PREAMBOLO
Continua oggi il mio viaggio alla scoperta della grande e inesplorata letteratura cinese del '900 con un altro bell issimo libro-denuncia sulla Cina post Impero. L'autrice è la dottoressa Han Suyin, una bravissima scrittrice/medico cino-belga divenuta più famosa al grande pubblico, soprattutto, grazie al fortunato best seller ispirato ad una vicenda autobio grafica, A Many Splendoured Thing , tradotto in italiano come L'amore è una cosa mer avigliosa , da cui fu tratto, nel 1955, il notissimo e omonimo film con Jennifer Jones e William Holden e di cui si ricorderà certamente la splendida colonna sonora Love is a many splendoured thing , premiata giustament e con l'Oscar.
In questo libro Han Suyin narrava la struggente storia d'amore vissuta tra lei stessa (medico all'ospedale di Hong Kong) e un giornalista inglese, Ian Morrison, corrispondente del Times di Londra e reporter di guerra in Corea.
The theme of the novel that vo Council illustrated here is just that, reserving for another occasion review of Love is a wonderful thing .
In FIN TO BE 'THE MORNING actors' role is reversed. The cup the a is, in fact, formed from a Chinese doctor, Jen Yong, and u na American journalist, Stephanie Ryder.
Stephanie is in China to follow a dream, more than for love of a Don Giovanni failed (and married), who wanted her in that distant land, only for companionship and to satisfy his sexual appetites are . What, however, that the fate in store for him not because he died in an accident before you set foot in the Far East. It will be just her, not at all affra nta from that loss, beginning a new chapter in his life that from that moment on, will change radically in a few months.
We are in 1944 Chungkin g, south China, in Szechwan Province, where he had retired the government of Chang Kai-Shek following irreducible Advanced Japanese invaders after city after city, province after province, the region had fallen, despite la popolazione ostinata, non si arrendeva, pur avendo sotto gli occhi la disfatta di grossi centri come Nanchino, Shanghai, Wu-H an e il feroce bombardamento sulla stessa Chungking, nel maggio del 1939. La sovraffollata città, nonostante tutto, aveva mantenuto un morale alto: tutti avevano contribuito alla ricostruzione, a vivere, a ridere e a lavorare, pur sott o ripetuti bombardamenti e conseguenti ricostruzioni. E gli Americani in Cina si innamoravano di quella terra tanto diversa, proprio grazie a quegli abitanti e alla loro ammirevole tenacia.
In quel momento, nel 1944, però, il Kuo-ming-tang di Chang Kai-Shek stava vivendo un periodo turbolento. La popolarità del 1938-39 era stata sostituita dall'odio more fierce, because that government, heroic and glorious q HAT was shown a few years before, had seduced by corruption and despotism, destroying the brave image captured. And the people had turned against him and had begun tentatively to open up to greater opponent, already powerfully organized in secret: the Communist Party headed by the young Mao Tse-Tung.
STEPHANIE
daughter of a wealthy and powerful aircraft engineer in Dallas, Texas, also holds large oil reserves, and a French nobleman, who, for the sake of quell'intraprendente had renounced his American family, Stephanie had graduated a year before in Asian history at Radcliffe University. He then accepted with enthusiasm, the proposal it had received from Here, the magazine he worked for, to go to China for a year to write exclusively on women in war. Once in Chungking, the then twenty-one Stephanie, had been shocked and outraged by the disgust with the situation found in the city, feeling more and more always in communion with the suffering of the locals.
It will be during one of visits planned to carry out their work, which the journalist is the mbatterà in an episode of blatant injustice, which will bring ad intervenire apertamente.
Una bella mattina la giovane, raggiunto il "ciglio dello strapiombo dove le mura della città si sgretolavano in un caos di pietre e di macerie" (p. 12), restò a guardare il paesaggio 150 m sotto la penisola a forma di cucchiaio su cui sorgeva la città, mentre il fiume Yang-tze distendeva le sue acque gonfie per la massa di nevi himalaiane discioltasi e finita dentro, aumentando il
livello delle acque, di quella estate, di quasi 30 metri e spazzando via parecchie delle casupole costruite troppo vicine alla riva. In fondo ad un sentiero scosceso, Stephanie poté rendersi conto, dalla fungaia intravista, che laggiù viveva quarter of the two million inhabitants of Chungking.
"Those clusters of catapec church that grew from the waste of the city landfill, the garbage or anything that was removed, thrown away, discarded. The inhabitants lived in the filth of the slums of the city, mushrooming of its filth "(p. 13).
That, according to Stephanie, was the ideal material for a series of articles and she had every intention of writing, accompanied by photo-truth.
down the slippery soft rock, began to hear screams in front of the first group of cabins. Some soldiers filthy, disheveled and with a look of pure malice on her face painted, were pushing out of their hovels men and women, hit with rifle butts, breaking down, while the bamboo struts, supporting the roofs of cardboard, oilcloth and set with string soaked axes. Stephanie saw "everything from collapsing clouds of dirt and ashes" (p. 13).
"Why?" - He asked himself. knew that those actions clear the slums were defined by the Chinese military: keep the city clean. But why then forced the men to go to q uelli which defined areas of recruitment, which were almost always the unfortunate death?
The soldiers had not yet noticed her, so Stephanie could take some pictures in peace, while angry women break out against the military that seized the men as beasts. One of them, a young woman in an advanced state of pregnancy, the last exit painfully shed, leaning against a child, had approached the officer who commanded the operation. Handsome, tall, neat, stood aside to watch the scene when he saw the woman kneeling in front, which indicated the belly, along with her son on his knees, he too was in the dust, asking for mercy.
After having watched the officer, clearly disgusted, raised a foot c up of leather boots and kicked in the belly of the woman. Faced with such a blatant abuse of power, intervened scagliandoglisi against Stephanie and shouting: - dirty bastard, how can ... how can ... -. In the two guards, who were at the sides of the officer detained, twisting his arms behind his back ia, while he, after having slapped, the threw a punch in the face. Now Stephanie nose sprang a gush of red blood c h and stained dress, while the soldiers left her afraid to go. Even the officer seemed frightened because he realized that this was a stranger, and certainly an American, then turned and ordered the soldiers to get in line and leave. The unfortunate pregnant that soon first appeared was in the throes of labor, now lying on the ground, his face bloodless, comforted only by the child, crouch beside her, shake her hand and moaned.
belly was swollen and twitching of life of women by Stephanie awaken from its slumber, to get them quickly decide who was to take her to hospital. While not knowing a word of Chinese, the journalist continued to shout the word "doctor" with some urgency, to whose prayers answered your baby, talking to inhabitants of slums remained to watch. Except that some women raised the body on his back, while three men took a broken chair of bamboo and there lay the woman, then, is the shoulder issatisi nghe della sedia, attesero che Stephanie s'incamminasse davanti a loro.
L'INCONTRO
All'ospedale Stephanie s'imbattè in una pietosa infermiera, che andò subito a chiamare il primo medico disponibile, Jen Yong, appunto, il quale proprio in quel momento stava smontando dal turno notturno ed era palesemente stanco e irritato da quell'imprevisto, perché non vedeva l'ora di andarsene per riposarsi. Essendo però un medico coscienzioso e sempre pronto ad accettare, senza lamentarsi, un ennesimo ricovero, anche in momenti come quello, accolse la nuova paziente mettendosi subito all'opera.
Accertatosi dell'accaduto Jen Yong, pur con la testa che gli girava per la stanchezza, notò che la soccorritrice straniera era graziosa e schietta, per cui, sorridendo dapprima, la ringraziò per aver soccorso la donna e poi le disse che, se voleva avere notizie, avrebbe potuto telefon are più tardi. Stephanie, dopo essersi presentata e chiarito chi fosse, assicurò che avrebbe telefonato più tardi. Anch'ella aveva avuto un guizzo di fronte a quel giovane medico magro e poco più alto di lei, il quale si era mosso con delicata sicu rezza quando aveva visitato la gestante ferita. Jen Yong le era piaciuto subito perché si muoveva armoniosamente, sicuro di sé stesso e, soprattutto, per i suoi capelli neri dai riflessi bluastri oltre che per quegli occhi dalle sopracciglia winged and narrow nose. It had seemed built c ome a precision instrument or as one of those statues of polished jade "(p. 22). Just like the smoothness of her skin.
YONG IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Dr. Jen Yong (Yong is the name. The Chinese, to be different, use report with the surname first and then the name) was born in Shanghai 28 years ago, in a wealthy family bankers and had come to Chungking after the Japanese had already occupied Manchuria and northern China were invading. At that time in all universities and high schools, students objected angrily to the invasion, parading through the streets and organizing events, after which they were beaten, shot and taken to prison by Chang Kai-Shek. The latter, for its part, had no intention of fighting the invaders, so he continued to hold only the disastrous and fallime Ntare military expeditions against the Chinese Communists.
In '36, however, Chang Kai-Shek was captured by the Communists and all had believed he would be killed. Doubt soon dispelled when, freed announced that he and the Communists were allies against Japan, growing in popularity dramatically. Jen Yong, and many others, have been infected by a great wave of patriotism since 1938 al '42 avevano creduto e sperato che Chang avrebbe mantenuto la promessa.
Nel '41 però il tradimento. Chang aveva ordinato alle sue armate di non combattere più i Giapponesi, lasciando ai comunisti tutto il peso della lotta, mentre riprendeva ad attaccare quelli che attualmente erano i suoi alleati. E Jen Yong era cambiato come un'intera moltitudine di intellettuali non comunisti, i quali restavano a guardare, ormai impotenti e con disperazione "la corruzione che disgregava il Kuo-ming-tang, la sua tirannia, il potere schiacciante della polizia segreta" (p. 18).
Perciò tantissimi intellettuali abbandonarono Chungking per Yen-an, roccaforte dei guerriglieri comunisti. L'ardente amore per la Cina creava un alone magico attorno a questi past. In the eyes of all non-Communist intellectuals, those fighters were seen as the red patriots, even by those who rejected the dogma of communism, just as Jen Yong. Since 1937, the prestige of the Communist Party had done nothing but go up and spread throughout China, even in Chungking, still the power center of Chang Kai-Shek.
There were many people who, apparently, the profession-looking neutral, while secretly, were working for clandestine communist organizations. Jen Yong hospital where practicing his profession as a doctor, the leader of the Communist was a minor character, a loser, one who cleaned the spittoon and pans washed and parrots, as well as public bathrooms : Old Wang.
Old Wang was to give directives to Jen Yong. This trained, later, medical personnel and then left for Yen-an, disguised in various ways and provided with false permits.
In 1941 Chiang Kai-shek began to rave and ordered the massacre of several units of the Communist New Fourth Army, whose victims were thousands of doctors, nurses and patients.
Venuti aware of ll'accaduto, foreign journalists had not taken well, while the diplomats had warned against Chang a resumption of civil war in China, a disaster for the Allied cause, which was now part of the War world. It was
U.S. intention to continue to fight to Chang Kai-Shek, who conceived of only one thing: power. Nothing else mattered. Similarly, the Communists thought: the ball was no more than power.
But there was at Yen-an, a stronghold of the Communists, a new leader, who had just imposed, Mao Tse-Tung, seconded skill and educated revolutionary Chou En-Lai, in truth, the mind of the party. Roosevelt, the U.S., wanted to know more on account of these two characters, so Chang had to, reluctantly, to accept an Yen-an American military mission came on July 22, which is sent directly to Washington, reports in favor.
But in May of '44 Japan to eliminate the dozens of U.S. air bases scattered around the area c Inese unoccupied, had launched a major offensive.
Faced with such an attack Chang Kai-shek had not fought the Japanese, nor protected the U.S. air bases, some of which were occupied by the invaders with great indignation of America.
Meanwhile, villagers and farmers had been deftly mobilized by the Communists, who had saved hundreds of American pilots, mechanics and others. The news had spread.
YONG
Jen Yong had arrived in Chungking six years ago, after graduating, walking from Shanghai, the largest coastal city, where, as we have already said, was born. He arrived there in company of other students and professors, but to escape the Japanese occupation. And immediately fell in love hard and proud people of Szechwan, Chungking region to which it belonged. There, Yong felt the pulsing heart of his country, he, the rich man and sophisticated, bourgeois extraction.
The flight from Shanghai had lasted four months and, once arrived in Chungking, Yong and others had created a medical school. Since then he had always worked in the hospital, founded by physicians American missionaries, and was convinced that once won the war, those who had dealt with the great exodus, will had returned home, including himself. Everyone
of his generation thought to save the country, because it was felt that having a mission in the blood and, after getting aware of what was unfortunate China, with its history full of shame and humiliation, had acted for the salvation of their national people neglected and exploited by colonial powers, first, and by the invaders, then.
Yong was filled with a patriotic spirit that went far beyond the common principles, even though many believed that China would be the saviors, in the end, the latter and they would put everything in place. This can explain the voluntary departure of many young people from Chungking to Yen-an. But he was not a communist, or member of the party. It was just a young patriot idealista, che si prestava affinché la sua gente migliorasse le proprie condizioni di vita. E per fare questo era consapevole che solo l'America poteva aiutarli.
UNA COPPIA
Yong e Stephanie si rincontreranno a causa della donna soccorsa. Grazie ad una banale telefonata di Stephanie all'ospedale per informarsi sulle condizioni di salute della paziente, Yong aveva colto la palla al balzo e aveva lanciato un invito a cena, pur paralizzato dalla propria sfacciataggine . Voleva vederla e a niente erano servite le spiacevoli riflessioni, dopo l'impulsività del gesto, di dover chiedere un prestito, perché lo stipendio percepito era bassissimo, e certe uscite erano solo luxuries he could not afford.
Yong met again soon learned to love her and now, just to fool the silence, he launched into a rant about surgery and medicine, which in China was still so far behind and that he hoped one day to go to America to catch up the most advanced surgical techniques.
The evening was magical for both and left the unmistakable sign that presaged a profound and radical change in their lives, so they remained in agreement that it would still be seen. Then everyone headed, dreamy, to your home. Indeed, Yong continued to roam the street like a cloud that kept him raised a meter above the ground, such was the ecstasy that had crashed. He would re view of this it was at least reliable.
In fact, the two young men were seen again until marriage and declare, through the registration of marriage in the records of the Communist Party, after a long series of misfortunes past, both because of the rigidity of the latter's suspicions.
The couple, during the Maoist conquest, settled in Shanghai, the city of him, and went to live in the former home of the family Jen, who welcomed with open arms, the young American daughter in law, demonstrating an open mind. Here in Shanghai a few years later, the couple's first child was born, Jen Lin, also known as Treasury Winter. Stephanie was also given a Chinese name, spring snow, because, he argued Yong, "The spring snow was unexpected and came down on the flowers of apple trees without destroying them" (p. 204). Just as Stephanie was in the eyes of her husband. So, whenever she felt called in that way, was always imbued with the sweetness of the delicate lines of the ancient poems composed thousands of years in that land, which state:
Under the snow of spring, all
women are beautiful
My heart is empty, there
penetrate the tide ... ,
remaining always enchanted source their perfect grace.
Years in Shanghai, however, are not all roses and flowers, and Yong will eg rseguitato and arrested because of what his American wife. Even Stephanie will not be easy living in that city suspected and criticized openly, despite having shown on several occasions, to be the and the Chinese nation and the dominant party, will often put up posters on public which were printed the accusations leveled against her, declared a pro-imperialist because of the temporary benefit that America allowed the Kuo-ming-tang Chang Kai-Shek. We are in the toughest American McCarthyism and the relations between the two countries are virtually non-existent.
Yong, however, was branded a counterrevolutionary dog. Things do not
cambieran not even after the transfer from Shanghai to Beijing.
After enjoying a lull, during which period, the Yong vorava renowned as a surgeon and a giver of lighting innovations, nell'osped wings of the capital, while Stephanie taught English literature at the university first , then in a school for foreigners, as well as works translated from Chinese to English, due to its perfect knowledge of the language of that country, the nightmare began again.
One day, during the notorious Cultural Revolution , Yong and Stephanie were accused, once again, by the usual posters in hospitals, universities and schools. One of these against Stephanie read:
LAI SNOW PR IMAVERA, STEPHANIE RYDER agent of American cultural.
This latest manifesto had been written accusation only to protect the minds of young socialist revolutionary bourgeois corruption.
Mao had exercised a subtle purifying the minds of those young people who literally worshiped her figure. And, just to the Kuo-ming-tang, he continued to perpetrate his confinement, to counter, in remote areas without communications. In that Yong was sentenced when Stephanie left, taking advantage of the permission granted to the party, foreign residents, to return to their original state every three years.
After a pregnancy terminated at the sixth month, for a miscarriage, the young woman was again pregnant with a blood heir of mixed race so despised and marginalized. Injury that even unconventional and revolutionary spirit of communism failed to erase.
Yong was unaware of this new pregnancy of his wife, Stephanie, nor was ever going to reveal. He just wanted to get away from there, from that world full of hate and suspicion, for the birth rire creature she was carrying, in a less hostile and suffocating. After years Stephanie had come to hate the seductive pleasures of the family of Yong, which had seized her first child. Now he wanted to run away and review the places where she was born and where he felt a yearning, while recalling that familiar forgotten by time.
IN TEXAS
Executive in Dallas, Texas, where he was protected by his father's wealth and power, but Stephanie will have to deal with the U.S. Secret Service, CIA and FBI, that they keep an eye on the suspect and of collaborating with Red China. Because of these persecutions, the young woman will give birth to a child Septet, and Yong was confined to the far field of rehabilitation of Lingfu, New Town, the future promise of industrial progress, as a doctor of the hospital, be guilty of a Right deviation. This punishment had been imposed because of its cutting-edge ideas, outlined in a project to implement a hospital in Beijing.
Despite having already achieved a considerable reputation in the medical, surgical, Yong had been, once again, accused of the counter-revolutionary espionage in favor of Chang Kai-Shek and pro-imperialist and branded as a deviation to the right, then confined to Lingfu, again that his foreign wife.
In this city, his fame and his skill made him to find allies intelligence in young hospital doctors, who worked with him was so rehabilitated.
fact, rehabilitated, Yong, will return to Shanghai, where his family awaited him and his son Treasury Winter. Stephanie was still in Texas. Then invited her to come back because everything was settled, but had not yet read his last letter, in which Stephanie tells him that he linked to loneliness, to another man, a fellow journalist, who has always loved her and that had arrived in China long before her.
Yong, heartbroken, he confided the mother, who admitted, wisely, that his daughter was the victim of the distance and needed a man at his side. Therefore Yong offered her a divorce, Stephanie never took that into consideration. The contacts of letters between the couple, at this point, you interromperruppero. Those involved in holding together the threads of this bond, from that moment on, was their Treasury Winter. Until, in 1971, appianatisi many obstacles between China and the U.S., Stephanie was able to return to the East to make known his daughter Marylee father.
Yong, meanwhile, pursued unconsciously and secretly already met by a powerful character, who conspired against the couple, for the duration of the novel, will succumb, due to some goons, and savor the joy of never see what that looks like the unknown daughter.
But, in the Finally, justice will be done and the good will triumph.
BRIEF BIOBIBLIOGRA FICI ON 'WRITER
Han Suyin was born on 09/12/1917 to Zhou Guang-Hu (or Chou Kuang-Hu) in a Hakka family in Henan province, China . His father's family is originally from Meixian, a province of Guandong. The maternal family of origin instead Belgian-Flemish. The
ls uo real name is Elisabeth Mathilde Comber. Dr. Comber, Chinese name Han Suyin, who graduated already in Beijing, moved to continue his studies, ll'università Brussels, studying in France. He continued, poi, gli studi scientifici, presso l'università di Londra, dove si laureò e specializzò come medico, professione esercitata, in seguito, nell'ospedale governativo di Hong Kong.
Nel 1938 la scrittrice/medico sposò Tang Pao Huang, ufficiale militare dell'esercito nazionalista cinese e adottò una figlia, Yungmei.
Nel 1947 il marito morì durante un'azione militare nella Guerra Civile Cinese, argomento ampiamente trattato nel romanzo di cui sopra.
Risposatasi nel 1952 con Leon F. Comber, un ufficiale britannico di stanza in Malesia lavorò come medico presso un ospedale malese. Più tardi aprì una clinica a Singapore. Nel frattempo, la dottoressa eurasiatica aveva già iniziato to write his first bestseller.
After her divorce from Leon Comber, Han Suyin married an Indian colonel, Vincent Ratnaswamy (d. January 2003).
After two separations, the author moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he now lives.
Han Suyin is fluent in six languages: the Hakka (a Chinese ethnic group belongs to the father's family), Mandarin (Chinese official), Cantonese (the language prevalent in the south of China), Malay, French and 'English.
Although I know all those languages, this talented writer Sino-Belgian writes mainly in English, although some of his books were written in French and Chinese. His literary output is
divided into three categories, separated by subject, called:
1) autobiography / history;
2) fiction (which is part of this novel);
3) socio-political essays and other writings-story (many on Mao). In the work of Han Suyin
the central role is always played by cultural and political conflicts between East and West in modern history. But it's also explored the struggle for the liberation of the south-east Asia.
In many of his writings, set in the colonial period in East Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the true facts are brilliantly mixed with fiction.
FIN THAT WILL BE 'THE MORNING was in 1982 and goes, as we have seen, from 1939 to well over the Cultural Revolution.
In the novel, the author provides a fascinating and detailed description of families of mixed races, psychological problems related to this breed apart, deliberately kept out. In many ways, Han Suyin was inspired by his personal experience, since she mistosangue.
The professions of the two protagonists also serve to complicate the story and look at what the author and Ian Morrison lived, even if assigned in reverse.
But the most important issue, that characterizes the plot is the explanation, rather than exhaustive, of the mysterious psychological mechanisms that have led even the elite of the Chinese intellectual class to accept communism as a part of themselves, highly patriotic alternative to moral chaos and corruption produced by the national-socialist bourgeois regime of Chiang Kai-Shek.
(Source: my mind, the network and the book).
MY OPINION
FIN THAT WILL BE 'THE MORNING is not primarily a love story: the story of Yong and Stephanie is an excuse to talk, and make certain historical facts faced up to the writer, who Otherwise, the West would not be known. Han Suyin writes mainly for this in English and lives exiled from China in part because of political persecution, as the author of works on the life of controversy Mao and Chiang Kai Shek. Although
fluently and wrote this novel discursive misleads the reader because, under the apparent ease of reading, hides the deep and tragic truth of the complaint on the condition of China, which, even today, the successive governments have certainly not solved . And Han Suyin, graced by the distance and the fame that covers it, deftly and cleverly took advantage to bring all to light. For this reason I do not know whether to recommend to everyone reading this novel as the writer of the other. One thing is certain: to take the reading of novels by this talented writer Sino-Belgian must arm themselves with a great curiosity (which is amply rewarded) and a large love of history, especially that of China in the last century.
***** I seem to do the minimum if you re-dedicate this post to you, dear Loris , as I did the first time that I published. Now it is as if he returned to his home.
0 comments:
Post a Comment