A mortal flower

It is an exceptional occasion when a gifted writer can tell from personal experience the story of a crucial period in history. When this occurs, as it does in A Moral Flower, the result is an important contribution to both history and literature. Two hearts beat on the pages of Han Suyin's autobiography. One is the heart of a young Eurasian girl growing up in Peking, beginning to earn her own living, setting forth to fulfill her determination to become a doctor, gradually emancipating herself from her family and struggling to overcome the special problems a Eurasian encounters in social and emotional relationships.

The other is the great heart of China as it pounds through the tumultuous years from 1927-1938 - years that saw the rise of Chiang Kai-Shek, the split between Chiang's Kuomintang and Mao Tse-tung's followers, the great campaigns launched by the nationalist against Mao's forces, the Japanese invasions of first Manchuria and then China itself, launched while the West vacillated and the United States stood by condemning Japan's action but selling her the materials to fuel her war machine. In the course of her narrative Han Suyin draws penetrating sketches of such figures as Chiang Kai-shek, of Chen Ye and Mao Tse-tung, of Chou En-lai, Chu Teh and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and of many other Westerners and Chinese with whom she came into contact.

She tells of Mao Tse-tung's mountain fortress of Chingkangshan in South Central China to which he was driven in 1927, his followers reduced to a mere 900 men, and of how at this now legendary base, Mao adopted the methods which made the Red Army a cohesive force and ultimately brought it supremacy in Asia, It is a story told in good part from interviews with men who still remember those eventful days. Shining through these decisive events and the men responsible for them comes Han Suyin's own moving story - the story of the ostracism she was subjected she was subjected to by her Chinese classmates at Yen Ching University because of her friendships with foreigners, the story of her years studying medicine in Belgium from 1935-1938 where she witnessed the growing unrest that was to lead to a second world war, and finally of her decision in 1938 to break off her medical studies and return to China as the Japanese peril mounted. -- from dust cover.