What was the time frame for the three movies?

Here's where I'm lost... I'm going to just go ahead and convince myself that when Lee and Carter go to Hong Kong at the end of the first movie, it's the vacation that they have at the beginning of Rush Hour 2. I don't see why Carter would go to Hong Kong a second time and not have gone to the massage parlor or anywhere else, or not have mentioned anything like where they went last time they were there. Carter could have shaved and such while he was there, that's no biggie. So I'm just going to pretend 1 & 2 sort of work next to each other, back-to-back.

Now, at the end of Rush Hour 2 they go to New York. We don't know for how long, but they certainly had a nice loot of cash with them. I suppose at some point we could say that maybe Lee even moved to New York and was there for a while with Isabella, but I don't think it could have been super long so that Lee and Isabella were coupled together for like five, six, ten years or something. And in Rush Hour 3 when they refer to "what happened in New York," it sounds more like a one-time event of them being in NY based on their vacation there at the end of Rush Hour 2. So apparently Carter shot Isabella three years prior in New York, which would probably allude to Rush Hour 3 taking place three years after Rush Hour 2.

So here's the problem... if it's anywhere between three and four or so years between the first and third movies, how is Soo Young as old as she is suddenly? How does the timeline that we've been given (or perhaps hinted to) match with Soo Young aging maybe thirteen more years? Maybe I'm mistaking myself with my assumptions between RH1, RH2, and RH3, and obviously I would have to be, but they wouldn't explain things like they had without the timeline being only about three years.

If someone else can clarify this more easily, that would be great.