US resident Zhang Sujiu has an almost impeccible China pedigree: her army general father led the defence of Shanghai against the Japanese invasion, she coordinates Sino-US communities and raises funds for Tsinghua University. And recently, she organized the Expo Shanghai float in a big New Year's Day parade, Yan Zhen reports.

She looks like an ordinary, smartly dressed old lady, nothing like you would expect of someone with such a famous family background. She has never lived or worked in Shanghai but she has a strong bloodline connection to the city which she continues to regard with affection.

After decades of a quiet life in southern California, Zhang Sujiu, daughter of a key Kuomintang and Communist Party military figure, recently emerged into the media spotlight as organizer of Shanghai's float in the annual New Year's Day Pasadena Rose Parade in the United States.

"I have retained countless ties with Shanghai throughout the years," said Zhang, who now chairs the Roundtable of Southern California Chinese-American Organizations.

"It is not only because of my family and friends but the city's own charisma as well," said the 70-something woman with curly hair, exquisite facial makeup and butterflies painted on her nails.

Zhang is the youngest daughter of General Zhang Zhizhong, one of the top military commanders in China's war against the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. The general supervised Shanghai's defense against the Japanese army in 1937, one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the eight-year war.

General Zhang also held office as provincial governor of Hunan and Xinjiang in the KMT regime. But he broke with the organization in 1949, refusing to abandon the mainland and flee to Taiwan with late KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek and the remainder of his force.

Zhang consequently developed a good relationship with victorious Communist Party leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, living in Beijing until he died in 1969. He was honored as a "Peace General" for his strong resistance to the civil war.

Zhang Sujiu, who has taken the English name Sue, seldom talks about her father or the stories he passed on. This has a lot to do with her low-key attitude but possibly also because she is the youngest of the general's seven children and her memory is not so vivid.

She recalled in a magazine journal some years ago that her father was "stern" and "educating kids to endure hardship from an early age." She remembers being severely scolded by him for using his official car to get to school.

At the time, Zhang lived with her parents and attended middle school in Nanjing, the country's capital before the People's Republic of China was founded. Although the Jiangsu Province city is hundreds of kilometers away from Shanghai, Zhang said that her fondness for Shanghai was nurtured during this period.

"Although I lived in Nanjing, my big brother's home was in Shanghai at the time," said Zhang, sitting in the backyard of her California house. "That's why I dropped into Shanghai on a regular basis."

She was impressed at a young age by traditional Chinese Shanghai's acceptance of the expanding influence of Western modernism, she said. And she remains impressed.

"I can understand Shanghai dialect and ... even speak it a little," Zhang claimed proudly, adding it was partly through mixing closely with her Shanghai-native classmates at Tsinghua University, but more so thanks to her Shanghai husband.

After the New China was founded, General Zhang insisted on staying in Beijing and wrote to his children who were studying or working abroad at the time to ask them all to return, whether they had finished their programs or not.

Zhang was enrolled in Tsinghua University and assigned a teaching job at Tianjin University after graduation in 1954. A year later, she went for further training at Harbin Industrial University in northern Heilongjiang Province where she met her husband Zhu Renzhong.

Their love was nurtured on the chilly northern university campus and the pair's marriage in 1956 was blessed by many big names, including then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai.

Shanghai husbands are known for their considerate care of their wives and family, even down to being masters of the family chores, all of which Zhu demonstrated in their 44-year marriage, Zhang said.

Even today, Zhang devotes most of her time to social activities and senior roles in different organizations while her husband manages all domestic affairs, ranging from house cleaning to her organizations' Website maintenance.

"I feel so lucky to have such a supportive Shanghai husband, who can help me in both career and family issues," Zhang said, a hand resting on the arm of her husband.

In 1981, Zhang was sent at age 46 by her university for further professional training, but this time her destination was the United States. She finished the training and stayed there, her outstanding work ethic securing her a job as a cartographer in a high-tech company. After more than six years, she managed to start a new life in the United States when her teacher husband, two daughters and a younger son joined her in 1987.

"Those initial days were very hard," her husband said. "Although we were both university teachers back in China, we had to try everything to start from scratch here."

The couple tried an extraordinarily wide range of jobs -- education, the steel industry, homes for the elderly services and stocks and securities -- with bitter and sweet results.

The lessons they learned, including being ripped off by partners and false business information, completely crushed their efforts. But the couple and their son working in the high-tech industry succeeded by investing in stocks and securities, Zhu said.

Zhang is now chairperson of both the Chinese-American organization and the North American Educational Foundation of her alma mater Tsinghua University whose focus is to raise funds.

"People trust her, asking her to take those important financial roles to some extent because of her father's reputation," Zhu smiled. "General Zhang impressed the public with his patriotism and his righteousness."

But Zhang believes her achievements result from the unity and unselfish support of her patriotic fellow Chinese Americans.

Look at the Expo Shanghai float's participation in the Pasadena rose parade this year, she said.

The rules of the parade say that only a US-registered entity is eligible to take part. Zhang and her Chinese-American organization members had applied unsuccessfully to participate last year, although they succeeded in sponsoring a float for the Beijing Olympics in the January 1, 2008 parade.

Zhang started working in October 2008 on a new application for the Expo float in the 2010 parade. She flew countless times between Los Angeles and Shanghai in the year leading up to the parade, getting authorization from Expo organizers, confirming float designs and coordinating all the participation parties.

Funding was another problem. The float's total production and operation cost was estimated at US$350,000 and the only source of revenue was from donations.

Different from the Beijing Olympics float project -- half the cost was funded by a company -- support for the Expo float had to be raised during the global economic crisis so Zhang had to rely on contributions from individual donors.

Initially, Zhang thought she had organized the perfect combination of funding sources -- one big player donating US$150,000 with the rest made up by 10 small donors contributing US$20,000 each.

But the situation suddenly changed. The biggest supporter did a u-turn, retrieving his donation only days before the cheque was to be cashed.

"That really got me flustered," Zhang said. "I had no other choice but to find new sources of support."

Fortunately, one of the 10 smaller donors dug generously deeper at the last minute. The entrepreneur contributed his originally promised US$20,000 share and made up the US$150,000 gap.

"I'm grateful to every Chinese American who contributed to make the Expo float a success," Zhang said. "They not only promoted the big event in front of the world, but realized my dream of doing something valuable for both the city and my motherland."