Follow-Up: Memorial and Burial Service for Dr. Henry C. Lee Held in Yangzhou, Wife Jiang Xiaping Says She Brought Him Home
The memorial and burial service for Dr. Henry C. Lee, the Chinese American forensic scientist, was held on October 23 at Yangzhou Cemetery in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, China. Lee died in the United States on March 27 at the age of 87. On October 18, the Double Ninth Festival, his wife, Jiang Xiaping, carried his ashes back to Yangzhou. On the morning of October 23, family and friends paid their respects and held a memorial service in the cemetery's multifunction hall, followed by the burial ceremony.
At the site, a sign at the cemetery gate directed mourners to the memorial service, a portrait of Lee stood at the entrance of the hall, and a memorial inscription read: "You were a beam of light that lit up many lives; you were an ocean that let withered lives shine again; you were a sword of justice that cut through layers of darkness." On the evening of October 22, a flower shop near the cemetery was already lined with bouquets whose ribbons read "In solemn memory of Dr. Henry C. Lee"; they were delivered to the cemetery early on October 23, and the flower baskets at the site stretched nearly one hundred meters. Many relatives and friends traveled from across China and from overseas to bid him farewell. No condolence money was accepted; following Yangzhou custom, the family returned a gift box containing candy and traditional pastries, a photograph of Lee with his biography printed on the back, and a "pocket lie-detector ruler," a science-outreach souvenir of the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science at the University of New Haven. His student Zhou Zhaocheng said at the service that the small ruler embodies the principles Lee lived by, recalling that Lee often taught him: handle cases on evidence, conduct yourself on conscience, hold the line as a lawyer, and let forensics speak with science.
Lee was born in Rugao, Jiangsu, in November 1938, moved with his family to Taiwan at the age of five, and later studied and worked in the United States, where he served as Connecticut's commissioner of public safety and as a professor at the University of New Haven. Over a career spanning decades he worked on more than 8,000 cases, served as a forensic expert in all 50 U.S. states and at least 46 countries, lectured in more than 70 countries, and consulted for some 600 law enforcement agencies. Cases he worked on included the reinvestigation of the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the O.J. Simpson case, and the September 11 attacks, earning him the nicknames "the Chinese Sherlock Holmes" and "the modern-day Sherlock Holmes."
Asked why Yangzhou, rather than his birthplace Rugao, was chosen as his resting place, Jiang Xiaping explained that Lee was born on the mainland, educated in Taiwan, and made his name in the United States, spending most of his life overseas, but that wherever the couple traveled, including Rugao, they stayed in hotels; "only in Yangzhou did we stay in our own home. So I say that burying him in Yangzhou is bringing him home." She said what he longed for was not only his birthplace, but China's broad land, its cultural heritage, and the sounds of the Chinese language. She also recalled that Lee once said he would leave no remains and would donate his body, "keeping only my eyes, because in my next life I will still make my living with them."
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：中国江苏省扬州市瘦西湖（资料图）。李昌钰博士的追思及安葬仪式在扬州举行。照片：Caitriana Nicholson，CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Slender West Lake in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China (file photo). Dr. Henry C. Lee's memorial and burial service was held in Yangzhou. Photo: Caitriana Nicholson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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