Customer Reviews

China to Me

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

China to Me opens a fascinating window into China during the most turbulent era in its modern history. Emily Hahn, a correspondent for the New Yorker, arrived in Shanghai in 1935, looking for fun, adventure, and the subject of her next book. She wound up staying in China until 1943. This autobiographical narrative of her Chinese sojourn falls into three parts: her five years in Shanghai from 1935 to 1939; a year of writing in Chungking (Chongqing) in 1940; and three years in Hong Kong from 1940 to 1943.

Hahn's stayed in Shanghai the longest, although her narration of her time there constitutes the shortest portion of the book. She reveled in the comparatively free and open social atmosphere of the European concessions. She conducted a celebrated affair with a Chinese poet, Sinmay Zau (Shao Xunmei), with whom she also ran a left-wing English-language newspaper; she even became his official concubine. She also purchased a Gibbon ape whom she named "Mr. Mills" and who accompanied her to society parties.

Hahn was not a political writer. Or, perhaps better, her politics were refracted through her personal relations. She visited Nanking (Nanjing) a year prior to the Nanking Massacre. She remarks in passing on the Marco Polo Bridge incident, but assumes that her readers will already know all about it. (This may not be true of contemporary readers, for whom these events have become distant history.) Hahn excelled at describing her conversations with Japanese spies, British officers' wives, and Chinese volunteers. At a time when classes, genders, and races were still socially stratified, Hahn delighted in breaking with convention.

She traveled to Hong Kong and then to Chungking after receiving permission to write an authorized biography of the famous Soong sisters. Chungking had become the capital of Free China after the fall of Nanking and was under nearly constant Japanese bombardment. She spent lots of time underground in crowded cave shelters and was rendered homeless after her hotel was destroyed. Hahn still managed to meet regularly with the sisters and to finish her biography, published in 1942.

The greatest part of her narrative is given over to describing her experiences before and after the fall of Hong Kong. Hahn was basically just casting about for her next assignment in Hong Kong when events overtook her. She entered into a romance with Charles Boxer, the (married) head of British intelligence, and had a daughter by him just prior to Hong Kong's fall. The Japanese invasion forced her to live hand-to-mouth under increasingly difficult and perilous circumstances. Hahn provides valuable historical insight into everyday life in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation. She avoided being sent to Stanley Internment Camp by claiming Chinese citizenship as a consequence of her concubine marriage to Zau. Hahn nursed a wounded Boxer back to health and later provided food for him and other interned soldiers at Stanley Camp. She finally left Hong Kong with her daughter, Carola, in 1943 with other repatriated Americans.

China to Me was published in 1944 before the Second World War had come to an end. Hahn's recollections, particularly of Chungking and Hong Kong, are strikingly fresh. She has not had time to process her experiences and sometimes her anger boils over on the pages. But this is autobiography, not history. China to Me deserves--as many others have said--to be rediscovered as a classic first-hand account of life in wartime China.

Emily Hahn has been an author and journalist since 1929, when her first stories appeared in The New Yorker magazine. In 1935, she ran away to China in an effort to forget a failed romance and to find herself. By the time she returned home eight years later on a refugee ship, she was a changed woman. China to Me is the story of her life, loves, and adventures in China. It's a candid and unabashed account of her romance with a Chinese poet, her battle to overcome opium addiction, her torrid love affair with a married British intelligence officer (with resulting child out of wedlock), her friendship with the illustrious Soong sisters, and her experiences in occupied Hong Kong. China to Me shocked America and became a bestseller when it was published. Hahn is a gifted writer with an easy, entertaining style. What's more she's a bright, witty, and engaging storyteller. Readers who are unfamiliar with her writings (she wrote 51 books)will enjoy this book. It's a great introduction to the writings of a woman who was a feminist before the word even invented and who is--as one of my friends puts it --"a forgotten American literary treasure."

China to me
By Emily Hahn

Emily Hahn, born in 1905, was an early feminist. Just to prove she could, she received a degree in engineering, one of the first American women to do so.

Totally unconventional regarding morals, she chose, in 1941, to become pregnant--deliberately--by her married lover, Charles Boxer, the head of British intelligence in Hong Kong. On paper only, she had a Chinese husband (a favor done for the man--a former lover--to preserve his assets), which saved her from being sent to the internment camps. Yet, the fact that the baby was Boxer's complicated her life and that of her child in unimaginable ways following the Japanese conquest.

China to me is often touted for its authenticity and for its nontraditional heroine, but, while reading the book is much to be recommended for its first-person look of a tumultuous time, the reader will probably, in the process, learn more about the British than the Chinese. It is an accounting of an endless round of socializing, drinking and name-dropping. Sometimes it makes a reader want to shake the author and implore, "Just tell the story; we don't care about Lord and Lady Whatsis." Part of the problem is that names in the book, while probably familiar to the 1940s audience, mean almost nothing to modern readers. Understanding the book requires quite a few visits to Wikipedia to sort it all out. A look at the index seems to indicate that there was an edition published with footnotes; if so, that version would definitely make for better understanding of the text.

Hahn arrived in China in 1935 and left in 1943. However, she lived in only three places, all of them good-sized cities (Shanghai, Chunking, and Hong Kong), meaning that the story is less about China than it is about the author. While she admires the Chinese and fault those who call them "chinamen" she blithely calls the Japanese "Nips" and "Japs." even though, prior to the invasion she socialized quite a bit with British-educated Japanese men. The terminology is a bit jarring to modern sensibilities, but in that respect, the book does present an accurate view of the mindset of that day.

Hahn was given the unique opportunity of writing a biography of the Soong sisters--one married to Sun Yat-sen, one married to Chiang Kai-shek, and the third married to Dr. H.H.Kung, the minister of finance and the richest man in China. This part of the book holds some interest, but is entirely too fawning in its tales of interactions with these celebrities of their day.

The book was written in that irritating madcap, perky, slang-filled manner so common to books by women in the 1940s. Part of the problem is that the book was published in 1944; because the war was still on, Hahn coyly sidesteps a number of names and places that might have actually added weight to the story. Although the book is almost unbearably long, it reads as if the writing were dashed off quickly. Perhaps it was; Hahn desperately needed money.

Although given two opportunities to leave Hong Kong during the occupation, Hahn kept refusing until finally Boxer, interned in a Japanese prison, told her to go. Any reader who is a parent will be appalled at her horrible judgment that daily placed her young child in danger.

Hahn seems proud of being American, yet she seems to out-British the British. Her unfailingly stiff upper lip wears on the reader. She was in Shanghai during the atrocities in Nanking, but writes in a mostly disinterested way of the Japanese custom of allowing soldiers three days to blow off steam by looting, killing and raping. Although she claims to have witnessed some horrific things, at no point, prior to the invasion of Hong Kong, does she even seem to grasp that she might be in danger. In Hong Kong, while men are being randomly shot on the streets for no reason, women are being raped and internees and prisoners are dying of starvation, she downplays the violence saying that readers who want to know about such things should read it elsewhere. It's hard not to agree with her; for a more authentic telling of the Japanese occupation experience, a reader would do well to look to Agnes Newton Keith and her excellent book, Three Came Home.

In spite of its many flaws, the book is well worth reading as a snapshot of a chaotic time; the main point to be gleaned is that the upper crust continued to do what they had always done because nothing in their experiences prepared them for the reality of such brutal times. Yet, while the book is recommended, its chief value is probably sociological as a study of the culture of the expatriates of the day. Any reader looking for a China travelogue or a national history will be disappointed.

I found this book by chance at a library booksale, and felt it was a very lucky find. It's a 1944 edition, the year it was first printed.

I was so compelled by Emily Hahn's story of her stay in Shanghai and Hong Kong that I immediately became interested in this period of Chinese history, when the Japanese invaded Shanghai and eventually moved south to Hong Kong. The atmosphere of the time among the local people and among the Europeans in Shanghai, the internment of foreigners in Hong Kong, and the struggle for survival there makes for riveting storytelling.

There are many books that cover this period in Chinese history, some written as fiction and others not. Hahn interviewed the Soong sisters in China during this peiod and published her famous biography, The Soong Sisters.

Her book, China to Me, largely inspired a recent novel set in Hong Kong, The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee, a Hong Kong writer.

Emily Hahn, born in 1905, was an early feminist. Just to prove she could, she received a degree in engineering, one of the first American women to do so.

Totally unconventional regarding morals, she chose, in 1941, to become pregnant--deliberately--by her married lover, Charles Boxer, the head of British intelligence in Hong Kong. On paper only, she had a Chinese husband (a favor done for the man--a former lover--to preserve his assets), which saved her from being sent to the internment camps. Yet, the fact that the baby was Boxer's complicated her life and that of her child in unimaginable ways following the Japanese conquest.

China to me is often touted for its authenticity and for its nontraditional heroine, but, while reading the book is much to be recommended for its first-person look at a tumultuous time, the reader will probably, in the process, learn more about the British than the Chinese. It is an accounting of an endless round of socializing, drinking and name-dropping. Sometimes it makes a reader want to shake the author and implore, "Just tell the story; we don't care about Lord and Lady Whatsis." Part of the problem is that names in the book, while probably familiar to the 1940s audience, mean almost nothing to modern readers. Understanding the book requires quite a few visits to Wikipedia to sort it all out. A look at the index seems to indicate that there was an edition published with footnotes; if so, that version would definitely make for a better understanding of the text.

Hahn arrived in China in 1935 and left in 1943. However, she lived in only three places, all of them good-sized cities (Shanghai, Chunking, and Hong Kong), meaning that the story is less about China than it is about the author. While she admires the Chinese and fault those who call them "chinamen" she blithely calls the Japanese "Nips" and "Japs" even though, prior to the invasion she socialized quite a bit with British-educated Japanese men. The terminology is a bit jarring to modern sensibilities, but in that respect, the book does present an accurate view of the mindset of that day.

Hahn was given the unique opportunity of writing a biography of the Soong sisters--one married to Sun Yat-sen, one married to Chiang Kai-shek, and the third married to Dr. H.H.Kung, China's finance minister and the richest man in China. This part of the book holds some interest, but is entirely too fawning in its tales of interactions with these celebrities of their day.

The book was written in that irritating madcap, perky, slang-filled manner so common to books by women in the 1940s. Part of the problem is that the book was published in 1944; because the war was still on, Hahn coyly sidesteps a number of names and places that might have actually added weight to the story. Although the book is almost unbearably long, it reads as if the writing were dashed off quickly. Perhaps it was; Hahn desperately needed money.

Although given two opportunities to leave Hong Kong during the occupation, Hahn kept refusing until finally Boxer, interned in a Japanese prison, told her to go. Any reader who is a parent will be appalled at her horrible judgment that daily placed her young child in danger.

Hahn seems proud of being American, yet she seems to out-British the British. Her unfailingly stiff upper lip wears on the reader. She was in Shanghai during the atrocities in Nanking, but writes in a mostly disinterested way of the Japanese custom of allowing soldiers three days to blow off steam by looting, killing and raping. Although she claims to have witnessed some horrific things, at no point, prior to the invasion of Hong Kong, does she even seem to grasp that she might be in danger. In Hong Kong, while men are being randomly shot on the streets for no reason, women are being raped and internees and prisoners are dying of starvation, she downplays the violence saying that readers who want to know about such things should read it elsewhere. It's hard not to agree with her; for a more authentic telling of the Japanese occupation experience, a reader would do well to look to Agnes Newton Keith and her excellent book, Three Came Home.

In spite of its many flaws, the book is well worth reading as a snapshot of a chaotic time; the main point to be gleaned is that the upper crust continued to do what they had always done because nothing in their experiences prepared them for the reality of such brutal times. Yet, while the book is recommended, its chief value is probably sociological as a study of the culture of the expatriates of the day. Any reader looking for a China travelogue or a national history will be disappointed.

As the adopted granddaughter of Emily Hahn and a co-founder of Bastard Nation, I was especially moved by reading my grandmother's brave, amusing and thought-provoking account of keeping her out-of-wedlock child (my mother, Carola).

Well the title says it all so don't miss it: even though the author was a journalist who lived in China between 1935 and 1943, the reader will not find any sweeping historical analysis of the political or military situation there during these agitated years. Even though she met many prominent figures during the course of her stay, the book reads more like the chronicle of the daily life of Emily Hahn, an original and a socialite. The first half of her story is set in Shanghai, the second in Hong Kong, with a few months in Chongqing in between. I found the Shanghai part a bit dull. Her Hong Kong years make for more interesting reading, especially her account of the Japanese occupation - and how she dealt with it by cleverly extracting favors from the occupants without compromising herself.
I was expecting to find something about Mao's communists. After all, the book covers a key period of the CCP's history and was written in 1944 by a reporter who went as far as writing a biography of the Soong sisters in 1939. Well, Emily Hahn mentions them briefly, but it's simply to insist on the fact that she knows nothing about them, hinting that there is not much to know anyway. Which is probably why Edgar Snow is remembered today much better than Emily Hahn on the subject of China.
Sixty years after, only one aspect of the book still stands out as remarkable to me: how this fiercely independent woman eventually became a mother at 36 and managed to bring up her baby girl alone despite the difficulties of occupation. So much for Chinese history...
The publisher's backpage note about the author presents Emily Hahn as a writer who revolutionized the Victorian era, which sounds a bit funny given that she was born in 1905, a few years after Queen Victoria's death.

I am writing to notify all readers that Ms. Hahn passed away in February 1997. She is survived by her daughters, Carola Vecchio and Amanda Boxer, and her husband, Charles Ralph Boxer