The writer takes readers on an exploratory journey as she covered the many facets of her life in China during the early years, as well as shared her experiences, her romance and intuitive insights on the world in her novels.
Quote:
“There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.”
- Han Suyin
Born Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou on Sept 12, 1917, in Xinyang, Henan, China, the Chinese-born Eurasian physician and author was better known by her pen name Han Suyin. One of her early novels was made into a Hollywood movie, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), which won her worldwide recognition. It was a drama set in the late 1940s Hong Kong amid the Chinese Civil War and starred William Holden and Jennifer Jones as the ill-fated lovers. He’s a dashing, married Western journalist and she is a widowed Eurasian doctor.
The story, apparently, was based on Suyin’s personal romantic experience. The movie theme song won an Academy Award for best song while the movie won Oscars for musical score and costume design.
Dr Han married her first husband Tang Pao-huang, a Guomindang military officer, who later became a general. She wrote her first novel, Destination Chungking (1942), chronicling her experiences during this period of her life. In 1940, she and her husband adopted their daughter, Tang Yungmei. Then in 1944, she went with her daughter to London, where her husband Pao had been posted two years earlier as military attache, to continue her studies in medicine at the Royal Free Hospital.
Pao was next posted to Washington and later to the Manchurian front.
In 1947, while she was still in London, Pao was killed in action during the Chinese Civil War.
After graduating in 1948, she went to Hongkong to work at the Queen Mary Hospital. There, she met and fell in love with Ian Morrison, a Australian war correspondent based in Singapore, who was later killed in Korea in 1950.
To overcome her grief, she wrote her bestselling novel, A Many-Splendored Thing, featuring their relationship. The actual story of her relationship with Ian was documented in her autobiography, My House Has Two Doors, written in 1980.
In 1952, Dr Han married Leon Comber, a British officer in the Malayan Special Branch, where she joined him in Johor, then Malaya still under the British rule.
She worked in the Johor Baru General Hospital and later opened a clinic in Johor Baru and another one in Upper Pickering Street in Singapore.
In 1955, Dr Han joined in the efforts to help establish Nanyang University in Singapore where she also served as a physician to the institution. She had earlier turned down the offer to teach literature by Chinese writer, Lin Yutang who was the first president of the university. Her reason being that she wanted to “make a new Asian literature, not teach Dickens”.
In the same year, her book, A Many-Splendored Thing was made into a movie, titled Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. Her next novel, And the Rain My Drink was published in 1956, touching on the guerilla war of Chinese rubber workers who were against the government then and was perceived to be anti-British. As a result, Comber had to resign as acting Assistant Commissioner of Police Special Branch. They were divorced in 1958.
In 1960, Dr Han married Vincent Ratnaswamy, an Indian colonel, and lived for a while in Bangalore, India, before moving to Hongkong and later, to Switzerland. They were later separated but remained married until Vincent’s death in 2003. Dr Han continued to live in Lausanne, Switzerland, till her death on Nov 2, 2012.
Her love story with Vincent was portrayed in her novel, The Mountain in Young, published in 1958.After 1956, Dr Han visited China every year. In fact, she was one of the first foreign nationals to visit post-1949 China, including during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution, where she was frequently invited back as a guest of Premier Zhao Enlai.
In 1974, Dr Han was the featured speaker at the founding national convention of the US-China Peoples Friendship Association in Los Angeles, the United States.
During the intervening year, Dr Han wrote and published a number of autobiographies, including The Crippled Tree (1965), which covers her life and that of her family in China from 1885 to 1928; A Mortal Flower (1966), which covers her life in China from 1928 to 1938; Birdless Summer (1968), covering her life in China during the years 1938 to 1948. She also wrote My House Has Two Doors (1980), which covers the years 1949 to 1979. The novel was split into two when released as paperbacks in 1982, with the second part titled, Phoenix Harvest.
In 1992, she wrote Wind in My Sleeves, covering the years 1977 to 1991; A Share of Loving (1987), featuring her relationship with husband Vincent and his family; and Fleur de soleil - Histoire de ma vie (1988) - French Only: Flower of Sun - The Story About My Life.
She also wrote The Morning Deluge - Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution in 1972, a two-volume biographical book with Volume I covering Mao’s childhood to the Long March and Volume II continuing the history of China and the life of Mao up to the Korean War. Both volumes narrate over 40 years of vibrant political development in the middle of a rapidly-changing international environment, in the most populated country in the world.Her other novels published include:
Two Loves (1962), featuring two novelettes - Cast But One Shadow and Winter Love
Four Faces (1963)
Till Morning Comes (1982)
The Enchantress (1985)
Wind in My Sleeves (1992)
Dr Han also wrote these historical studies and essays:
China in the Year 2001 (1967)
Asia Today: Two Outlooks (1969)
The Morning Deluge: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution, 1893-1954 (1972)
Lhasa, the Open City (1976)
Wind in the Tower: MaoTsetung and the Chinese Revolution, 1949-1965 (1976)
China 1890 -1938: From the Warlords to World War (1989)
Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China (1994)
Dr Han died at the age of 95 in 2012. To honour and commemorate Han Suyin as a physician, author and woman, G.M.Glaskin wrote A Many-Splendoured Woman: A Memoir of Han Suyin, published in 1995.
