MCLC: Han Suyin dies at 95

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Han Suyin dies at 95
***********************************************************

Source: China Daily (11/05/12):
http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2012-11/05/content_15875683.htm

Writer Han Suyin dies at 95 in Lausanne

Chinese-British writer and physician Elizabeth Comber, whose pen name was
Han Suyin, died at the age of 95 on Friday at her home in Lausanne,
Switzerland.

A memorial service will be held in Lausanne on Thursday, her family told
Xinhua.

The biographer of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, Comber, a writer of both
fiction and nonfiction works, is the author through whom most English- and
French-speaking readers got their earliest images and understanding of
China.

The Chinese-American writer Frank Chin credits her with being one of the
few who "(wrote) knowledgeably and authentically of Chinese fairy tales,
heroic tradition and history" in his essay Come All Ye Asian American
Writers of the Real and the Fake.

Her semi-autobiographic novel, A Many Splendored Thing, was made into a
Hollywood hit in the 1950s, winning three Oscars.
Shuttling between China and the Western world, Comber had a colorful life,
which was also deeply rooted in her unstoppable pursuit of telling real
Chinese stories to her world audience.

Comber was born Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow in Henan province in 1917
to a Chinese father who was a railway engineer and a Belgian mother from
an aristocratic family.

Young Comber dreamed of being a doctor and she pursued the dream by
studying medicine in Yenching University and later in Brussels and London.

In Brussels she developed a strong literary interest and eagerly read the
masterpieces.

Looking back on her days in Chengdu, where she worked as a midwife, she
got the inspiration for her debut novel Destination Chungking (Chongqing
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/node_1059062.htm>). With help from a US
colleague, the book was published in the United Kingdom and the United
States, which boosted her writer's career.

"In my memory, my mother was always busy working in hospitals during the
daytime, and busy writing and translating in her spare time at home," her
daughter Tang Yungmei told the Guangzhou
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/node_1060181.htm>Daily.

Comber lived in different countries with her second husband, Leon F.
Comber, a British officer and later publisher, and with her third husband,
Vincent Ratnaswamy, an Indian colonel. Her fiction and nonfiction, written
in both English and French, recreated her own experiences and the China
she saw during her stays. Eventually, she settled down in Lausanne.

As a British citizen, she was among the first foreign nationals to visit
China after 1949. Her photos appeared on the news with leaders who she
came to know well. She also funded or helped establish several Chinese
literary awards to encourage young writers and translators.