Rosamond Soong Ch'ing-ling was a Chinese political figure. As the third wife of Sun Yat-sen, then Premier of the Kuomintang and President of the Republic of China, she was often referred to as Madame Sun Yat-sen. She was a member of the Soong family and, together with her siblings, played a prominent role in China's politics prior to and after 1949.
Bai Chongxi was a Chinese general in the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China (ROC) and a prominent Chinese Nationalist leader. He was of Hui ethnicity and of the Muslim faith. From the mid-1920s to 1949, Bai and his close ally Li Zongren ruled Guangxi province as regional warlords with their own troops and considerable political autonomy. His relationship with Chiang Kai-shek was at various times antagonistic and cooperative. He and Li Zongren supported the anti-Chiang warlord alliance in the Central Plains War in 1930, then supported Chiang in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. Bai was the first defense minister of the Republic of China from 1946 to 1948. After losing to the Communists in 1949, he fled to Taiwan, where he died in 1966.
Fortress Besieged is a Chinese satirical novel written by Qian Zhongshu, first published in 1947, and widely considered one of the masterpieces of twentieth century Chinese literature. The novel is a humorous tale about middle-class Chinese society in the late 1930s. It gained worldwide popularity after it was reprinted in the 1980s and made into a television series in 1990.
Emily "Mickey" Hahn was an American journalist and writer. Considered an early feminist and called "a forgotten American literary treasure" by The New Yorker magazine, she was the author of 54 books and more than 200 articles and short stories. Her novels in the 20th century played a significant role in opening up Asia and Africa to the west. Her extensive travels throughout her life and her love of animals influenced much of her writing. She was the first woman to receive a degree in Mining Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, then after living in Florence and London in the mid-1920s, she traveled to the Belgian Congo and hiked across Central Africa in the 1930s. In 1935 she traveled to Shanghai, where she taught English for three years and became involved with prominent figures, such as The Soong Sisters and the Chinese poet, Shao Xunmei.
Tiān (天) is one of the oldest Chinese terms for heaven and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang dynasty, the Chinese referred to their supreme god as Shàngdì or Dì (帝,"Lord"). During the following Zhou dynasty, Tiān became synonymous with this figure. Before the 20th century Heaven worship was an orthodox state religion of China.
Agnes Smedley was an American journalist, writer, and activist who supported the Indian Independence Movement and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Raised in a poverty-stricken miner's family in Missouri and Colorado, she dramatized the formation of her feminist and socialist consciousness in the autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth (1929).
The Nanking Incident occurred in March 1927 during the capture of Nanjing by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) in their Northern Expedition. Foreign warships bombarded the city to defend foreign residents against rioting and looting. Several ships were involved in the engagement, including vessels of the Royal Navy and the United States Navy. Marines and sailors were also landed for rescue operations including some 140 Dutch forces. Both Nationalist and Communist soldiers within the NRA participated in the rioting and looting of foreign-owned property in Nanjing.
This is a list of bestselling novels in the United States in the 1930s, as determined by Publishers Weekly. The list features the most popular novels of each year from 1930 through 1939.
Qian Weichang or Chien Wei-zang was a Chinese physicist and applied mathematician, as well as academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He served as President of Shanghai University.
Alice Tisdale Hobart born Alice Nourse in Lockport, New York, was an American novelist. Her most famous book, Oil for the Lamps of China, which was also made into a film, drew heavily on her experiences as the wife of an American oil executive in China amid the turmoil of the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912.
Hsia Chih-tsing 夏志清 or C. T. Hsia was a Chinese literary critic, scholar, and translator. He contributed to the introduction of modern Chinese literature to the Western world by promoting the works of once marginalized writers in the 1960s. Today, C. T. Hsia is considered one of the most important critics of Chinese literature.
Shen Bao, formerly transliterated as Shun Pao or Shen-pao, known in English as Shanghai News, was a newspaper published from 30 April 1872 to 27 May 1949 in Shanghai, China. The name is short for Shenjiang Xinbao, Shenjiang being a short form of Chunshen Jiang, the old name for the Huangpu River.
Oil for the Lamps of China is a 1935 drama film starring Pat O'Brien and Josephine Hutchinson. It is based on the novel of the same name by Alice Tisdale Hobart. A man blindly puts his faith in his employer. The film was loosely remade in 1941 as Law of the Tropics.
Xia Qifeng was a politician, diplomat and journalist in the Chinese Republic. He engaged in foreign affairs in the Beiyang Government and the Nationalist Government. In the end, he became an important politician during the Reformed Government of the Republic of China and the Reorganized National Government of China. His former name was Yun (雲). He was born in Taizhou, Jiangsu.
The Call is a novel published in 1985 by the American writer John Hersey. The novel, which is in the form of a fictionalized biography with letters and excerpts from Treadup's journal, presents the experience of David Treadup, an American Protestant missionary in China during the first half of the twentieth century. As the novel progresses, and China undergoes Japanese invasion and communist revolution, Treadup reconsiders whether his efforts to help China were useful and questions the usefulness of the Christian mission. Hersey based Treadup on a composite of six historical China missionaries, including his own father. Other historical figures appear, sometimes under their own names.
Wen Yuan-ning, also known as Oon Guan-neng, was a Chinese professor, writer, and diplomat.
Chi-chen Wang was a Chinese-born American literary scholar and translator. He taught as a professor at Columbia University from 1929 until his retirement in 1965.
T'ien Hsia Monthly was a monthly English-language magazine published in Shanghai from August 1935 to 1937 and in Hong Kong from 1937 to 1941. The editors of the magazine were ethnic Chinese, including editor-in-chief Wen Yuan-ning. Contributors included C. R. Boxer, Chuan Tsen-kuo, William Empson, Emily Hahn, Lin Yutang, Shao Xunmei, and John C.H. Wu. The magazine's purpose was to include works from Chinese writers introducing China to the west and works from Western writers discussing their ideas about China. The Sun Yat-sen Institute for the Advancement of Culture and Education supported the publication. Kelly & Walsh was the magazine's printer.
Shao Xunmei was a Chinese poet and publisher. He was a contributing writer for T'ien Hsia Monthly, and also was the owner of Modern Sketch. He originated from Shanghai. Jonathan Hutt wrote in Monstre Sacré: The Decadent World of Sinmay Zau that "For many, Shao was not simply inspired by the Occident but rather was of it" and that his lack of awareness of "the Chinese literary scene" distinguished him from his colleagues. On some occasions he used the name Hao Wen (浩文).
Mr. Pan: A Memoir is a 1942 book by Emily Hahn, published by Doubleday Company.
