RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 191 BURTON, Miss Jill V. - BUTT, Dr. Nancy S. G. - BYRNE, D. J. - CALCINA, P. G.* CAMERON, N. CAPLAN, M. - CAREY-HUGHES, Dr. J. CARLSON, Miss R. E. CATER, J. - CHAMBERS, J. W. CHAN, Alfred T. CHAN, Gilbert Fook-lam CHAN, Leonard CHAU, Hon. Sir Tsun-nin* CHEN, Prof. Cheng-siang CHEN, Ching-Ho + CHEN, Yih CHENG, Dr. Irene - CHENG, T. C. CHEUNG, Oswald CHING, Henry CHOA, Dr. Gerald H. CHOW, Edward T. CLARK, Mrs. A. T. CLARK, Mrs. E. E. CLARK, Mrs. P. M. COLLINS, Mrs. D. A. COMAN, Miss A. A. COMBER, Leon T + + - + + - 807 The Hermitage, MacDonnell Road, H.K. The Grantham Hospital, Wong Chuk Hang, Aberdeen, H.K. P. O. Box 981, Nassau, Bahamas. Commercial Investment Co., Ltd., Union House, 12th floor, H.K. A-9 Repulse Bay Towers, Repulse Bay Road, H.K. 6, Homantin Hill Road, Kowloon. Room 315 Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building, H.K. 4, Mansfield Road, Flat 13, 6/F., H.K. 3 Peak Pavilions, Mt. Kellett Road, H.K. c/o Colonial Secretariat, H.K. Coronet Court, 14/F "H", North Point, H.K. La Belle Mansion, 118-120 Argyle Street, 7th floor, Flat A, Kowloon. c/o Pfizer Eastern Corporation, G.P.O. Box 2513, Bangkok, Thailand. 8 Queen's Road, West, Hong Kong. Dept. of Geography, United College, 9 Bonham Road, H.K. New Asia College, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 6 Farm Road, Kowloon. 406A Bank of East Asia Building, H.K. c/o Confucian Tai Shing School, N.K.I.L. No. 4405, San Po Kong, Kowloon. United College, Bonham Road, H.K. Room 703, Prince's Building, H.K. 9 Village Road, 1st floor, H.K. Queen Mary Hospital, Pokfulum, H.K. 3, Village Terrace, Happy Valley, H.K. 13, The Albany, Albany Road, H.K. Tytam Villa, 30 Tai Tam Road, H.K. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., H.K. Dept. of Chemistry, The University, H.K. 53 Dina House, Duddell Street, H.K. K.P.O. Box 6068, Kowloon. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 31 rule over Malaya (known as the Emergency) and unmasking multiple pointless atrocities of the decaying colonial system. And the Rain My Drink, the novel considered the most exhaustive and also the most accurate picture of this particular period of time ever written, was first published in 1957 and it summarizes Han Suyin's experience of Emergency, accumulated during her several years' stay in Johore Bahru, British Malaya, in the double role of wife of Leonard Comber, her English second husband, at that time Assistant Superintendent in the Special Branch (i.e., in the British colonial police), and a doctor running a private medical practice: The Emergency. We lived and breathed it; it penetrated our pores, we chewed it with every mouthful of food. Its formless pervasive threat held gaunt shape in my unquiet mind (from Chapter Three of My House Has Two Doors). At that time everyone except for the British already seemed to realise that there was absolutely no future for the colonial system either in that region, or in the rest of the world. The book describes the great thirst for independence of the two peoples side by side inhabiting Malaya, namely the Muslim Malays and the Chinese national minority, and it emphasises the significant contribution of the Chinese jungle guerillas to liberation of Malaya from white rule: It was the Japanese conquest of Malaya in 1942 which spurred national independence. The white man's myth of invincibility was shattered by the Japanese victories (from Chapter Three of My House Has Two Doors). Han Suyin gives an abundant and informative record on ruthlessness of the British Special Branch in handling the evading situation, on their failed attempts to suppress the upheaval, on numerous penal re-settlings of whole villages of Chinese rubber-tappers from the regions neighbouring with the jungle taken over by the guerillas to the true concentration camps, additionally located in unhealthy marshlands far away from the rubber-tree plantations, and on imprisonments, torturing and blackmailing both active participants to the liberation Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 257 Han Suyin was the daughter of a Belgian (Dutch/Flemish) mother, Marguerite Denis, and a Chinese father, Chou Yen Tung, (a railway engineer) and one of eight children. She was born in Sinyang, Henan Province. Her parents met whilst her father was studying at university in Belgium. In 1932, she started work as a typist at the Peking Union Medical College to earn money to study. She entered Yenching University in 1933. She transferred to the University of Brussels in 1935 but abandoned her studies in 1938 and returned to China after the Japanese invasion. The same year, she married a Kuomintang officer, Tang Pao Huang, who rose to the rank of general before he was killed during the Civil War in 1947. Tang served for a period as a military attaché in London during World War Two. Before his death, they adopted a daughter, Mei. Han Suyin, aged three (second from left) with her father behind her In 1944, she entered the School of Medicine, University of London and in 1948 graduated M.B., B.S. (Hons.). She took an appointment as a paediatrician at Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong, in 1949. After Mr. Morrison's death in August 1950, she continued working in Hong Kong and married Leonard (Leon) F. Comber, an English publisher, on 1 February 1952, in Hong Kong. She spent the next 10 years in Johore Bahru, Malaysia, working at an anti-tuberculosis clinic. Mr. Comber was a Special Branch officer (assistant superintendent) in Malaya between 1948 and 1960. It was in Malaysia, also, that she met her current husband, an Indian Army colonel Vincent Rathnaswamy. There is a confusing report that she practiced medicine in China until about 1961. ================================================================================