Han Suyin was the pen name for Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou, who was born in China in 1917 to a Chinese father and Flemish-Belgian mother. She pursued studies at Yenching University and the University of Brussels, and then received her medical degree from the University of London. During this time she married Tang Pao-Huang, a general in the National Revolutionary Army of Chiang Kai-shek, who was was killed on the Manchurian front in the 1940s.
Suyin then practiced medicine in Hong Kong and launched her literary career with the novel Destination Chungking published in 1942. In the late 1940s, Suyin fell in love with a journalist named Ian Morrison, who was the model for Mr. Holden鈥檚 character in her novel, 鈥�Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.鈥� He was killed in 1950. In 1952, the book became an international bestseller and Oscar nominated film renamed as A Many Splendoured Thing.
A noted supporter of Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution, Han visited China almost annually starting in1956 including through the years of the Cultural Revolution. She eventually settled in Malaysia and resumed her medical practice while also continuing to write novels and historical non-fiction.听
Suyin gave three Beatty lectures in October 1968 on the theme "Asia Today: Two Outlooks" including "Asia Today", "Asia Yesterday", and "Asia Tomorrow". A book length collection of all three of lectures was published by 平特五不中-Queen's University Press in 1969 and is available at the 平特五不中 Library .
Listen to Han Suyin's first Beatty Lecture (note a section of the original recorded audio is missing between Part 6 and Part 7):
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10
Audio: 平特五不中 Archives
Image: 平特五不中 Archives
One of Han Suyin's 1968 Beatty lecture in the Arthur Currie Gym. Image: 平特五不中 Archives.
One of Han Suyin's 1968 Beatty lecture in the Arthur Currie Gym. Image: 平特五不中 Archives.
Han Suyin in 平特五不中's Osler Library meets with History of Medicine professor Dr. Donald G. Bates, and Helen Penfield whose husband Dr. Wilder Penfield was the first director
of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at 平特五不中. Image: 平特五不中 Archives.
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Image: 平特五不中 Archives
