Looking for my Shanghai fatherPosted in Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, History, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2015-08-30 02:17Z by Steven |
Looking for my Shanghai father
BBC News Magazine
2015-08-25
Yvonne Foley with her mother Grace
After World War Two ended, the British government forcibly repatriated hundreds of Chinese sailors who had been recruited for the Merchant Navy. Their sudden departure had a devastating effect on families left behind, like that of Yvonne Foley.
“You’re just like your father,” Yvonne’s mother exclaimed, “always arguing, trying to change the world.”
The nine-year-old was confused. That sounded nothing like her father.
“I mean your Shanghai father,” her mother insisted.
Who? Yvonne was momentarily baffled, but then put it to the back of her mind.
Two years later, in 1957, the subject came up again. This time her mother, Grace, wanted to tell her more.
The man Yvonne had been calling “Dad” was not her biological father. Instead her birth father was Nan Young, a Chinese ship engineer her mother had met in Liverpool in 1943…
Read the entire article here.