Han Suyin Research
By Ding Jiandong
A many-splendoured woman has many a splendoured name.

On September 12, 1916(I checked the Chinese lunar calendar and found out that it should be 1916, the year of the dragon, not as all the documents stated1917), according to the Chinese lunar calendar it is the Mid-Autumn Festival, on this big traditional festival in Sinyang (Xinyang), Henan province the splendoured woman Han Suyin was born. Her mother Marguerite Denis was a Flemish Belgian from a noble family, who tried every way, even pregnancy to marry a Chinese engineering student, Zhou Yintong. Han Suyin was one of the four survivors among their eight children.

After her birth, her father gave her the name “Yuebin”. Which means “moon guest”, but I don’t think it was really what her father hinted at. I think her father hinted at “Chang E zhuan shi”(Chang E descent to the world), according to the Chinese fairy tale Chang E was a housewife who ate magic pills that the Emperor of Heaven had given to her husband Hou Yi, and then became an immortal goddess and abandoned her husband and villagers flew to the moon. There she lived in a luxury palace called Guanghan Palace. She stayed there lonely and childless. It is said most of the time she was thinking of the joyful life on the earth. Strangely this resembles a lot of Han Suyin’s life: Han Suyin married Tang Paohuang on October 10th 1938. Through him she knew the high officials such as Tai Lee (Dai Li), Hu Tsungnan (Hu Zongnan), Song Meiling, Chiang Kaishek (Jiang Jieshi) and understood the situation in China. She has not only been regarded as a world-renowned writer and a diplomat but also an expert on China issues. Just as she stated in one book that she had luck with all her husbands, including Pao. Without him she couldn’t understand the old China. Han Suyin lives in Lausanne, a beautiful city in Switzerland. She seldom watches TV or listens to the radio, but she reads 5 newspapers a day, she has made a spectacular tribute to China, she traveled to China frequently. She used to say: "I am a Hakka, my roots are in China.” In December 2001.Tang Yungmei visited her mother Han Suyin. Later Tang Yungmei told me " Even at the age of 86, my mother knows clearly what has happened to China and what is happening."

“Han Suyin” is a pseudonym. What does it stand for? I read Professor Liao Liandi’s article “Han Suyin is My Teacher”, he writes: “according to Han Suyin, Suyin means a low and unadorned voice.”(1) I don’t believe a person like Han Suyin who is so passionate and strong-minded will take “low and unadorned voice" as the meaning of her pen name. So I discussed this with her daughter, Tang Yungmei, who told me that according to Han Suyin stands for “the clear voice of the Han people.” I suddenly understood why she chose "Han" as her surname. There has been some debate about the origin of Hakka people whether they belong to "Han" people or a minority from "Xiongnu". From most of the evidence gathered, it can be concluded that Hakkas are likely Han people rather than a derivative from the Xiongnu. Han Suyin’s conclusion is:

"The word Hakka does not denote a racial group, for the Hakkas are Han People, Chinese People. It was a word applied to all displaced peasants, and only after the tenth century came to design a special group. Moving en masse these refugees from misery were 'people who sought a roof, hence called Guest People' which was more courteous than calling them displaced persons or refugees...”

"The Hakkas say they are the true people of Han, and that they have escaped degenerate habits brought by foreign rule. They are proud of their singularity” As the Guest People, especially among the overseas Chinese, where their clans are prosperous and strong.” (2)

So we can see that Hakka people are the Han people, not belonging to a minority. That is one main reason why Han Suyin chose “Han” as her surname.

Last but not least, Han Suyin is apparently not a racist, she hated the Nazis and Hitler, she states in “Birdless Summer” that she refused to read the demon's book “Mein Kampf” despite Tang PaoHuang’s fierce beating. She once talked with Dr. Teresa Kowalska via telephone that she knew only one race that is the Human race. So I think that "Han" does not only mean the Han people but the whole of China, because the Han people comprise more than 80 percent of the Chinese population. She once 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.”(3) Consequently I think her name Han Suyin stands for “the clear voice of China.” 

Her other name Chow Kuanghu (Zhou Guanghu), "Chow" of course is her family name. "Kuang" is her generation name, which was a typical traditional Chinese custom that all the brothers, sisters and cousins in a family must take a same character in their given names. Just take Han Suyin’s cousins for example, her cousins like her third uncle’s eldest son Chow Kuangyong and his brothers Chow Kuangtun and Chow Kuangdi. They all have “ Kuang” in their names. For Chow Kuanghu the last character “瑚”(hu)is very fascinating. The left part “王”（wang/yu）means jade, or king/ royal. When Han Suyin was young her mother had told her that she had a kinship with the royal family of the Netherlands. The middle part “古”(gu) means ancient or with a long history. China is certainly a country with a long history. The right part “月”(yue) means moon, Han Suyin was born on the Chinese Mid-autumn Festival. On which day the people eat moon cakes and appreciate the big round full moon. The middle part and the right part together is also a Chinese character “胡”(hu) that has several meanings. Two of them are: “non-Han nationalities living in the north and west of ancient China; introduced from northern or western nationalities or from abroad.”(4)

Han Suyin's passport name is Dr. Elisabeth C.K. Comber. And it is also written on the door of her apartment in Switzerland. "Comber” is the family name of her English second husband, she apparently preserved. "C.K." holds for her Chinese name Chow Kuanghu. She puts her English name and Chinese name together with a tendency to show that she is a Eurasian.

Han Suyin bought her daughter Tang Yungmei?

Almost all readers of Han Suyin’s book “Birdless Summer” believe that Tang Yungmei was adopted. In Chapter ten she writes: 
"One of the midwives I knew in the hospital had a relative with four daughters; the fourth born only three months before. The mother wanted to sell the third daughter, because she felt the first two are too old, and would know enough to weep and scream; the youngest, the baby, she could not as yet bear to part with, though she would also sell it later, ‘for it was better that she should live than die of starvation’. The third, in between, at the toddler’s stage, was only a year and a half old. She had asked the midwife to find a buyer for her.

The midwife told me that the little girl was not very pretty, and also had a bad temper…but perhaps I would like to have a look? The price was one thousand dollars, which was high; one could get a small and sturdy little girl for five hundred, or even three hundred. Some of the midwives thought I should bargain for five hundred;’ the mother doesn’t expect one thousand, it is only the asking price.’ But that price was because the mother was educated, and could read and write. The child had previously been sent to another family on a trial basis, but after a month that family had returned her, saying she was too headstrong and not pliable enough.

One morning Huang Szeyuan came into my room carrying a little girl. She was in rags, and so very frightened that she looked frozen, with a big tear slowly beginning in each eye. I fell in love with her…

I paid the thousand dollars without bargaining, without insisting on a trial period, while Huang Szeyuang tut-tutted between her teeth and said I could have had her for less; and everyone else said what a lucky child, and I said I was the lucky one, For she is the most beautiful child I had ever seen-had people no eyes for beauty… In about two weeks her sores cleared and I took her back to Chungking by air…”(5)

But I doubted this story when Tang Yungmei told me in 2001. This May, Tang Yungmei visited Chengdu and met her sixth uncle (Han Suyin’s sixth cousin). He told her if Tang Yungmei had been adopted in Chengdu, of course they would have seen her then, but they didn’t see her in Chengdu. They didn’t know where on earth she comes from? During Han Suyin’s two-week’s stay in Chengtu (Chengtdu), according to what she wrote she resided in the hospital or somewhere near the hospital. But when she left Chengdu her relatives were most likely seeing her off, (that is a Chinese custom) they didn’t see her with a little girl or they didn’t notice one. 

In the same chapter:” And then Marian produced a children’s book with big letters A.B.C, that a missionary family had discarded, and the little girl stared at it solemnly, then pointing to the letter T she said: ‘airplane, bang, bang,’ which showed that she knew about bombings.”(6) If what she wrote about this little girl is true, then the girl should not be a Chengdu girl, but probably from Chungking (Chongqing). Because Chungking then was often bombed while for Chengdu it was otherwise. What's more Chengdu is hundreds of miles away from Chungking. 

At the end of chapter ten she writes: “On leaving Calcutta Pao named the little girl, giving her a poetic name, Yungmei, Plum Blossom of Chengtu; for she had been born on the third day after the Chinese New Year, when the plum blossom adorns every household.”(7) According to this and Tang Yungmei was born on February 10th. 1940. If you subtract 9 months’ (period of pregnancy) that will be June 10th 1939.Let's see what happened around then: “ It was June before Pao returned from the ‘front’, and spent three weeks in Third Uncle’s house in Chengtu, since we no longer had a house in Chungking. About ten days after his return, the first amiability wearing off, Pao’s favorite demon started to fret and torment him again. Morality and virtue. Virtue and morality. I was totally without either. His task was to save me by inculcating these, by force, into me. The next day it came out that Hu Tsungnan had inquired me in a letter, hearing I had a family in Chengtu, and had expressed the desire to call on me and my family, and Pao was afraid that Hu Tsungnan might not approve of me; might look at my face and deduce some ‘foreign’ blood; and Hu Tsungnan’s xenophobia was notorious. This might spoil the good impression that Pao had made; he wrote to Hu that I was ‘so shy’ that I refused to see anyone; I live in the bosom of my family, from which I could not be extricated, and besides, I was pregnant…”(8)

“ So Pao departed, alone, and not too unhappy in spite of his ‘sacrifice’, for he was going back to get into the Obey and Serve office directly under Chiang, and my absence in Chengtu would be a removal of a possible hindrance; he had told so many lies about me, including the one that I was pregnant, that my disappearance for a while was welcome. Besides Hu Tsungnan was now going to Chungking to a military colloquy there, and Pao was eager to be ready at all times, at all times showing himself, so that he might not be forgotten in the struggle for advancement.”(9)

What an incredible coincidence! Did Pao lie? Maybe. But why he she could he say she is pregnant at this particular time? Pao had stayed in Sian (Xi’an) for a couple of months with Hu Tsungnan(Hu Zongnan), and then he went to Chungking to work and at the same time to meet Hu Tsungnan. Before Pao went to Chungking in chapter six she writes:

“I could help him, only I must be patient. I replied that he had promised to let me work, I wanted to work; I could not help doing not sit doing nothing at home; and suddenly he was willing. Yes, here in Chengtu, I could study if I wish to, he himself would going to the university and enquire…

We enquired about the requirements for entrance to the university. I then began to feel that going back to university was not what I wanted. I wanted to do something immediate value, some work connected with situation. Besides I was not certain of Pao’s next change of mood, and all depended on his mood. Now Pao let out that Hu Tsungnan had some ‘female relative’ studying at the university. Did Pao want to utilize me to meet her?”(10)
What would Pao meet the "female relative" really for?

Not long before Tang Yungmei was adopted, Pao and Han Suyin went to Tai Lee’s :
“Tai Lee shook hands and motioned us to sit; we sipped the tea. The conversation consisted at first of commonplaces, with Pao talking in his best ‘good family’ manner. Pao told Tai Lee that I wad recovering from an illness (my malaria). Tai Lee asked brusquely how many children we had and Pao said one daughter in Chengtu.”(11)

If Tang Yungmei was really his child of course he knew she then was a girl. Plus for a high and handsome official as Pao was at that time, he could easily find mistress or borrow a wife.
Let’s look at Han Suyin’s explanation for this/

Of course I was supposed to have a child, a convenient fiction to account for not only for my frequent disappearances when Pao did not wish to exhibit me in public, but also for my trips to Chengtu. But there was another reason for the answer…”(12)

“Something was worrying Pao, and now it came out. For some months we had been drawing rice rations. Rice was distributed to all government officials to ‘stabilize’ price (it did not), and Pao had drawn rice rations for three, not two. I think he gave the supplementary rice to Paohua, his cousin, who either sold it on the black market, or gave some away in return for ‘services’. Pao had claimed as part of his family a child born in Chengtu, and thus obtained rations for three.”(13)

From “Birdless Summer” we can see even her longest stay in Chengtu was not exceed three or four months, so she can not give birth to a child. And Pao and Han Suyin then lived well, they were not short of a child's rice ration. Even Pao’s cousin Paohua “either sold it on the black market, or gave some away in return for ‘service’.” Would Pao risk his reputation and career for a child’s rice ration? I doubt.
Right before Pao left London to fight the communists:
“he had rung up Yungmei at Barney Cottage and wept when he heard her voice saying cheerfully: ‘Good-bye Daddy.’ His face was worn with the worry that he was not absolutely right in everything; doubt infected and eroded him; he could not bear to be unsure.”(14)

Why did he cry? Was that because he was unsure whether he could see his only daughter again or not?
I had told Tang Yungmei my suspicion that she could be Tang Paohuang’s daughter. She laughed and said to me that she was not so curious about this. She told me after "Birdless Summer" was published she wrote to her mother and asked about this. Han Suyin told her that she was Pao’s daughter in the first letter, but the next letter said she was bought from a peasant’s family. She also told me that Pao was kind to her, which Han Suyin omitted in her novel. This reminds me of what I had seen on the internet: “ One that was formerly very close to her (Han Suyin) wrote that ‘it is truly unfortunate that she has a propensity sometimes to mix fact with fiction with unpleasant results for the persons concerned’”(15)

But last December Tang Yungmei visited her mother Han Suyin in Lansanne. Han Suyin told Yungmei that Yungmei's family name was Ling(Lin). I did find a certain Ling in "Birdless Summer":
“In Chungking I found that Pao had moved from Third Uncle’s house and rented a room for us in the center of the city; it was a good room, with a wooden floor, a bed, a chest of drawers a table, in a flat belonging to an official who some years before, when land and houses were cheap, had built this house. By great good luck it had not been bombed.