Han Suyin
(b. 1917)
These, an not intellectual conviction, explain my commitment.
It is almost biological; only later would come reinforcing knowledge
and understanding. But I had to live by what was imprinted in
my cells, remaining averse to and suspicious of high-flown abstractions,
but totally engaged to that smell and savour and warmth, that
feel of the tide, blood beat, which is for me the people of China.
With others, exultant ideologies may have priority, but it has
never been so with me. I shoulder and make do with systems, with
ideologies. I am not committed to any. Only one thing concerns
me: in the great sweep of history, will this or that system have
been another step forward for the Chinese people? They are the
only 'side' I am on.-My House Has Two Doors
Biography
Han Suyin, Maiden name, Elizabeth Chou, was born on September
12, 1917, in Sinyang, China. Her father was a Chinese engineer.
He went to Europe in 1993 to study engineering and came back
to China in 1913. Her mother was a flemish. She came to China
with her father, and gave birth to eight children. Han Suyin
was brought up in China. She married P. H. Tang, a Chinese militarist
in 1938 in China. They adopted a Chinese girl named Mei. Mei
is the only child Han Suyin ever had. Pao died in 1947, and she
married L. F. Comber (a publisher) on February 1. 1952 in Hongkong.
Being a Eurasians, she started to work as a typist at Peking
Hospital in order to go to university, to study and to become
a doctor when she was not quite fifteen years old. On September
1933, she was admitted to Yenching university. And she went to
University of Brussels to study medicine in 1935. When Japanese
was invading China, she gave up scholarship, studies and a boy
friend, and returned to China in 1938. She entered School of
Medicine at London University in 1944, and got M.B., B.S. in January
1948. Then she returned Hongkong, and was draw back to her roots
in Asia since then. Being a writer is fortuitous to Han suyin,
in her words, "it is an accident determined by my return
to China in 1938, my marriage with Pao, and the anguished clash
of our lives."
In 1942, with the assistance of an anonymous American woman
missionary, Han Suyin published her first book Destination
Chungking in the U.S. Destination Chungking is an autobiographical
fiction that presents the idealized version of a brave young Chinese
couple-Chiang Kaishek and his wife, struggling to serve their
country. It had an intention to please and to interest the American
public which would read it, to incite affection and admiration
for China at war, and its legal government. But it never sold
well, and quickly went out of print in the United States. "Destination
Chungking did not convince me that I could write, but instead
gave me an inferiority complex; I was convinced that I could not
write". For the next ten years she did not write again,
except for short sketches and stories, which were not published
.
Han suyin's second book, A Many-Splendoured Thing, was
published by the end of summer 1942 in England. The book is about
her love affair with a British newspaper correspondent who was
subsequently killed in Korea. It was a best seller. Set against
war and social conflict, it was regarded as an objective report
of conditions in Asia. The story was called "Love is a Many-Splendored
Thing " by Twentieth Century-Fox and filmed in 1955; the
movie was chosen as one of the ten best picture of the year by
the Film Daily poll. A daily CBS-TV series titled "Love
is a Many -Splendored Thing" and based on the novel, premiered
in September, 1967. Despite her success in writing, Han Suyin
still wanted to be a doctor, "sitting down to begin my next
book, the words came, the images; but also I felt lost, bereft,
without the contact of people, the children, the sick."
So she remained a doctor through fifteen years of active practice,
till 1964 and finally surrender to the evidence that she is a
writer in 1967. Her works after A Many-Splendoured Thing
are And the Rain My Drink, The Mountain is Young, Two Loves,
The Four Faces, The Crippled Tree, …. All together she
had wrote 16 books. Many are frankly autobiographical. Her novels
reflect her feeling for the country of her birth.
Literary critics have been angered by her outspoken views
and disgust for Western values. Martin Levin wrote: "…
In The Four Faces the pill has a bitter center of anti-Westernism,
and the coating is a rigamarole of dope-peddling, double-dealing
and intrigue in Camboida, where East is best and west is worst…Determined
one-sidedness makes her novel tough going even for a reader who
is willing to believe, as Dr. Han does, that there is pie in the
Asian sky for the uncommitted nations," Edward Weeks noted:
"I have come to think of Han Suyin as a novelist who draws
more transparently upon her emotions than on her intellect. In
A Many-Splendored Thing,her best book, she was outgiving;
the love story she proclaimed and celebrated was evocative, full-hearted
and poignant. Two Lovers is a smaller performance-two
novellas, each of which seems to have been composed in a resentful
mood."
If her books have been deplored by some for their partisanship,
they have been praised by others for the same reason. David Dodge
wrote: "Because she is so honestly partisan, The Crippled
Tree is of greater interest and value than it might have been
if written more objectively. It gives the Chinese side of a story
that we in America know only from our own side…The Crippled
Tree is written by a woman who does not like and admire us
as we want to be liked and admired. But it explains in its way
why we are not liked and admired, and any explanation of China
today is better than none. Futhermore, Han Suyin writes with
elegance and style. Even when she is ripping into Americans"
Han Suyin is thought to be extremely sympathetic with the
government of Mao Tse Tung and the problems of the Chinese people.
She has said: "I write as an Asian, with all the pent-up
emotions of my people. What I say will annoy many people who
prefer the more conventional myths brought back by writers on
the Orient. All I can say is that I try to tell the truth. Truth,
like surgery, may hurt, but it cures."
Selected Bibliography
Works by the Author
1. And The Rain My Drink (1956)
2. Asia Today: Two Outlook (1969)
3. Birdless Summer; China, autobiography, history (1968)
4. China In The Year 2001 (1967)
5. Chou En-lai, yu ta ti shin chi /Han Su-Yin Chu; Wang Nung-Sheng…
teng I; Ch`eng Chen-ch`iu Chiao (1992)
6. The Crippled Tree; China: biography, history, autobiography (1965)
7. Destination Chungking (1942)
8. The Enchantress /By Han Suyin (1985)
9. Erh ling ling I nien ti Chung-Duo (1970)
10. A Many-Splendoured Thing (1952)
11. The Morning Deluge; Mao Tsetong and the Chinese Revolution
1893-1954 (1972)
12. A Mortal Flower; China: autobiography, history (1966)
13. The Mountain Is Young (1958)
14. My House Has Two Doors: China, autobiography, history/ Han Suyin
(1980)
15. Wind In The Tower: Mao Tsetong and Chinese Revolution, 1949-1965/
by Han Suyin (1976)
16. Wind In My Sleeve: China, autobiography, history/
Han Suyin (1992)
Works About the Author
1. Han Suyin. Birdless Summer; China, autobiography, history. London:
Cape, 1968.
2. Han Suyin. A mortal Flower; China: autobiography, history. New York:
Putnam, c1965.
3. Han Suyin. My House Has Two Doors: China, autobiography, history/
Han Suyin. New York: Putnam, 1980.
4. Martin Seymour-Smith, eds. Novels and Novelists. New York: ST. Martin's
Press, 1980.
5. Contemporary Authors. Vol: 17-20. Detroit, Gale Research CO., 1976.