A Chinese migrant to the US who worked in the Hong Kong office of Morgan Stanley has been named as New York's first tsunami victim.
Fund-raising drives on behalf of Hannah Shi Lei's family have raised thousands of dollars and New York City councillor John Liu awarded her a city honour, describing her as an exemplary immigrant.
About 1,000 mourners gathered at St Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan on Friday to bid farewell to Shi, 25, an analyst for Morgan Stanley, who died while sleeping in her hotel room on Phi Phi Island on December 26.
She had worked in the Hong Kong office since August 2003.
When they heard of the disaster, her parents embarked on a seven-day search on Phi Phi before finding her in a makeshift morgue at a Buddhist monastery.
Two earrings on her left ear helped the family identify her from more than 650 enlarged photographs of dead tsunami victims posted by the monastery.
'It was a horrible journey. Our hearts were torn into pieces. [When we saw the photo], we dared not confront the truth,' her father, Shi Rong, a freelance journalist, said.
