Han Suyin, a lady doctor in Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Some information about Han Suyin by Dr. Wong Yin Onn, Johor Bahru;

THE greatest literary success in novelist Han Suyin's career is A Many Splendoured Thing, a book that was made into a film titled Love Is A Many Splendored Thing, starring Jennifer Jones and William Holden . This 1955 classic won four Academy awards for Best Picture, Best Song, Best Score and Best Costume. You may even know the lyrics to the song by the same name, sung by Nat King Cole.

She was born Elisabeth Chow Kuanghu (Zhou Guang-Hu) in 1917 in Henan, China, to Zhou Yuan Dong and Marguerite Denis, her Flemish-Belgian mother.

In 1933 she was admitted to Yanjing (Yenching) University (later part of Peking University). In 1935 she went to Brussels to study science. In 1938 she returned to China, working in an American Christian mission hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan, then went again to London in 1944 to study medicine, graduated MBBS in 1948 and went to Hong Kong to practice medicine in 1949 at the Queen Mary Hospital. Her husband, Tang, meanwhile, had died in action during the Chinese Civil War in 1947.

In the novel, Han described Hong Kong of 1949 and 1950 and how thousands of refugees escaping from the Communists swelled the population each week. She made the filth, despair, poverty and vice come tragically alive but all these were the backdrop for a passionate love affair. A Many-Splendoured Thing is frankly autobiographical. The novel described the love affair between the author and Ian Morrison, an Australian correspondent for The London Times. All Hong Kong knew about the love affair. They were inseparable, walking the streets of the city and the hills of the island at all hours, meeting openly at his hotel. They made no effort to keep the affair quiet. She was a well-known doctor, a Eurasian widow with a small daughter. He had a wife and children. The affair lasted several months and was suddenly interrupted by Morrison's front line death in Korea, when reporting on the Korean War. After his death, Han poured her grief into writing A Many Splendoured Thing and it seemed to bring a closure for her.

In 1952, she married Leon F. Comber, a British officer in the Malayan Special Branch, and went with him to Johore, where she worked in the Johore Bahru General Hospital, and later opened a clinic in Johore Bharu and Upper Pickering Street, Singapore.

In 1955, Han Suyin contributed efforts to the establishment of Nanyang University in Singapore. Specifically, she offered her services and served as physician to the institution, after having refused an offer to teach literature. Chinese writer Lin Yutang, first president of the university, had recruited her for the latter field, but she declined, indicating her desire "to make a new Asian literature, not teach Dickens".

She spent at least 10 years in Johor Baru, later working in an anti-tuberculosis clinic located above Universal Pharmacy, at 24 Jalan Ibrahim!Long before Guardian, Apex or Pharmacare existed, Universal Pharmacy was where JB folk went for pharmaceutical needs as it was well stocked with a wide range of imported merchandise on the ground floor. A broad wooden staircase led to the clinic upstairs where patients consulted Dr Elisabeth. Conversant in Hakka, Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay, French and English, she is well remembered by older generation Johoreans. She now lives in Lausanne, Switzerland, and maintains her name as Dr Elisabeth C.K. Comber.The building that Universal occupied has been demolished and is now a vacant lot opposite Johor Central Store. So the next time you pass Johor Baru's busy Jalan Ibrahim, check out that space next to the motorcycle service shop and picture what used to be Universal Pharmacy and the clinic upstairs where Dr Comber, GP, once worked.


Here are additional personal information by Dr. Tan Chow Wei of The People’s Dispensary, Johor Bahru.

Here are some of the less known facts about the great Han Suyin, even missed by the NST reporter (because he missed interviewing an expert in JB history):

She practised medicine in JB in the 50s where she opened her first clinic near the old Cathay cinema (where Johoreans go to savour the famous beef noodle). The clinic was known as Chow Dispensary (In those days, clinics or surgeries were known as dispensaries, the word polyclinic was not even born. So when you see a clinic such as The People's Dispensary, you instantly know that it is a "grandfather clinic"!). Han Suyin was then affectionally called "Dr.Chow". She later relocated her clinic to the up-stair of the 2-storey shop house above the Universal Pharmacy, still retaining the name "Chow Dispensary". It is just a stone's throw away from the oldest clinic in JB, The People's Dispensary, where Dr.Tan Chow Wei (who is also a Hakka) is proud to be associated with. She used to visit Dr.Yeoh Hon Shu, the founder of The People's Dispensary and more than 20 years her senior, (who incidentally, was the first GP in JB to have a post-graduate degree, MRGP.) By the way, next to The People's Dispensary, where the Chinese Association was (Now being converted to museum of Chinese history in JB), was the birth-place of Robert Kuok, the richest man in Malaysia.

Han Suyin's husband then, Leon Comber was a Malayan Special Branch Officer during the 1948 to 1960 'Emergency' period. (After many years in book publishing he is now a research associate at the Monash Asia Institute of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia).

“Han Suyin” is a pseudonym. What does it stand for? According to her daughter, Tang Yungmei, Han Suyin stands for “the clear voice of the Han people.” There has been some debate about the origin of Hakka people whether they belong to "Han" people or a minority from "Xiongnu". From most of the evidence gathered, it can be concluded that Hakkas are likely Han people rather than a derivative from the Xiongnu.

Han Suyin’s conclusion is:

"The word Hakka does not denote a racial group, for the Hakkas are Han People, Chinese People. It was a word applied to all displaced peasants, and only after the tenth century came to design a special group. Moving en masse these refugees from misery were 'people who sought a roof, hence called Guest People' which was more courteous than calling them displaced persons or refugees...”

"The Hakkas say they are the true people of Han, and that they have escaped degenerate habits brought by foreign rule. They are proud of their singularity” As the Guest People, especially among the overseas Chinese, where their clans are prosperous and strong.”

So we can see that Hakka people are the Han people, not belonging to a minority. That is one main reason why Han Suyin chose “Han” as her surname.

She used to say: "I am a Hakka, my roots are in China.”

In December 2001, Tang Yungmei visited her mother Han Suyin. Later Tang Yungmei told me " Even at the age of 86, my mother knows clearly what has happened to China and what is happening."

Her other name Chow Kuanghu (Zhou Guanghu), "Chow" of course is her family name. "Kuang" is her generation name, which was a typical traditional Chinese custom that all the brothers, sisters and cousins in a family must take a same character in their given names.

Han Suyin's passport name is Dr. Elisabeth C.K. Comber. And it is also written on the door of her apartment in Switzerland. "Comber” is the family name of her English second husband, she apparently preserved. "C.K." holds for her Chinese name Chow Kuanghu. She puts her English name and Chinese name together with a tendency to show that she is a Eurasian.

Han Suyin is a very productive and prominent contemporary novelist. Most of her writing is in English some is in French and Chinese. Her works mainly fall into four categories: autobiography and fictions biography and sociological essays.

Han Suyin has long been based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She said then that she owned neither a television nor a radio but that she read five newspapers per day. At various times, she has maintained homes in Beijing and New York. She remains WHO consultant on China Affairs.

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