Han Suyin
physician and author (1917–2012)
Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou (Chinese: 周光瑚; 12 September 1917 or 1916 – 2 November 2012) was a Chinese-born Eurasian physician and author better known by her pen name Han Suyin (Chinese: 韓素音). She wrote in English and French on modern China, set her novels in East and Southeast Asia, and published autobiographical memoirs which covered the span of modern China. These writings gained her a reputation as an ardent and articulate supporter of the Chinese Communist Revolution. She lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, for many years until her death.
Biography
Han Suyin was born in Xinyang, Henan, China. Her father was a Belgian-educated Chinese engineer, Chou Wei (Chinese: 周煒; pinyin: Zhōu Wěi), of Hakka heritage, while her mother, Marguerite Denis, was Belgian (Flemish).
She began work as a typist at Peking Union Medical College in 1931, not yet 15 years old. In 1933 she was admitted to Yenching University where she felt she was discriminated against as a Eurasian. In 1935 she went to Brussels to study medicine. In 1938 she returned to China, and married Tang Pao-Huang (Chinese: 唐保璜), a Chinese Nationalist military officer, who was to become a general.
“Han Suyin” enters the record as physician and author (1917–2012). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Suyin, physician and author can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Han Suyin” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Suyin, physician and author provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16400. VIAF identifies the subject as 108293425. The Library of Congress control number is n50031681. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 1916, 2012 and 1931.
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This entry incorporates text from “Han Suyin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.