China to me

“When Emily ‘Mickey’ Hahn set off from America on a world tour in 1935, she little realized that she would spend the next nine years in the Far East.

China to Me tells the story of that extraordinary time up to 1944: of the five years in Shangai, with its easy-going colonial life, her beloved gibbon, Mr Mills, and her husband, Zau Sinmay, with whom she founded the successful magazine, Candid Comment.

Always on the search for new adventure, she travelled to Chungking in 1939 to complete the biography of the Soong sisters.

When she fell in love with Major Charles Boxer, she postponed her planned return to the States indefinitely and, three weeks before Pearl Harbour, gave birth to their daughter, Carola.

With Hong Kong in a state of nervous tension as the Japanese invaded the island, Emily Hahn had to overcome her own personal trials: finding powdered milk for Carola; getting much needed provisions to a wounded Charles in hospital; seeing the mass internment of friends at Stanley, where people were ‘starved and herded like cattle’; suffering her own interrogation; and experiencing the Reign of Terror in 1943.

Throughout, Emily Hahn retained her sense of humour and hope, believing in herself and others; ‘I am proud of human toughness’.

Out of print since 1944, this is a fascinating account of life in China and Hong Kong before and during the Second World War.”