The Early Years: China to Me, Hong Kong Holiday, and England to Me
Nov 2018 · Open Road Media
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957
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About this ebook
Memoirs of an exotic, unconventional life in Asia and Great Britain in the 1930s and 1940s, from a colorful, prolific New Yorker writer ahead of her time.
China to Me: A proud feminist and fearless traveler, Emily Hahn set out for China in 1935 and stayed through the early years of the Second Sino-Japanese War, wandering, carousing, living, loving—and writing. During her travels from Nanjing to Shanghai, Chongqing, and Hong Kong, where she lived through the Japanese invasion in 1941, Hahn embarks upon an affair with lauded Chinese poet Shao Xunmei; gets a pet gibbon and names him Mr. Mills; establishes a close bond with the women who would become the subjects of her bestselling book The Soong Sisters; battles an acquired addiction to opium; and has a child with Charles Boxer, a married British intelligence officer. Deemed scandalous at the time of its publication in 1944, Hahn’s now classic memoir remains remarkable for her insights into a tumultuous period and frankness about her personal exploits.
“The keen prose is suffused with an intellectual freedom and freshness of perspective that vivify the concerns of a long-gone world.” —Publishers Weekly
Hong Kong Holiday: The same day they attacked Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the British colony of Hong Kong, which they would occupy until their surrender in 1945. Emily Hahn was living there with her newborn daughter. The baby’s father, Charles Boxer, the local head of British army intelligence, was imprisoned in a POW camp. With sharp observations and incisive wit, Hahn gives a vivid picture of her time in the oppressed city—from daily life in the bazaars, beauty shops, restaurants, and opium dens to the crowded hospitals and internment camps—until she fled the city in 1943 with her daughter.
England to Me: Following the end of the Second World War, Hahn married Charles Boxer—fortunately reports of his beheading by the Japanese had been greatly exaggerated—and they returned to his inherited estate in the English countryside. From Southampton to London, Hahn offers a fascinating portrait of a postwar country in flux, as well as her own struggles to adjust to a more sedate English country life after her harrowing but exciting years in the Far East.
China to Me: A proud feminist and fearless traveler, Emily Hahn set out for China in 1935 and stayed through the early years of the Second Sino-Japanese War, wandering, carousing, living, loving—and writing. During her travels from Nanjing to Shanghai, Chongqing, and Hong Kong, where she lived through the Japanese invasion in 1941, Hahn embarks upon an affair with lauded Chinese poet Shao Xunmei; gets a pet gibbon and names him Mr. Mills; establishes a close bond with the women who would become the subjects of her bestselling book The Soong Sisters; battles an acquired addiction to opium; and has a child with Charles Boxer, a married British intelligence officer. Deemed scandalous at the time of its publication in 1944, Hahn’s now classic memoir remains remarkable for her insights into a tumultuous period and frankness about her personal exploits.
“The keen prose is suffused with an intellectual freedom and freshness of perspective that vivify the concerns of a long-gone world.” —Publishers Weekly
Hong Kong Holiday: The same day they attacked Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the British colony of Hong Kong, which they would occupy until their surrender in 1945. Emily Hahn was living there with her newborn daughter. The baby’s father, Charles Boxer, the local head of British army intelligence, was imprisoned in a POW camp. With sharp observations and incisive wit, Hahn gives a vivid picture of her time in the oppressed city—from daily life in the bazaars, beauty shops, restaurants, and opium dens to the crowded hospitals and internment camps—until she fled the city in 1943 with her daughter.
England to Me: Following the end of the Second World War, Hahn married Charles Boxer—fortunately reports of his beheading by the Japanese had been greatly exaggerated—and they returned to his inherited estate in the English countryside. From Southampton to London, Hahn offers a fascinating portrait of a postwar country in flux, as well as her own struggles to adjust to a more sedate English country life after her harrowing but exciting years in the Far East.
About the author
Emily Hahn (1905–1997) was the author of fifty-two books, as well as 181 articles and short stories for the New Yorker from 1929 to 1996. She was a staff writer for the magazine for forty-seven years. She wrote novels, short stories, personal essays, reportage, poetry, history and biography, natural history and zoology, cookbooks, humor, travel, children’s books, and four autobiographical narratives: China to Me (1944), a literary exploration of her trip to China; Hong Kong Holiday (1946); England to Me (1949); and Kissing Cousins (1958).
The fifth of six children, Hahn was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and later became the first woman to earn a degree in mining engineering at the University of Wisconsin. She did graduate work at both Columbia and Oxford before leaving for Shanghai. She lived in China for eight years. Her wartime affair with Charles Boxer, Britain’s chief spy in pre–World War II Hong Kong, evolved into a loving and unconventional marriage that lasted fifty-two years and produced two daughters. Hahn’s final piece in the New Yorker appeared in 1996, shortly before her death.
A revolutionary for her time, Hahn broke many of the rules of the 1920s, traveling the country dressed as a boy, working for the Red Cross in Belgium, becoming the concubine to a Shanghai poet, using opium, and having a child out of wedlock. She fought against the stereotype of female docility that characterized the Victorian era and was an advocate for the environment until her death.
The fifth of six children, Hahn was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and later became the first woman to earn a degree in mining engineering at the University of Wisconsin. She did graduate work at both Columbia and Oxford before leaving for Shanghai. She lived in China for eight years. Her wartime affair with Charles Boxer, Britain’s chief spy in pre–World War II Hong Kong, evolved into a loving and unconventional marriage that lasted fifty-two years and produced two daughters. Hahn’s final piece in the New Yorker appeared in 1996, shortly before her death.
A revolutionary for her time, Hahn broke many of the rules of the 1920s, traveling the country dressed as a boy, working for the Red Cross in Belgium, becoming the concubine to a Shanghai poet, using opium, and having a child out of wedlock. She fought against the stereotype of female docility that characterized the Victorian era and was an advocate for the environment until her death.
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