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TEA, IVORY AND EBONY:
TRACING COLONIAL THREADS IN THE INSEPARABLE LIFE AND LITERATURE OF HAN SUYIN
TERESA KOWALSKA
Han Suyin, medical doctor and fierce Chinese patriot, is the grand dame and doyenne of Chinese writers, born and brought up in pre-communist semi-colonial Old China, and has devoted over fifty long years, in a splendid literary career, to the interpretation of her beloved and largely misunderstood motherland China to the Western world. In spite of perfect fluency in French, Mandarin Chinese and English, she decided to write in the latter language in order to reach the largest possible audience. Her ultimate intention has always been to build bridges of communication and understanding between East and West, and her much under-estimated artistic and intellectual contribution has added a non-Eurocentric reflection on modern history of the Far East and South-East Asia to the treasury of contemporary global thinking. Maybe the humiliating touch of quasi-colonial atmosphere in Peking of her childhood and adolescence spurred her to undertake this challenging task of becoming an outspoken ambassador of her nation in front of the outer, fairly prejudiced and occasionally hostile world. Her inner independence irritated many, provoking accusations of being a communist, or a communist sympathizer at least. The artist's answer to these unfounded objections and simultaneously her meaningful artistic as well as human credo is contained in the below cited fragment of Chapter Eleven from Phoenix Harvest, volume five of her powerful six-volume epic cycle on modern history of China:
I have had to live by what was imprinted in my cells, remaining averse to and suspicious of high-flown abstractions, but totally engaged to that smell and savour and warmth, that feel of the tide, blood beat, which is for me the people of China. With others, exultant ideologies may have priority, but it has never been so with me. I shoulder and make do with systems, with ideologies. I am not committed to any. Only one thing concerns me: in the great sweep of history, will this or that system have been another step forward for the Chinese people? They are the only 'side' I am on.