Frankness about Han Suyin...(II)

[Teresa Kowalska <kowalska@uranos.cto.us.edu.pl>]

Dear Mr Lee,

Thank you so much for your second e-mail. I'm really glad to see that our
discussion on Han Suyin is frank, serious, fairly profound, perhaps quite
fruitful and that we can still rather easily find a good consensus. After
second thoughts, let me however refer to certain fragment from your first
e-mail, and namely that given below:

>Han Suyin's lack of outright condemnation of Communism >was indeed viewed
with suspicion by others (not just >Westerners) at a time when  Communism
was considered the >Evil of the world. 

It is true that Han Suyin never expressed an outright condemnation of
Communism in her books. However, her endless hints about certain facts
observed in the course of her regular visits to China are even more
eloquent and persuasive, than direct condemnation. E.g., in the course of
her first visit to Peking to see her old father, she was not allowed to
stay with him in her old pre-war family house; instead, she had to stay in
a hotel for foreigners as a British passportholder and was allowed to meet
him for an hour or two per day only. Moreover, even her most intimate
conversations with father had to be carried out in constant presence of two
uneducated (and therefore permanently suspicious) "Chinese KGB" people. And
so on, and so forth, through all her historical / autobiographical books. 

As a matter of fact, Han Suyin always writes in a very sweet and
inoffensive manner, even when writing the horrids, which can well be
misleading and easily taken for an approval. However, in one of her books
about China she made the following warning statement, which - I believe -
can be applied to her general attitude about Communism also. Namely, she
warns that one cannot be mislead by a Chinese smile, because in Chinese
culture smile is like a fan, very frequently used just to politely cover
anger, pain and a lot of other negative emotions from the viewers, just
trying no to hurt them.

I believe there are two more reasons for the lack of outright condemnation
of Communism in Han Suyin's writings.

(i) Totalitarian regimes to a large extent temporarily prosper due to the
"law" about collective responsibility of people (i.e. responsibility for
what totalitarian regimes regard as 'crimes'). I firmly believe that Han
Suyin - with her extended Great Family inhabiting China - very consciously
tried to protect her Chinese relatives from being punished (in one way or
another) for the 'crime' of her outright condemnation of Communism. One can
imagine that this 'Confucian piety' largely and negatively affected her
literary career, which of course means certain (substantial!) injustice
done to her by some Westerners and some Overseas Chinese, too.

(ii) The second reason seems to me even much more important for the whole
cause. The majority of Chinese people live in China. In certain Western
circles, condemnation of Chinese Communism could only too easily be
manipulated and taken for condemnation of China as such, giving rise even
to some unfounded racist and anti-Chinese attitudes outside this country.
And in my opinion, Han Suyin is an idealistic patriot of an old (mandarin?)
kind, who cannot imagine herself staying on the side of Western ('white'?)
critics and helping them spit on her beloved motherland.

I believe to have spoken up my mind about "the misunderstood Hakka
woman-writer" right to the bottom and that there is hardly anything more
left from my part to continue this frank discussion. You deserve my deep
thankfulness for spurring me to opening my mouth in public about how I
understand the tragic role of Han Suyin as a genial writer and an utterly
honest human being in our contemporary "open and friendly global village".

Best regards,
sincerely,
Teresa 
********************************************************
Prof. Dr. Teresa Kowalska
Institute of Chemistry, Silesian University
9, Szkolna Street
40-006 Katowice, POLAND
E-mail: kowalska@us.edu.pl
Phone/fax (office): (+48-32) 599-978
Phone (home): (+48-32) 24-12-162 
Mobile phone: (0) 602-675-049
********************************************************