Tian Xiong Zheng

Tian Xiong Zheng was born on October 10th, 1959 in Ting Jiang Fuzhou, China, and died on August 3rd, 2023 at the age of 63 in Issaquah, Washington, United States. He was born to father Jinglian Zheng and mother Meixian Wang into a family of four children, with two older sisters and a younger brother. He is survived by his wife Yangfang Chen, daughter Yueheng Zheng, and son Risheng Zheng and his four grandchildren.

Tian Xiong was born during the tumultuous era of The Cultural Revolution in China during a time of poverty and social unrest. His family was like many, struggling to keep the children from going hungry on a daily basis. He was an intelligent child, quick to learn, and appointed in school to be the class president. During this time, the youth were discouraged from pursuing intellectual achievements and instead pushed into being productive citizens from an early age. As a teen, Tian Xiong had to pick up work to support his family in construction, moving boulders manually. Like in school, he was quick to adapt to necessary skills which would come to help him later in life.

While in school, Tian Xiong met his wife Yang Fang Chen, and had his daughter and later his son. Moved by the desire to be able to better provide for his family, when the chance came to risk sailing through the ocean and walking across the desert to the United States, he did not hesitate to take it. He willingly risked his own life and left behind what he knew and spent months with people he did not know or able to talk to on ships, trucks, and long roads. Once Tian Xiong reached the United States, he quickly found work and started training in restaurants in New York. He saved for many years and sent much of his earnings back to his family. Eventually, he was able to reunite with his family in 1995. In 1998, his dream of independently providing for his family finally came true when he built something that is his own and opened his restaurant.

Tian Xiong Zheng took pride in his ability to work with his own hands and to take care of his family, sacrificing himself so that they would have a better future. His family will remember and forever be grateful for all the toils of his childhood, the dangers he faced along the way, and the future he has provided.