Yuan-Tsung Chen's View of Chinese Revolution
Vivid Writing Brings Family's History to Life
Aug 9, 2008
Historian Yuan-Tsung Chen blends historical facts, family history, and vivid descriptions to relate the story of three revolutionaries who shaped modern China. Her experience as a revolutionary and habit of writing short, exact sentences give Return to the Middle Kingdom an edge over dull histories of twentieth century China. Other books may present outsiders’ views or official histories of the Chinese revolution, but Madam Chen and her family experienced it.
Author Yuan-Tsung Chen
Yuan-Tsung Chen was born into a middle class family in Shanghai. They lived in a special district known as the Foreign Devil’s Vanity Fair – a French, British, and American-dominated settlement holding 95% of China’s wealth. Her mother educated her in American missionary schools and groomed her to marry into bourgeois society. Everything changed when the communists took control in 1949.
Newly graduated, Yuan-Tsung Chen took a job in the Department of Film and Scenario Writing in Beijing, the new capital of the communist-led coalition government. There she met Jack Chen, son of famed revolutionary Eugene Chen. They were married eight years later.
Mao Zedong's Revision of History
During the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, Mao Zedongs version of Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930’s, the Chens were told to write a family history. They were to go back three generations, confessing their crimes against China.
Mao Zedong determined to destroy Chinese history, but the Chens determined to save their family’s heritage as Chinese revolutionaries. Return to the Middle Kingdom came of their desire. They did their research at night, reading and discussing in bed under a blanket with a small light. Writing took place under a desk covered by a sheet.
Three Generations of Chinese Revolutionaries
The book has little to say about Ah Chen (Grandfather Chen). He was an itinerant carpenter and barber, scarred by the atrocities of the Opium War. After fighting in the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64 he was forced from China and eventually settled in Trinidad.
Eugene Chen was given a good education and became a successful lawyer. Seizing an opportunity to become part of the Chinese revolution, he left his family and law practice in Trinidad to return to his father’s native country.
Most of the book covers the life of Eugene Chen. He wrote propaganda for the revolution, regained land conceded to Britain, and shaped China’s foreign policy for many years. He died in Shanghai in 1944, betrayed by the people he helped put into power.
Jack Chen was a popular political cartoonist and journalist. He made several lecture tours to promote modern China. He died in 1995, leaving Madam Chen to finish their history.
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