While Mrs Wong was a little hard of hearing these days, her mind and eyesight were still sharp, and she certainly did not suffer fools gladly, her son Stephen Wong said.
"She’s very alert and very quick to notice anything that’s perhaps not in its place, and quick to reprimand you if you’re the culprit."
Her other son, Malcolm Wong, said she was born on June 18, 1920, on the back of the influenza pandemic, and now she had lived through another pandemic.
"It just goes to show the strength of the human spirit."
Despite being surrounded by cards, cake, flowers, friends and family for her birthday celebrations at Radius Fulton Rest Home yesterday, she was reserved about the milestone.
"It’s just another day," she said.
There was a glimmer of delight when she opened her birthday cards from the Queen, the Governor-General and the Prime Minister, but she was especially pleased with the cards she received from friends — mainly because they had scratchy tickets inside.
She has always liked "a flutter", particularly when it came to horse racing, her sons said.
She and her late husband, Frank Wong, owned Master Mood, the horse that won the New Zealand Trotting Cup and the Auckland Trotting Cup in 1986.
Mr and Mrs Wong were also well known in Dunedin because they owned and ran retail fruit shops in George St, Princes St and Hillside Rd.
Mrs Wong endured a "hard life" of physical work, working long hours, seven days a week. She continued to work until she was 83.
Now, she has a room at Radius Fulton, which looks across the street to her old Hillside Rd fruit shop.
"It’s nice to see the old shop. I worked in there for so many years.
"But it’s nicer to be here [at Radius Fulton]. It’s warmer."
She still waves to her old neighbours, "the boys" at Robertson’s Meats, which has been run by three generations of the Robertson family.
