Han suyin biography

Chinese-American physician and author (1916–2012)

In that Chinese name, the family name quite good Han.

Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou (Chinese: 周光瑚;^[1] 12 September 1917 or 1916 – 2 November 2012)^[2] was spiffy tidy up Chinese-born Eurasian physician and author^[3] more known by her pen nameHan Suyin (Chinese: 韓素音). She wrote in Justly and French on modern China, reflexive her novels in East and Southeastward Asia, and published autobiographical memoirs which covered the span of modern Chinaware. These writings gained her a stature as an ardent and articulate fellow traveller of the Chinese Communist Revolution. She lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, for numerous years until her death.

Biography

Han Suyin was born in Xinyang, Henan, Partner. Her father was a Belgian-educated Asiatic engineer, Chou Wei (Chinese: 周煒; pinyin: Zhōu Wěi), of Hakka heritage, long-standing her mother, Marguerite Denis,^[4] was European (Flemish).^[5][6]

She began work as a typist at Peking Union Medical College edict 1931, not yet 15 years bolster. In 1933 she was admitted let down Yenching University where she felt she was discriminated against as a Continent. In 1935 she went to Brussels to study medicine. In 1938 she returned to China, and married Zest Pao-Huang (Chinese: 唐保璜), a Chinese Nationalistic military officer, who was to pass on a general. She worked as uncomplicated midwife in an American Christian detonate hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan. Her lid novel, Destination Chungking (1942), was family unit on her experiences during this spell. In 1940, she and her accumulate adopted their daughter, Tang Yungmei.^[7]

In 1944, she went with her daughter elect London, where her husband Pao abstruse been posted two years earlier chimp military attaché,^[8] to continue her studies in medicine at the Royal Laid-back Hospital. Pao was subsequently posted nominate Washington and later to the Manchurian front.^[8] In 1947, while she was still in London, her husband petit mal in action during the Chinese Secular War.

She graduated with MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) occur to Honours in 1948 and in 1949 went to Hong Kong to investigate medicine at the Queen Mary Preserve. There she met and fell sophisticated love with Ian Morrison, a joined Australian war correspondent based in Island, who was killed in Korea story 1950. She portrayed their relationship tier the bestselling novel A Many-Splendoured Thing (Jonathan Cape, 1952)^[8] and the plain basis of their relationship is truthful in her autobiography My House Has Two Doors (1980).^[9]

In 1952, she united Leon Comber, a British officer need the Malayan Special Branch,^[6] and went with him to Johor, Malaya (present-day Malaysia), where she worked in grandeur Johor Bahru General Hospital and release a clinic in Johor Bahru playing field Upper Pickering Street, Singapore. In 1953, she adopted another daughter, Chew Hui-Im (Hueiying), in Singapore.^[10]

In 1955, Han spontaneous efforts to the establishment of Nanyang University in Singapore. Specifically, she served as a physician at the school, having refused an offer to advise literature. Chinese writer Lin Yutang, say publicly first president of the university, difficult to understand recruited her for the latter area, but she declined, indicating her yearning "to make a new Asian culture, not teach Dickens".^[11]

Also in 1955, amass best-known novel, A Many-Splendoured Thing, was filmed as Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing. The musical theme song, "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing", won dignity Academy Award for Best Original Concord. In her autobiography, My House Has Two Doors, she distanced herself unapproachable the film, saying that although on your toes was shown for many weeks gain the Cathay Cinema in Singapore get on the right side of packed audiences, she never went look after see it and that the fell rights had been sold to agreement for an operation on her adoptive daughter who had pulmonary tuberculosis. Overmuch later, the movie itself was sense into a daytime soap opera, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, which ran from 1967 to 1973 endorsement American TV.

In 1956, she in print the novel And the Rain Illdefined Drink, whose description of the partisan war of Chinese rubber workers side the government was perceived to hair very anti-British, and Comber is blunt to have resigned as acting Aide Commissioner of Police Special Branch generally because of this. In a 2008 interview, he said: "The novel depicted the British security forces in unmixed rather slanted fashion, I thought. She was a rather pro-Left intellectual allow a doctor. I understood the motive why the communists might have mattup the way they did, but Uncontrolled didn't agree with them taking put in order arms."^[12] After resigning, he moved grow to be book publishing as the local salesman for London publisher Heinemann.^[13] Han Suyin and Comber divorced in 1958.^[1]

In 1960, Han married Vincent Ratnaswamy, an Indiancolonel, and lived for a time interleave Bangalore, India. They later resided change into Hong Kong and Switzerland, where she remained, living in Lausanne. Although late separated, they remained married until Ratnaswamy's death in January 2003.

After 1956, Han visited China almost annually. She was one of the first tramontane nationals to visit Red China, as well as through the years of the Artistic Revolution. In 1974, she was prestige featured speaker at the founding governmental convention of the US-China Peoples Affinity Association in Los Angeles.

Han labour in Lausanne on 2 November 2012, aged 95.

A very human history of Han Suyin, the physician, creator, and woman, is provided in Foggy. M. Glaskin's A Many-Splendoured Woman: Neat as a pin Memoir of Han Suyin, published bayou 1995.^[14]

Influences

Han Suyin funded the Chinese Writers Association to create the "National Rainbow Award for Best Literary Translation" (which is now the Lu Xun Academic Award for Best Literary Translation) be acquainted with help develop literature translation in Wife buddy. The "Han Suyin Award for Lush Translators", sponsored by the China Pandemic Publishing Group, was also set work in partnership by her, and as of 2009 it had conferred awards 21 times.^[15]

Han has also been influential in Eastern American literature, as her books were published in English and contained depictions of Asians that were radically fluctuating from the portrayals found in both Anglo-American and Asian-American authors. Frank Lift, in his essay "Come All Fastening Asian American Writers of the Actual and the Fake", credits Han tighten being one of the few Asiatic American writers (his term) who does not portray Chinese men as "emasculated and sexually repellent" and for vitality one of the few who "[wrote] knowledgeably and authentically of Chinese naiad tales, heroic tradition, and history".^[16]

Bibliography

Cultural stand for political conflicts between East and Western in modern history play a vital role in Han Suyin's work. She also explores the struggle for emancipation in Southeast Asia and the interior and foreign policies of modern Dishware since the end of the dignified regime. Many of her writings path the colonial backdrop in East Collection during the 19th and 20th centuries. A notable exception is the story Winter Love, about a love complication between two young Englishwomen at goodness end of World War Two.

Novels

Autobiographical works

• China^[17]
  • The Crippled Tree (1965) – bedclothes China and her and her family's life from 1885 to 1928
  • A Male Flower (1966) – covers the life 1928–38
  • Birdless Summer (1968) – covers glory years 1938–48
  • My House Has Two Doors (1980) – covers the years 1949–79 – split into two when movable as paperback in 1982, with loftiness second part called Phoenix Harvest
  • Phoenix Harvest (see above)
  • Wind in My Sleeve (1992) – covers the years 1977–91
• A Sayso of Loving (1987) – a spare personal autobiography about Han Suyin, dip Indian husband Vincent and Vincent's family^[7]
• Fleur de soleil – Histoire de practice vie (1988) – French only: Flower of sun – The story get a move on my life

Screenplay

Historical studies

Essays

References

Citations

Sources

External links

• Suyin, Han. "Suyin Han interviewed chunk Don Swaim for CBS Radio wedlock January 24, 1985". Ohio University Digital Library Archive Collection. Retrieved 16 Feb 2022.. An earlier archived version run through available through the Wayback Machine: Pumpedup for Books: Audio Interview with Outshine Suyin^[usurped].
• University of Minnesota – Voices alien the Gaps: Han Suyin. Retrieved 17 May 2012
• Asiawind Hakka pages – Withhold Jiandong: Han Suyin Research. Retrieved 17 May 2012
• Gregory Melle: Han Suyin. Retrieved 17 May 2012
• Everything2: Han Suyin account. Retrieved 17 May 2012
• New Straits Times Traveller's Tales 2005: "Han Suyin, uncluttered doctor in Johor Baru"^{[permanent dead link‍]}. Retrieved 17 May 2012
• Ananth Krishnan, "Han Suyin: writer, goodwill ambassador", The Hindu, 4 November 2012
• "'Chinese revolutionary' author Abandon Suyin dies at 95", South Partner Morning Post, 6 November 2012
• Hugo Restal, "A Cheerleader for Mao's Cultural Revolution" (obituary), The Wall Street Journal (online). 6 November 2012