Her roots were from Shanghai, China. She spent a few years of her childhood in Tianjin. Her family then moved back to Shanghai and she considered herself a genuine Shanghainese.
Her paternal grandmother was the daughter of the 19th-century statesman Li Hongzhang -
a high-ranking official in China's last dynasty, the Qing.
When she was only one semester short of graduating college in Hong Kong, she was forced to drop out due to financial issues and Hong Kong's sudden Japanese takeover.
She studied English at a private high school, very rare for Chinese females of her time.