#this post took me way longer to compile than i expected 😭

[thecapturedafrique]

HLAW: Day 5—Home/Childhood

Good evening and happy day 5 of Hana Lee Appreciation Week! This is one the easiest days for me to contribute to, as I’ve already spent an extensive amount of time creating head canons for Hana revolving around this very theme. Since PB’s mostly left her backstory a blank page aside from Shanghai being her home town and her having a late grandmother, this leaves us Hana fans to build her one ourselves. I hope y’all enjoy reading mine! 😁

Tagging @hanaleeappreciationweek and the truly spectacular hosts @lizzybeth1986 and @sazanes!

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The Lee’s originally immigrated from mainland China to Singapore in the mid 1800s; they started their own textile company just before the boom hit as a result of WWI

When the Great Depression struck, they moved their business to Shanghai and continued to thrive until the Second Sino-Japanese War began destroying mills and supply chains

The Lee’s left for Hong Kong and were able to recover until their company the Lee Kowloon Group had become the biggest privately owned manufacturer of textiles in China, with a yearly revenue of 25 billion yuan (~$3.5 billion)

Cheung Bao (张宝) [1] was a Cantonese fashion designer who married into the Lee Family; as their second son, Xinghai (星海) wasn’t expected to inherit a controlling share of the family company

As such, Xinghai moved to Shanghai to re-establish the textile market there (since the only real competition was the government) with a subsidiary focused on high quality fabrics aimed at the rich

This move was made several months after he’d married Lorelai Ryuka, who he’d met in Cordonia when he’d gone to accompany his mentor/friend Charles Shang [2] to the celebration of Prince Liam’s birth in order to network

The only daughter of Lady Syeira, Lorelai was heir to their regality Antirrhinum, but after her parents passed, she chooses to relocate permanently to Shanghai with her husband and leaves its stewardship in the hands of her grandmother Floure

Though they both hope for a son, Lorelai gives birth a few years later to a daughter who they name Hana Lee Hua (李花), and she is raised in one of the Rose Garden Villas in the Xuhui District of Shanghai

During her Zhuazhou ceremony, Hana picks the cooking utensil which means she’ll make a good housewife, and later turns out to be a child prodigy (particularly on the piano)

Her parents’ aspirations are thus reignited and they pin all of their hopes onto her, as due to the One Child Policy she will be their only one

While visiting Lorelai intermittently to update her on their regality, Floure spends time with Hana to regale her with fairy tales and Cordonian folk stories [3]

Floure passes when Hana is 6, who is not able to attend the funeral since it’s in Cordonia; Xinghai instead takes her to the zoo where she sees pandas for the first time

Hana is educated from the ages of 5 to 10 primarily by her Taiwanese governess Tài Luó, who after is replaced by Lady Julianne de Montfort of Brittany [4]

Under Lady Julianne, she begins studying etiquette in preparation for her first society appearance at the start of England’s Social Season, after which there is a sharp decrease in time spent with her parents outside of social engagements

While abroad, Hana is also enrolled in the Wimbledon Village Stables, a riding academy where she studies dressage, and she successfully schemes to no longer have to play the piano in public at the age of 12

Though her parents end her lessons since they refuse to spend money on a skill that’s no longer of “use,” Hana’s instructor Lin Changsong [5] already told her that there was nothing else he could teach her

Bao is a central figure in her childhood as well as her primary caretaker at home when Lorelai and Xinghai are out of town; she inspires Hana’s love of fashion design and fosters her talent

Hana herself serves to inspire some of Bao’s own designs, and as canon states, they sew a black cheongsam together the summer before Bao dies, which is only a few weeks before Hana turns 15

Thus sparks her “goth phase” that goes hand in hand with being gifted a laptop of her own in order to attend the online Balissande Finishing School

The phase is also inspired by the black kitten Li Ming her grandmother left to her, but it’s less gothic and more angsty, as she uses her laptop to wax bleak poetry on her Stumblr blog, stream sad romance movies, and indulge in hurt/comfort fanfiction

Hana goes undiscovered for nearly a year, but once Lorelai finds out about the blog, her laptop is confiscated; she dyes her hair pink in retaliation for her 16th birthday celebration, and though it’s only temporary, Li Ming is taken as punishment [6]

At 18, she attends the first Shanghai International Debutante Ball in the dress pictured below, heralding her official debut into society and the start of her parents attempts to have her be chosen by a suitor

Foot Notes:

Bao’s face claim is Vivienne Tam, a real Chinese fashion designer. Credit to @cassiopeiacorvus for the Cantonese HC!

Charles Shang is a character from Crazy Rich Asians; after watching the movie following @mand-delemonde pointing out that Hana should be living the same sort of lifestyle, I decided to have CRA crossover into my version of the Choices world. I imagine Xinghai and Charles bonded over neither being the heir to their respective family companies. Charles was invited to celebrate Prince Liam’s birth since I head canon his niece Princess Cassandra was a friend of Queen Eleanor’s.

This is based on the coin tradition scene Hana shares with her fiancée in TRR3, which she states she learned from her great-grandmother. I’ve fleshed out Lorelai’s side of the family further than is shown, but the details weren’t included in this post since the only Cordonian family member Hana met during her childhood was Floure.

Tài Luó and Lady Julianne’s names are derived from the characters Miss Anne Taylor (from Emma) and Julian (from Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper). Julianne’s surname is due to how I made her the daughter of the Duke of Brittany, a duchy which is extinct IRL. She’s actually a friend of Joëlle’s, who in my head canon is a noblewoman from a neighboring French duchy that’s also extinct IRL, but those details will be shared during Kiara’s appreciation week later this month.

Lin Changsong is a parodied version of the pianist and composer Yin Chengzong. I imagine that if Hana had not been forced to hide her skill in order to keep it from being exploited, Lin would have tried to convince her parents to enroll her in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (which Yin himself joined at the age of 12).

I do plan to have Li Ming and Hana reunite in my post-TRR fic because I could never be that heartless. 🤧

#playchoices #the royal romance #trr #hana lee #hanaleeappreciationweek #hlaw day 5 #hlaw #head canons #this post took me way longer to compile than i expected 😭 #no doubt bc i kept adding further details to it lol #we’ll see if i can get tomorrow’s post in before 11 PM EST