Mixed Race Studies

Michael David Kwan, Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China, reviewed by Yuxin Ma

International Journal of China Studies
Volume 4, Number 1, April 2013
pages 169-171

Yuxin Ma, Associate Professor of East Asian History
University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky

Michael David Kwan, Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China, Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc., 2000, reprinted 2012, 240 pp. + xvi.

Telling stories of wartime China from the perspective of a Eurasian boy, Kwan’s memoir reconstructs a lost China where unforeseen wars and revolution, international politics, and economic disorders in the 1930s and 1940s changed people’s life courses as they carried on their patriotic struggle for survival. The 2012 new edition adds a preface by the author’s son on his father’s late years in China since 1980s, which presents the author’s life story in a Chinese emotion yeluo guigen – fallen leaves return to the root of the tree. The book provides fascinating details on the lives of a Chinese family with a British housewife, their interactions with other Westerners, Eurasians, and Chinese folks. Kwan focused on how turbulent changes in China affected his coming- of-age, his family members and their friends. Through the inquisitive eyes of a biracial child in search for his identity at home, within the small Western community, and in Chinese society at large, Kwan presented the contradictions, brutality and ruptures in wartime China with fresh and humane touches.

The first eight chapters described the sheltered and privileged life of David’s childhood. Born in Japanese occupied Harbin in 1934 as the youngest son to an influential railway administrator who worked underground for the Nationalist government, Kwan’s Swiss biological mother jilted him, and he called his father’s new British wife Ellen as Mother. Under his father’s tutelage, David had lived with Anglo-Chinese friends in British Concession in Tienjin, developed friendship with a tenant farmer who engaged in guerilla activities in Beidaihe, and enjoyed the life of the Western community at the Legation Quarter in Beijing which isolated them from “war, disease, poverty and starvation.” (p. 56) David was not immune to the suffering of ordinary Chinese through shared experiences of Japanese bombing, gunfight, and martial law, and interactions through shopping, sightseeing, and vacation breaks. First tutored by Chinese teachers then attended the International School, David grew up bicultural with the knowledge his father was a secret agent for the Nationalist government in Chungking. After the Pearl Harbor Incident, Japanese sealed the Legation Quarter and closed the International School. David attended a Chinese school briefly where he suffered from excruciating racism and bullying…

Read the entire review here.

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China

Waveland Press, Inc.
2000
240 pages
Paperback ISBN 10: 1-57766-784-0; ISBN 13: 978-1-57766-784-1

Michael David Kwan

Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten is a beautifully written collection of Michael David Kwan’s childhood experiences in China during the 1930s and 1940s. Born into privilege, David saw his pampered life disintegrate as the Japanese overran China. His father, the wealthy administrator for China’s railroads, took a position in the pro-Japanese government to work covertly for the Chinese resistance.

In Beijing, the Kwan household became a gathering place for resistance members. At their summer villa in Beidaihe, the family surreptitiously aided the guerillas in the nearby mountains. In Qingdao, the Kwans lived next door to a Japanese admiral and his wife. From a tree house overlooking their garden, young David enjoyed listening to the music they played, while his father worked secretly for the resistance. David’s other memories (for example, cricket hunting with his father’s tenant farmer, performing rituals as an altar boy, being tormented in school, gardening with the owner of an antique shop, and participating in Boy Scouts) provide fascinating insights into life in China during those turbulent times.

In August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Within days, Japan surrendered. Chiang Kai-shek’s regime replaced the Japanese puppet government in Nanking. Chiang declared that all who had links to the defunct government would be considered traitors until proven otherwise. David’s father was imprisoned. During the Japanese occupation, Chiang’s Kuomintang and Mao Zedong’s Communists had been united against the invaders, but once Japan was defeated, China moved toward chaos as the two factions vied for power. At age twelve, David was sent to live with relatives in Shanghai before being spirited out of the country, not knowing if he’d ever see his family again. Things That Must Not Be Forgotten will stay in readers’ hearts and minds long after they’ve turned the final, wrenching page.