A remarkable life

The Telegraph has published the obituary of a remarkable woman. She's impressive both for her accomplishments and for her moral courage.

Lady Lindsay of Birker, who has died aged 93, was the daughter of a rich Chinese landowner and became a British peeress after falling in love with Michael Lindsay, later the 2nd Lord Lindsay of Birker, an English professor teaching in Beijing in the late 1930s during the Japanese occupation of China.

For four years from 1941 Hsiao Li and her husband performed dangerous work behind enemy lines smuggling radio parts, teaching English and supporting the communist resistance in Yenan in north-west China, for which they won the personal thanks of Mao Tse-tung and other communist commanders.

After the war – but not before attending a farewell dinner thrown by Chairman Mao and his wife – the couple left for Britain, where Michael's father was the newly ennobled Master of Balliol College, Oxford. The peerage passed to Michael in 1952, making Hsiao Li – the new Lady Lindsay – the first Chinese peeress in history, an event remarked upon by The New York Times.

Hsiao Li was born Li Yueying in Taiyuan, in China's northern Shanxi province, on July 17 1916. A fine horsewoman, she showed an early rebellious streak, taking part in student demonstrations at Taiyuan Normal University before fleeing to Beijing, where she changed her name after being blacklisted by the authorities.

In Beijing she was admitted to Yenching University, where she met Michael Lindsay, a professor who was already using his protected foreign status to assist the communists in obtaining medical and radio supplies. Hsiao Li, one of his brightest students, was quickly recruited to the cause.

With her parents' blessing, but nonetheless breaking the taboos of the time, the couple married in June 1941. But their wartime adventures were nearly brought to an end after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that December suddenly rendered Michael liable to arrest as a citizen of an enemy power.

The Japanese, long suspecting the Lindsays' covert activities, moved quickly to arrest the couple – but not quickly enough. "As we escaped through one gate, the Japanese secret police came through another gate to arrest us," recalled Hsiao Li in her memoir Bold Plum: With the Guerrillas in China's War Against Japan, written shortly after the war but not translated into English until 2007.

So began four years of dangerous work behind enemy lines, Michael working in the communists' all-important Radio Department and later at the New China News Agency while Hsiao Li taught English to the cadres.

Hsiao Li always credited her rebellious character to her father, Li Wenqi, an army officer who in 1912 had defied his landowning family to join Sun Yat Sen's republican movement, running a training school for a local warlord. When Hsiao Li asked to bind her feet, he refused.

After two years in the guerrilla region, the couple completed a circuitous 500-mile journey on foot to reach the communist HQ in Yenan, taking shelter with local peasants who risked torture and death if discovered by the Japanese.

During that period Hsiao Li gave birth to two children: Erica was delivered in a hut high in the mountains, with no running water or electricity, after a Japanese offensive caused the hospital to be evacuated; James was born in the hospital cave in Yenan.

After moving to Britain, Hsiao Li followed her husband's career – first to Australia, where Michael Lindsay taught at the Australian National University; and then, in 1959, to Washington, DC, where he had joined the faculty of the Far Eastern programme at American University. They remained in Washington after he retired in 1975.

In 1949 and 1954 the couple made two visits to China – where Hsiao Li said she "never stopped thinking" of living – but in 1958 they were refused visas after Michael criticised the communist leadership; his wife later revealed that he had supported the leadership not out of ideological sympathy but because he believed in the patriotic right of the Chinese to resist occupation.

Later Hsiao Li, who became a United States citizen in 1975, would echo Soong May-ling, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, in saying that China's totalitarian system was "worse than Hitler or Stalin", remarking in one speech reported in the American press in 1975 that the communists had "destroyed individual belief in one's self and have ignored human dignity".




It was not until the late 1970s, after the death of Mao Tse-tung, that the couple were able to return to China. They made extensive visits, renewing acquaintances with old friends from their Yenan days, among them now some of the most senior members of the Chinese government.

There's more at the link. There's also more information at the Web site set up by Hsiao Li and her son to promote her book. It's well worth a visit.

Here's a video clip of Hsiao Li speaking of her life and experiences.

The world is poorer for the passing of such people. May she and her husband rest in peace.

Peter