s favorite place).

With her roots firmly planted in the Berkeley community, she continued her education at UC
Berkeley. Berkeley in the late 1950s and 1960s was a haven for Chinese Americans, particularly
within professional and academic fields, and growing activism. EDUCATION: B.A. in Music from
UC Berkeley. B.S. in Social Welfare1968 from UC Berkeley M.S.W. from UC Berkeley in 1974.
From there, she became a fervent anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and worked
tirelessly as a community organizer and proponent of Asian/Asian-American issues, both
cultural and social, and was employed as a Counselor for Youth Employment Services for the
City of Berkeley for many years.

When David passed away in 1995 due to cancer, caring for her youngest daughter, Celia, who
was developmentally disabled, became her life’s purpose until Celia’s death at the age of 62 in
May of 2021. She was preceded in death by her father, her mother, Molly Wong, and her
brothers, Martin and Steven Wong. She is survived by her daughter, Heather, and her grandson,
Jacob, along with many loving nieces, nephews, and grandnieces & grandnephews.

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