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China to Me
A revolutionary woman for her time, Emily Hahn takes us on an adventure through the many faces that populate the landscape of China. Blending fiction and non-fiction seamlessly, Emily Hahn looks at everything and everyone she met on her breath-taking journey through the China of the nineteen-thirties. Hahn investigates not so much the complicated issues of political blocs and party conflict, but the ordinary, or extraordinary, lives of Chinese residents and tourists. This includes taking us into the personal lives of everyone from Asian prostitutes to European merchants. Join Emily Hahn as she explores China in this literary adventure.
452 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1944
74 people are currently reading
800 people want to read
About the author
Emily Hahn
79 books92 followersEmily "Mickey" Hahn was called "a forgotten American literary treasure" by The New Yorker magazine; she was the author of 52 books and more than 180 articles and stories. Her father was a hardware salesman and her mother a suffragette. She and her siblings were brought up to be independent and to think for themselves and she became the first woman to take a degree in mining engineering from the University of Wisconsin. She went on to study mineralogy at Columbia and anthropology at Oxford, working in between as an oil geologist, a teacher and a guide in New Mexico before she arrived in New York where she took up writing seriously. In 1935 she traveled to China for a short visit and ended up by staying nine years in the Far East. She loved living in Shanghai and met both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. She became the lover of Zau Sinmay, an intellectual, whom she particularly liked for his overwhelming curiosity about everything, she felt it rubbed off on her, and together they founded the English-language magazine Candid Comment. During her time in China she learned to smoke opium, persisting for two years until, inevitably, she became addicted; she was then cured by a hypnotist.
In Hong Kong Hahn met Major Charles R. Boxer, a married British intelligence officer; in 1940 she became pregnant and they had a daughter, Carola. Boxer was captured by the Japanese after being wounded in the attack on Hong Kong; Hahn visited him as much as possible in his prisoner-of-war camp, until she and Carola were repatriated to the United States in 1943. On his release they got married and in 1946 they arrived in Dorset where she called herself a "bad housewife". Although Boxer continued to live in England, where he became Professor of Portuguese at London University, Hahn lived mostly in America as a tax exile.
In Hong Kong Hahn met Major Charles R. Boxer, a married British intelligence officer; in 1940 she became pregnant and they had a daughter, Carola. Boxer was captured by the Japanese after being wounded in the attack on Hong Kong; Hahn visited him as much as possible in his prisoner-of-war camp, until she and Carola were repatriated to the United States in 1943. On his release they got married and in 1946 they arrived in Dorset where she called herself a "bad housewife". Although Boxer continued to live in England, where he became Professor of Portuguese at London University, Hahn lived mostly in America as a tax exile.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
August 25, 2018
On first glance, you would think that the memoir of a working American woman living without family or chaperones in China in the mid 1900s, who then went on to become a single mother would be highly interesting. But this is where good writing comes to the fore and the need for a good editor is absolutely essential. China To Me had neither.
The title is apt because this was China as seen by Hahn's very narrow eyes. Despite being a feminist and opposed to colonisation and racism, despite having an affair with a married Chinese man, Hahn looks at life from a very narrow Western immigrant perspective. The local Chinese population might as well not have existed, and there is very little about Chinese culture. This was basically a narrative of the lives of Bright Young Things, only in China. And that really wasn't interesting.
One of the themes of the book was Hahn's writing a book about the Soong Sisters, who were prominent in Chinese politics of the time. But this just dragged on and on. In the meanwhile, Hahn continued to drop names of random people as if we were all friends and the reader should somehow know who they were and be interested in them. This reader really was not. The cast of characters was pretty much impossible to keep track of.
The book is also set in wartime China and there are mentions of bombs falling around their heads. However, this does not stop all the random and endless socialising and vapid discussions by these uninteresting people, nor does it stop Hahn from documenting it all in excruciating detail. Do you get a sense of the war? Not really. It appears as if it's just something going on in the background and not really relevant to the story.
Fine, does Hahn bring some interesting political or historical insights to the table? Nope! She does mention a few political bigwigs and then nicely skirts around the issue without giving the reader anything. There is very little political analysis of whatever is happening, despite there being a war going on. Hahn was actually working for a newspaper during this time and probably was more politically literate than most other women of the time, so I really find this inexcusable.
Overall, this book has very little to offer anyone today. It was a huge hit in its day, but I suppose the public was less exposed and even a small mention of life in China would have been rather interesting. The readers of the time would also have been acquainted with the endless cast of uninteresting characters who probably made it to the tabloids every Sunday. For us more modern readers, there is not much left unless you want to do the very hard work of peeling off the fluff to find the very few interesting gems within.
The title is apt because this was China as seen by Hahn's very narrow eyes. Despite being a feminist and opposed to colonisation and racism, despite having an affair with a married Chinese man, Hahn looks at life from a very narrow Western immigrant perspective. The local Chinese population might as well not have existed, and there is very little about Chinese culture. This was basically a narrative of the lives of Bright Young Things, only in China. And that really wasn't interesting.
One of the themes of the book was Hahn's writing a book about the Soong Sisters, who were prominent in Chinese politics of the time. But this just dragged on and on. In the meanwhile, Hahn continued to drop names of random people as if we were all friends and the reader should somehow know who they were and be interested in them. This reader really was not. The cast of characters was pretty much impossible to keep track of.
The book is also set in wartime China and there are mentions of bombs falling around their heads. However, this does not stop all the random and endless socialising and vapid discussions by these uninteresting people, nor does it stop Hahn from documenting it all in excruciating detail. Do you get a sense of the war? Not really. It appears as if it's just something going on in the background and not really relevant to the story.
Fine, does Hahn bring some interesting political or historical insights to the table? Nope! She does mention a few political bigwigs and then nicely skirts around the issue without giving the reader anything. There is very little political analysis of whatever is happening, despite there being a war going on. Hahn was actually working for a newspaper during this time and probably was more politically literate than most other women of the time, so I really find this inexcusable.
Overall, this book has very little to offer anyone today. It was a huge hit in its day, but I suppose the public was less exposed and even a small mention of life in China would have been rather interesting. The readers of the time would also have been acquainted with the endless cast of uninteresting characters who probably made it to the tabloids every Sunday. For us more modern readers, there is not much left unless you want to do the very hard work of peeling off the fluff to find the very few interesting gems within.
July 25, 2015
Candid memoir of expatriate life in 1930’s-40’s China
When I first started reading Emily Hahn’s candid memoir I felt like I’d walked into the middle of a witty and fascinating conversation that I didn’t quite have the context for. There’s a reason for that, when China to Me was first published in 1944 WWII was still going on and the public was already well aware of Emily Hahn and her unconventional somewhat scandalous life, so there were details she could assume people already knew. I was out of that loop, but I soon enough found my footing.
Hahn traveled to Shanghai with her sister in 1935, got a writing job for a British newspaper and decided to stay. She mixed with the rich and powerful, mainly British and other European expatriates, but she also had a romantic relationship and business partnership with an already married Chinese publisher and poet. Her apartment--which she describes in humorous detail--was in the red light district and she kept a pet gibbon name Mr. Mills who sometimes accompanied her to parties.
In 1940 Hahn traveled inland to the mountainous city of Chungking (now Chongqing) to interview one of the Soong sisters, who I’m ashamed to say I had never heard of, for a book she was writing about the family. All three sisters were married to prominent Chinese men--political and military leader Chiang Kai-shek, revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, and uber wealthy finance minister Kung Hsiang-hsi--but the sisters also cultivated their own positions of power and influence. Hahn was in Chungking while the Japanese were conducting bombing raids on the city, so she had to type her book between frightening but tedious sessions in cave-like air raid shelters.
But Hahn’s experiences in Chungking were nothing compared to her life in Japanese occupied Hong Kong. She had about a year in the city before the invasion, which was long enough to have an affair with a married British military officer and give birth to their baby. Up until this point Hahn’s memoir had been highly interesting to me, but her harrowing descriptions of the chaos, scarcity, and menace of living under enemy rule while trying to care for and feed her infant daughter and make sure her hospital imprisoned lover had food and medicine made the book almost impossible to put down.
Hahn was a follows-her-own-rules kind of person, and this is a lively, entertaining, and informative book, but it’s her astute and forthright observations about people, including herself, and their varied reactions to hardship, displacement, cultural difference, tests of love and loyalty, and the loss or gain of power that elevated this memoir above a simple recounting of events for me. The book closes in 1943 when Hahn finally returns to the US with her daughter, but the war is raging on so her life and the fate of her lover are still up in the air, making me very relieved that I had a biography on hand to fill me in on what happened next--though you could just check her Wikipedia page.
This memoir is well over 400 pages, and I did find myself skimming at times, but like many of my favorite books, China to Me sent me into passionate internet research mode, and it’s added several titles to my TBR list--I for sure have to read Hahn’s book about the Soong sisters. There’s a lot more by Hahn to choose from because she authored a total of 52(!) books and wrote articles, poems, and short stories for New Yorker magazine almost up until her death at the age of ninety-two in 1997.
In 2014 China to Me was republished by Open Road Media. I read an ebook review copy supplied to me at no cost by the publisher through NetGalley. Review opinions are mine.
When I first started reading Emily Hahn’s candid memoir I felt like I’d walked into the middle of a witty and fascinating conversation that I didn’t quite have the context for. There’s a reason for that, when China to Me was first published in 1944 WWII was still going on and the public was already well aware of Emily Hahn and her unconventional somewhat scandalous life, so there were details she could assume people already knew. I was out of that loop, but I soon enough found my footing.
Hahn traveled to Shanghai with her sister in 1935, got a writing job for a British newspaper and decided to stay. She mixed with the rich and powerful, mainly British and other European expatriates, but she also had a romantic relationship and business partnership with an already married Chinese publisher and poet. Her apartment--which she describes in humorous detail--was in the red light district and she kept a pet gibbon name Mr. Mills who sometimes accompanied her to parties.
In 1940 Hahn traveled inland to the mountainous city of Chungking (now Chongqing) to interview one of the Soong sisters, who I’m ashamed to say I had never heard of, for a book she was writing about the family. All three sisters were married to prominent Chinese men--political and military leader Chiang Kai-shek, revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, and uber wealthy finance minister Kung Hsiang-hsi--but the sisters also cultivated their own positions of power and influence. Hahn was in Chungking while the Japanese were conducting bombing raids on the city, so she had to type her book between frightening but tedious sessions in cave-like air raid shelters.
But Hahn’s experiences in Chungking were nothing compared to her life in Japanese occupied Hong Kong. She had about a year in the city before the invasion, which was long enough to have an affair with a married British military officer and give birth to their baby. Up until this point Hahn’s memoir had been highly interesting to me, but her harrowing descriptions of the chaos, scarcity, and menace of living under enemy rule while trying to care for and feed her infant daughter and make sure her hospital imprisoned lover had food and medicine made the book almost impossible to put down.
Hahn was a follows-her-own-rules kind of person, and this is a lively, entertaining, and informative book, but it’s her astute and forthright observations about people, including herself, and their varied reactions to hardship, displacement, cultural difference, tests of love and loyalty, and the loss or gain of power that elevated this memoir above a simple recounting of events for me. The book closes in 1943 when Hahn finally returns to the US with her daughter, but the war is raging on so her life and the fate of her lover are still up in the air, making me very relieved that I had a biography on hand to fill me in on what happened next--though you could just check her Wikipedia page.
This memoir is well over 400 pages, and I did find myself skimming at times, but like many of my favorite books, China to Me sent me into passionate internet research mode, and it’s added several titles to my TBR list--I for sure have to read Hahn’s book about the Soong sisters. There’s a lot more by Hahn to choose from because she authored a total of 52(!) books and wrote articles, poems, and short stories for New Yorker magazine almost up until her death at the age of ninety-two in 1997.
In 2014 China to Me was republished by Open Road Media. I read an ebook review copy supplied to me at no cost by the publisher through NetGalley. Review opinions are mine.
October 24, 2018
Writer Emily Hahn - known to her friends as Mickey - traveled from the USA to China in 1935 and she didn't come home until she was repatriated - with her daughter - in 1943.
She hadn't intended to stay for so long, but she found so many reasons to stay and establish a life there.
She was offered an interesting job, in newspaper journalism; and that led her into a business partnership and a romantic alliance with her - married - Chinese publisher.
She mixed with the rich and powerful, mainly British and other European expatriates
.
She found and furnished an apartment in Shanghai's red light district, and she kept a pet gibbon who she named Mr. Mills and who often accompanied her to social events.
Starting to read this book was a little like stepping into a party not knowing any of the other guests and catching the voice of a warm and witty raconteur with a great deal to talk about. I can't say that I got the whole story straight, but I picked up lots of details and I was intrigued.
That might have happened because the author was a columnist for the New Yorker and was writing for an audience who already knew the shape of her story; it might be because she was anxious to publish this account but wary of saying too much during the war; and it could be significant that she had a serious opium habit for the first few years she spent in China ....
As time passed key events became a little clearer.
Mickey was commissioned to write a book about the three famous Soong sisters. Each sister had married a prominent Chinese men - military leader Chiang Kai-shek, revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, and wealthy finance minister Kung Hsiang-hsi - and each had used that to establish their own position of power and influence.
She traveled inland to the mountainous city of Chungking to interview the first of trio, and gaining her confidence and trust opened the doors she needed opening to complete her book.
There isn't a great deal about the sisters in this book but there was enough to pique my curiosity, and to make me very glad that I have a copy of that book.
Then Mickey moved to Hong Kong. She began an affair with the local head of British army intelligence and she gave birth to their baby. That was planned, because she thought that a baby would steady her and he agreed ....
She was still in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded - on the same day that they attacked Pearl Harbor. That raised this book from interesting to compelling, as she vividly describes of the confusion, the uncertainty, the deprivation and the fear of living under enemy rule. She struggled to feed and care for her infant daughter and to make sure her that her lover, who was a hospital-bound prisoner, had the food and medicine that he needed.
The book closes in 1943 when Mickey is repatriated to the US with her daughter; the outcome of the war and the fate of the man she loved still uncertain.
Emily Hahn was a proud feminist and fearless traveler, and the kind of woman who lived life as she felt it ought to be lived without waiting for the rules to be changed. That made her wonderful company, but it was her skill as a writer and her interest in the people around her that really elevated this memoir. She made clear and insightful observations about the people around her - and herself and how they dealt with cultural differences, the changes that politics and the war brought, and all of life's ups and downs.
You won't find a comprehensive account of the history that Emily Hahn lived through in this book, you won't find much at all about people outside her social circle; and there is so much detail in more than four hundred pages that I can't say that I took it all in. But I can say that those pages weren't enough, because brought her own life back to life on the page so vividly and she really made me understand what it was like to be in her position.
I was sorry to part company, but I did understand that the book had reached a natural end.
She hadn't intended to stay for so long, but she found so many reasons to stay and establish a life there.
She was offered an interesting job, in newspaper journalism; and that led her into a business partnership and a romantic alliance with her - married - Chinese publisher.
She mixed with the rich and powerful, mainly British and other European expatriates
.
She found and furnished an apartment in Shanghai's red light district, and she kept a pet gibbon who she named Mr. Mills and who often accompanied her to social events.
Starting to read this book was a little like stepping into a party not knowing any of the other guests and catching the voice of a warm and witty raconteur with a great deal to talk about. I can't say that I got the whole story straight, but I picked up lots of details and I was intrigued.
That might have happened because the author was a columnist for the New Yorker and was writing for an audience who already knew the shape of her story; it might be because she was anxious to publish this account but wary of saying too much during the war; and it could be significant that she had a serious opium habit for the first few years she spent in China ....
As time passed key events became a little clearer.
Mickey was commissioned to write a book about the three famous Soong sisters. Each sister had married a prominent Chinese men - military leader Chiang Kai-shek, revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, and wealthy finance minister Kung Hsiang-hsi - and each had used that to establish their own position of power and influence.
She traveled inland to the mountainous city of Chungking to interview the first of trio, and gaining her confidence and trust opened the doors she needed opening to complete her book.
There isn't a great deal about the sisters in this book but there was enough to pique my curiosity, and to make me very glad that I have a copy of that book.
Then Mickey moved to Hong Kong. She began an affair with the local head of British army intelligence and she gave birth to their baby. That was planned, because she thought that a baby would steady her and he agreed ....
She was still in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded - on the same day that they attacked Pearl Harbor. That raised this book from interesting to compelling, as she vividly describes of the confusion, the uncertainty, the deprivation and the fear of living under enemy rule. She struggled to feed and care for her infant daughter and to make sure her that her lover, who was a hospital-bound prisoner, had the food and medicine that he needed.
The book closes in 1943 when Mickey is repatriated to the US with her daughter; the outcome of the war and the fate of the man she loved still uncertain.
Emily Hahn was a proud feminist and fearless traveler, and the kind of woman who lived life as she felt it ought to be lived without waiting for the rules to be changed. That made her wonderful company, but it was her skill as a writer and her interest in the people around her that really elevated this memoir. She made clear and insightful observations about the people around her - and herself and how they dealt with cultural differences, the changes that politics and the war brought, and all of life's ups and downs.
You won't find a comprehensive account of the history that Emily Hahn lived through in this book, you won't find much at all about people outside her social circle; and there is so much detail in more than four hundred pages that I can't say that I took it all in. But I can say that those pages weren't enough, because brought her own life back to life on the page so vividly and she really made me understand what it was like to be in her position.
I was sorry to part company, but I did understand that the book had reached a natural end.
December 31, 2024
Approximately, imagine a character from a 1940s Hawks comedy finds themselves in, successively, Shanghai, Chongqing and Hong Kong, before and during the war. As fun and sometimes alarming as it sounds though sometimes rather tiring.
October 4, 2009
I was hoping that this memoir of an American woman living and working in 1936 Shanghai would be evocative of the time, but she spends a lot of her time writing sbout the socializing and local politics, all which would have been relevant to a reader at that time, but left me feeling kind of lost. Couldn't finish it.
February 25, 2019
This is a book I’ve started a few times but only got through now - thanks to the audiobook. It’s definitely a colonial book albeit from an American perspective with some scathing criticism of the British colonials. I think I’m particularly partial to it due to all the years spent in HK and her “back story” on the war years there. Of interest is how language and the ability to speak Japanese by Charles Boxer was so important plus the fact that as a socialite she welcomed all to her table regardless of ethnicity and how that stood her in good stead, and probably helped her and the many she took supplies for in the war survive.
I can imagine many of the streets and buildings she refers to plus mannerisms and attitudes that still prevail nearly a century later!
I can imagine many of the streets and buildings she refers to plus mannerisms and attitudes that still prevail nearly a century later!
May 1, 2021
I enjoyed this chaotic memoir of Emily Hahn's time in pre-war Shanghai, her stay in Free China capital Chongqing 1938-39 to collect background information for her authorized biography of the Soong sisters, and then lastly in the middle of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. The roughly edited prose makes it real and raw, and communicates the emotions and triggers the senses so much more than a more tidy work could ever have done.
March 9, 2014
Oh man this book is great. This is like the most ladylike book ever. It is ladylike as balls. In this incredibly ladylike memoir, Emily Hahn gets up to all sorts of ridiculous doings in China. You can look at any bio of her for the big picture, but it doesn't get across the blithe and casual way she runs her terribly topical and engaging social life. Best part: the copy I got has a newspaper clipping from 1945 with a picture of her and her pet monkey. The second half is some of the best war reporting from a civilian perspective I've read. I don't know what it is about this book. She's like Herodotus. You might overlook her as being too ladylike and engaging to be serious, but she has a very firm way of telling a story by merely setting the events out and not making pronouncements about their meaning.
ETA: If you read it, get ready for some terribly ladylike racism, but it's okay.
ETA: If you read it, get ready for some terribly ladylike racism, but it's okay.
July 28, 2021
COULD NOT READ. I’m sure Emily Hahn has a very interesting story about her life in China, but I could not get through her style of writing. She was all over the place. Emily threw out a multitude of names and places that weren’t mentioned previously in the book and I didn’t know who these people were. She’d jump from writing about one location and then to the next with no warning or at least an extra space between the paragraphs for some kind of warning to the reader. I got about 70 pages in and just decided, I can’t go on. I’m not enjoying this book at all. Wish I did for I wanted to learn of Emily’s experience in China in the 1930s.
August 31, 2019
One of my favourite books on China. Surprisingly relevant for the China expat experience today.
March 30, 2023
Emily Hahn is such an entertaining writer that is hard to imagine her writing a boring book, but she comes close to it a couple times here. A strong willed editor could have turned this into a great book, but as it is, it is still a very good one. The book is an account of the author's 8 year stay in China. It can be divided into three parts: her residences in Shanghai, Chungking and Hong Kong. Shanghai in the 1930s was a playground for Americans and Europeans, and the first section of the book reflects that. Accounts of the parties she attended and people she met, as well as the close companionship she developed with a Chinese poet, were, for me, fascinating, but I can see how some people might find it boring. Hahn stayed in Chungking for a time while researching her biography of the Soong sisters. This, for me, was the least interesting part of the book, and could have been trimmed down. But at the time it was written, it was the capital of Free China and was the subject of intense interest, so perhaps Hahn felt she had to play it up. The beginning of the Hong Kong part is also a little full. There she embarked on an affair with the man who would become her husband. Unfortunately, he was married at the time, so the details of the affair are not only boring but also made me a little queasy. But once the Japanese take over Hong Kong, the book becomes absolutely riveting. (However, these events were covered in a more entertaining, and probably less truthful, manner in her book Hong Kong Holiday.) So, overall, a mixed bag. I loved it despite its flaws, and I suspect most fans of Hahn (are there any of those any more?) will as well. But a newcomer to Hahn's work might be better served with one of her other books.
October 9, 2020
- While Americans experienced the great depression in the 30s, Shanghai experienced an economic boom
- Chinese were enthusiastic about the Nationalist taking over the Qing government, but many were quickly disappointed when seeing the equal corruption the Nationalist also had
- The wealth divide between the rich and poor were well pronounced.
- Foreign education - much like today's - was the hot commodity in China in the 30s.
- Exchange rate calculated - again, much like today's - cost of living in China was far lower than America's. Of course, the quality wouldn't be the same.
- Eurasian children was not treated with the same respect in China, nor many parts of Europe.
- Chinese were enthusiastic about the Nationalist taking over the Qing government, but many were quickly disappointed when seeing the equal corruption the Nationalist also had
- The wealth divide between the rich and poor were well pronounced.
- Foreign education - much like today's - was the hot commodity in China in the 30s.
- Exchange rate calculated - again, much like today's - cost of living in China was far lower than America's. Of course, the quality wouldn't be the same.
- Eurasian children was not treated with the same respect in China, nor many parts of Europe.
August 11, 2023
This book is a personal biography (partially real, partially fictional) of Emily Hahn, an American reporter who lived in China from the 1930s to the 1940s, witnessing Japan's invasion of China. It is deeply personal, showing more of her life and less of the overall history. Emily is also rather hilarious and over the top, but I enjoyed the book more so because of the time period it showed then because I enjoyed the story itself.
March 31, 2013
According to Emily Hahn’s biographer, she “feverishly” wrote China to Me in just a few months, and it reads as if she’s recalling China in a breathless rush. It was, indeed, a breathless adventure.
At the outset I didn’t know what to make of this book. She opens by talking about her Hollywood hairdresser and then about the society pages of the Shanghai newspaper. What kind of a spoiled ditz have we here? I suspected she was like a chatty aunt who has traveled everywhere and could tell you of countless adventures if only you could keep her focused on one narrative without diverging into a diatribe about, for example, the inability of the Chinese to construct a proper chair.
She is so much more than that.
Cut her some slack. Skim, skip a few pages if you must. By the middle of the book she is in Hong Kong being shelled by the invading, raping, looting Japanese Army. She falls in love with a married British spy (though she never identifies him as a spy because when she was writing the book, the war had not ended and he was a Japanese POW). To add to the danger, she has a baby. Her lover is in prison; her baby is starving; she is in constant danger of random violence or death. In addition, she is engaged in clandestine relief work for which the penalties are severe.
At one point she is among a group being raided by Japanese thugs:
Along the way she occasionally finds time to write a poem or to analyze, cold-bloodedly, the political use of rape, or to point out that all the English and American journalists didn’t know diddly about the communists in China (which made the book anathema to certain journalists in the USA).
Here is how her baby came about — she had dinner at a restaurant with Charles (her lover) and some guests. A woman named Mrs. Lee asks:
It was a proposal, flippant and indignant. Emily Hahn herself could churn flippantly and indignantly throughout the giant insane nation of China — or the many warring nations of China — and you can accompany her.
At the end of the book, (I am spoiling nothing by telling you this) she has one final visit with Charles, her lover, in his prisoner-of-war camp, knowing she may never see him alive again:
The father of her child is led back to prison — probably never to see her again — arguing about whether he kissed her or not. It’s this odd mix of the small and the large, the mess that is China, the mess that is all of our lives, that comes through so clearly. What a book.
At the outset I didn’t know what to make of this book. She opens by talking about her Hollywood hairdresser and then about the society pages of the Shanghai newspaper. What kind of a spoiled ditz have we here? I suspected she was like a chatty aunt who has traveled everywhere and could tell you of countless adventures if only you could keep her focused on one narrative without diverging into a diatribe about, for example, the inability of the Chinese to construct a proper chair.
She is so much more than that.
Cut her some slack. Skim, skip a few pages if you must. By the middle of the book she is in Hong Kong being shelled by the invading, raping, looting Japanese Army. She falls in love with a married British spy (though she never identifies him as a spy because when she was writing the book, the war had not ended and he was a Japanese POW). To add to the danger, she has a baby. Her lover is in prison; her baby is starving; she is in constant danger of random violence or death. In addition, she is engaged in clandestine relief work for which the penalties are severe.
At one point she is among a group being raided by Japanese thugs:
Terror seems to make people very, very sad. We were indistinct in the candlelight, but I could see the faces pretty well and everyone was hangdog, and kept his eyes fixed on the table. Actors registering fear in the movies don’t do it right. I know that now. Alec had been tied painfully tightly and his face was twisted with the effort not to yelp. They didn’t tie me up at all, nor the luscious Lena, nor Veronica, nor Susie, and that was terrifying too. In spite of all the airy things I had been saying about rape, now that I thought my time had come I was so afraid of it that I turned to jelly.
Along the way she occasionally finds time to write a poem or to analyze, cold-bloodedly, the political use of rape, or to point out that all the English and American journalists didn’t know diddly about the communists in China (which made the book anathema to certain journalists in the USA).
Here is how her baby came about — she had dinner at a restaurant with Charles (her lover) and some guests. A woman named Mrs. Lee asks:
”Have you any babies, Madam?”
“No,” I said solemnly shaking my head. “No, I can’t have any children.”
“Oh, isn’t that a pity!”
Over on the other side of the table, Charles pricked up his ears and looked at me. “Nonsense,” said Charles crisply. “Of course you can have children.”
“As it happens, I can’t,” I said, and I thought I was telling the truth. “I’ve been told so, often, by doctors. I can’t.”
“Of course you can. I’ll bet you anything you like.”
“What is this nonsense?” he demanded in the taxi, after we had sent the guests off to the ferry. “Is that why you carry on so about children, weeping at Wu Teh-chen’s and keeping gibbons and all that?”
“Oh no. I don’t want children. I never did.”
“All women want children,” said Charles with amusing certainty. “But see here; do you really want a child? If so, I’ll let you have one.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s have one,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. It can be my heir. Just to make things all right, if I can get a divorce and if it all works out, we might even get married. If we want to, that is, and after a long time for considering.”
“Do you mean it?” I asked after a pause. I knew already, though, that he did. He was being flippant, but that is the way Charles is; he just is flippant. It didn’t alter the fact that he meant it.
“I never heard such nonsense,” said Charles indignantly. “Can’t have children! Whatever will Mrs. Lee think of me?”
“All right," I said, “let’s try.”
It was a proposal, flippant and indignant. Emily Hahn herself could churn flippantly and indignantly throughout the giant insane nation of China — or the many warring nations of China — and you can accompany her.
At the end of the book, (I am spoiling nothing by telling you this) she has one final visit with Charles, her lover, in his prisoner-of-war camp, knowing she may never see him alive again:
The officer turned his back a minute and we kissed each other briefly, and then it was time for Charles to go. As they walked away I heard the officer say: “You’re allowed to kiss her good-by.”
“But I did already,” said Charles.
“Did you? I didn’t see you.”
“Well, I did, I tell you.”
They went out through the door arguing about it. Carola, who had been shy of Charles, now looked disconcerted. “Uncle’s gone,” she said.
“Uncle? That wasn’t Uncle, you silly baby. That was your daddy.”
“Oh?” She accepted the correction without argument. “Daddy’s gone,” she said. She began to whimper.
“Daddy’s gone,” I said.
The father of her child is led back to prison — probably never to see her again — arguing about whether he kissed her or not. It’s this odd mix of the small and the large, the mess that is China, the mess that is all of our lives, that comes through so clearly. What a book.
March 15, 2022
I found this quite interesting due no doubt primarily to my longstanding personal interest in Chinese history. This time period - late 1930s-early 1940s - was particularly fascinating to read from a someone who experience the Japanese occupation firsthand.
May 30, 2020
Longtime New Yorker correspondent's take on a fascinating place. She becomes an opium addict, acquires a pet monkey, takes a Chinese lover, and more. How I wish I coulda partied with Ms. Hahn!
December 30, 2021
Fascinating and well-written account of the author’s experience in China during the 1930s and WWII.
June 16, 2025
Emily Hahn is a fascinating person. I love her fearlessness and overall approach to life. GREAT book. Her writing was clear and relatable.
May 25, 2013
Emily (Mickey) Hahn's 'China to Me' memoir is bit of a puzzle. Is it a travelogue, a window into another society, a historical record? Was it written as a means of coming to grips with the sudden arrival in America after nearly a decade of living in Asia? Is it a catalogue of names and events recorded for posterity? She wrote:
Half the men I remember that night, horsing around, are dead,
and the girls are standing in line at Stanley with cup in hand,
waiting for a handout of thin rice stew.
Her writing styple is without a doubt geared toward the magazine reader, a conversational tone, hinting at larger topics without great depth or detail. Sprinkled throughout are names of persons known and unknown - mostly the later today. The first third of the book sheds light on Mickey's character as well as the life of foreigners living in China in the 1930's. Picturing her home with the human and animal managerie she maintained underlines her unconventional nature. It also serves to ground her as a legitimate observer in a time of great change in China. The central portion covers the writing of her well-known book on the Soong sisters, the wives of the New China's leaders. The remainder describes life in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. In the center of it all is a love story which might be the essence of minimialism, presented in such a matter of fact way that the reader knows it was completely different.
Her experiences during the occupation of Hong Kong seem at odds with the stories that came out of the internment camps. While she benefited from an association with highly placed Japanese officials, her life was different from the internees only in the apparent freedom of movement she was allowed and the company she kept. Those outside the camps were subject to sudden terrors, violence and criminal behaviors every much as those inside. She was fortunate to be part of a support network that worked for the survival of themselves and the internees alike.
Mickey's personality is such that hers fears and concerns, while noted, do not take over the narrative. As she wrote, she likes to be the boss and naturally could not maintain the proper demeanor as an enemy national. Clearly, the Japanese did not know what to make of her. Throughout, she does not hesitate to criticize herself, her actions or her behaviors but holds fast to her purpose of providing for her daughter and for her daughter's father.
This is not a tell-all tale and the reader is left with the impression that a lot has been left unwritten. Her purpose, however, was not to document conditions and events that others were in better positions to detail or who had already done so. At that, anything from the pen of this extraordinarily interesting woman is well worth reading.
Half the men I remember that night, horsing around, are dead,
and the girls are standing in line at Stanley with cup in hand,
waiting for a handout of thin rice stew.
Her writing styple is without a doubt geared toward the magazine reader, a conversational tone, hinting at larger topics without great depth or detail. Sprinkled throughout are names of persons known and unknown - mostly the later today. The first third of the book sheds light on Mickey's character as well as the life of foreigners living in China in the 1930's. Picturing her home with the human and animal managerie she maintained underlines her unconventional nature. It also serves to ground her as a legitimate observer in a time of great change in China. The central portion covers the writing of her well-known book on the Soong sisters, the wives of the New China's leaders. The remainder describes life in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. In the center of it all is a love story which might be the essence of minimialism, presented in such a matter of fact way that the reader knows it was completely different.
Her experiences during the occupation of Hong Kong seem at odds with the stories that came out of the internment camps. While she benefited from an association with highly placed Japanese officials, her life was different from the internees only in the apparent freedom of movement she was allowed and the company she kept. Those outside the camps were subject to sudden terrors, violence and criminal behaviors every much as those inside. She was fortunate to be part of a support network that worked for the survival of themselves and the internees alike.
Mickey's personality is such that hers fears and concerns, while noted, do not take over the narrative. As she wrote, she likes to be the boss and naturally could not maintain the proper demeanor as an enemy national. Clearly, the Japanese did not know what to make of her. Throughout, she does not hesitate to criticize herself, her actions or her behaviors but holds fast to her purpose of providing for her daughter and for her daughter's father.
This is not a tell-all tale and the reader is left with the impression that a lot has been left unwritten. Her purpose, however, was not to document conditions and events that others were in better positions to detail or who had already done so. At that, anything from the pen of this extraordinarily interesting woman is well worth reading.
January 30, 2012
Emily Hahn is one of my all time favorite writers/women/adventurers and if I were an actress she is the one character that I would want to play in a film. In her autobiographical writing, Hahn is brutally honest about her complicated life and nobody could ever accuse her of taking the easy road. She talks about her decision to leave her comfortable home to move to the Southwest to become an engineer, and later, move to Asia, where she hooked up with a Chinese lover, a pet monkey, and a minor opium addiction. Still later in Hong Kong she fell head-over-heels into an affair with Charles Boxer, a married man (and British spy). When he was imprisoned by the invading Japanese, she managed to evade authorities by disguising herself as a local woman. (Please note, I last read this book a number of years ago and also her biography so some of this may have shown up in the bio instead of the memoir.) I once had a professor at Yale tell me about having dinner with Hahn and Boxer many years later and he remembered that at the end of the meal Hahn dumped a vase of water over Boxer's head when he flirted with a young woman at their table. Glad to hear that she did not lose her wonderful strong personality as she aged. She was smart and funny and wild and her writing is a treat.
September 15, 2013
This is essentially a travelogue from an American journalist/adventurer-ess in China prior to and during the Japanese invasion of China. The name Emily Hahn was unfamiliar to me, but upon doing some light research it was apparent that she was quite a woman!
The style of the book was a little off-putting at first. It is very "chatty" and extremely detailed in terms of people and places. It takes time to grasp all the people she describes only to have her then move to another city and introduce a whole new pack.
The events that she witnessed and the live she lived make for a fascinating read, if you have a little time and patience.
The style of the book was a little off-putting at first. It is very "chatty" and extremely detailed in terms of people and places. It takes time to grasp all the people she describes only to have her then move to another city and introduce a whole new pack.
The events that she witnessed and the live she lived make for a fascinating read, if you have a little time and patience.
January 23, 2020
This book provided great insight into the world of white/Western colonialists and immigrants in East Asia during the Second World War and the period preceding it. The writing is great, but it’s difficult to get past the borderline racist generalizations about the Japanese and Chinese people from lower classes (duck-bottomed??? And every regular Chinese person that dares to oppose the thoughts of the westerners is either a tart or impertinent) and the casual dismissal of the struggles of the working poor natives. It is definitely a book of its time (and unwittingly showcases the ideological driving forces of some of the independence movements).
February 12, 2020
I love Emily Hahn! She lived such an adventurous life and accomplished so much as a female journalist in the 1940s and beyond.
This book tells of her years in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chungking, where she researched a book on the Soong sisters at a time when Soong May-Ling was at the height of her powers as first lady of China. Fascinating details by a quirky, unpredictable writer who lived a life most American women of that day would never dream of.
This book tells of her years in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chungking, where she researched a book on the Soong sisters at a time when Soong May-Ling was at the height of her powers as first lady of China. Fascinating details by a quirky, unpredictable writer who lived a life most American women of that day would never dream of.
July 31, 2016
Just waiting for a train wreck
High tales of China in the 30's and 40's. I amazed that the author through good fortune rather than good planning emerges unscathed . The real China and Hong Kong don't seem to emerge. Rather tales revolve around the high and mighty; the coolies are coolies and the servants have at least names.
High tales of China in the 30's and 40's. I amazed that the author through good fortune rather than good planning emerges unscathed . The real China and Hong Kong don't seem to emerge. Rather tales revolve around the high and mighty; the coolies are coolies and the servants have at least names.
May 18, 2011
Wow, what an amazing life this woman lead, from the high life of an ex-pat in Shanghai in 1935 to starvation in Hong Kong under the Japanese. And all written without a self-pitying attitude, she was quite a character.
February 27, 2012
Very interesting to hear first-hand experience of someone during the invasion of China by the Japanese and occupation of Hong Kong.
More interesting to read from a reporter's perspective at that time.
Even more interesting to read from a western, female reporter's perspective.
More interesting to read from a reporter's perspective at that time.
Even more interesting to read from a western, female reporter's perspective.
February 29, 2008
I was a boy and learned about the adventures of a courageous woman missionary in China during WWII. I would like to know more about Emily Hahn, the author.
Currently reading
August 16, 2009Just starting this in bits and chunks.
Want to read
January 11, 2013From the jacket flap: "This book has not been condensed. Its bulk is less because of government paper quota regulations on all publishers."
It has an EH monogram embossed on the front cover.
It has an EH monogram embossed on the front cover.
December 16, 2025
Third reading, prompted by an article about Emily Hahn in the New Yorker.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews