Eastern Starlight ~ A British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s
Eastern Starlight ~ A British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s

Author: Jean Elder with Reg Mitchell

Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.

Published: 2023-08-17

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 168526915X

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Set against the backdrop of Japan's seizure of China's entire northeast, Eastern Starlight, a British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s is the second of a trilogy by Jean Elder, born in Hwangkutun village near Mukden, Fengtien Province, Manchuria, in 1912, year of the fall of the last Manchu Dynasty. The story continues as Jean and her mother survive the fearsome night assault on Mukden by the Imperial Japanese Army in September 1931, but are forced by the invaders to leave Manchuria. Jean accepts her brother Jim's offer to settle in Peking, intellectual crossroads and cultural oasis of the Orient, safe from China's expanding civil war and continuing clashes with the Japanese in Jehol. We meet her charismatic friends in L'Hotel de Pekin--Italian Count Galeazzo Ciano and his wife, Edda, daughter of Mussolini; Julius Barr, famed American aviator; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; William Henry Donald, referred to by historians as Donald of China; and the acclaimed March of Time photographer "Newsreel" Wong--and become a part of her intriguing social life with them. Chang Hsiao Liang (the Young Marshal), close to Jean and the Elder family, must take a self-imposed year-long exile from China to save face, after which he will be forgiven for the loss of Manchuria. Jim departs with the Marshal for Europe, and during her own leave of absence, Jean shares with us her straight-from-the-heart impressions of America during the Depression and her fascinating life at sea aboard the great liners of the era including Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic. She must defy cannon-firing brigands and snipers along the Yangtze River in order to reunite with Jim in Hupei Province, where the Marshal has reestablished command of his troops. Jean provides an unvarnished insight into the "anything goes" world of China in the 1930s including her harrowing escape in the dark from a pirate vessel while aboard a passenger steamer in the Yellow Sea. In Hankow, she is a frequent guest of the US Navy aboard USS Luzon (PR-7) and USS Tutuila (PR-4) during the swashbuckling days of inshore gunboat diplomacy in scenes much like those portrayed in the movie, Sand Pebbles. After a whirlwind courtship, she marries the love of her life, US Vice Consul Reginald Mitchell. This is the story of a British girl who grew up in China in the hands of an Amah with the good fortune of gaining dual perspectives of life, Chinese and Western, forever loyal to family and friends, compassionate toward others, true to her values, and humble as a person.

Eastern Starlight, A British Girl's Memoir as the Wartime Wife of a U.S. Diplomat
Eastern Starlight, A British Girl's Memoir as the Wartime Wife of a U.S. Diplomat

Author: Jean Elder With Reg Mitchell

Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.

Published: 2024-03-18

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13:

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Set against the backdrop of Europe with World War II imminent, Eastern Starlight, a British Girl's Memoir as the Wartime Wife of a U.S. Diplomat, is the third book of a trilogy by Jean Elder, the first two of which are about her China years. We join Jean and her husband, US Vice Consul Reginald Mitchell, as the newlywed couple depart Shanghai for their first post together, Warsaw, Poland, an armed camp surrounded by enemy superpowers and a haven for spies. Jean draws us into the fascinating but fiercely demanding Foreign Service world of international relations face-to-face diplomacy in a lifestyle that few of her peers would ever know at age 23. She shares with us her experiences engaging with Ambassadors and Ministers and their wives and Papal Emissaries at grand diplomatic soirees and equally important, as a diplomatic hostess having to plan and manage teas and tiffins and dinner parties at home. Protocol is a carryover from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and rules about formal attire, such as all but swords and medals (ABSAM) and stringent social etiquette, are followed to the letter. Posted to Dublin, Irish Free State, Jean, becomes friends with Sinead O'Flanagan, wife of IFS President Eamon de Valera, who opposes Britain and intends to keep Ireland neutral in any future war with Nazi Germany. Returning "home side", Reg is assigned the newly created position of State Department Press Spokesman and White House Press Liaison. Through Jean's eyes, we have a colorful close-up view of pre-war Washington, a city of lovely parks, Christmas lights along bustling downtown sidewalks, Beaux Arts theaters, and large department stores. Assigned to our Legation in Port-au-Prince following Pearl Harbor, the respect accorded her by Haiti's mercurial President, Elie Lescot, is invaluable in gaining access to medical attention when Malaria strikes her family. Based on her riveting wartime diary, Jean brings to life for the first time her incredible journey as a mother with two young sons aboard a Liberty ship in an armed convoy having to survive multiple German air attacks at night in the Mediterranean to join her husband at the US Consulate, Port Sa'id, Egypt in 1944. Eastern Starlight is about a remarkable woman of her era, not only because of the life she led, but the kind of person she was-----her moral character and compassion, loyalty to family and friends, willingness to put others above herself, acceptance of people of all walks of life, and courage when in peril. This is a compelling story that will resonate with readers of all ages.

That Time of Year
That Time of Year

Author: Garrison Keillor

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-12-01

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1951627709

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With the warmth and humor we've come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty-two years, 1,557 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”

Eastern Starlight
Eastern Starlight

Author: Jean Elder

Publisher:

Published: 2022-04-04

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781638857235

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Set against a backdrop of one of the most explosive and intriguing eras in China's 3,000 year old history, Eastern Starlight, a British Girl's Memoir of Warlord China is the first of a three-volume memoir by Jean Elder, born in Hwangkutun village near Mukden, Fengtien Province, Manchuria in 1912, year of the fall of the last Manchu Dynasty. The powerful warlord, Marshal Chang Tso-lin, rules all of Manchuria with the exception of the South Manchurian Railway, the Japanese Concession granted them following their victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. As Manager of the Manchurian segment of the Peking-Mukden Railroad on behalf of the Imperial Railroads of Northern China, her father, Hugh Elder, must on his own achieve the cooperation of Chang Tso-lin and officials of Japan's industrial conglomerate, Mantetsu. Hugh achieves that formidable task and much more-----the friendship, respect, and trust of Chang Tso-lin and his family, the Chinese villagers of Hwangkutun, prominent foreigners of the trans-national community, in particular the Japanese. Among the many rarely awarded medals he was honored to wear as a foreign civilian were Imperial China's Order of the Double Dragon and Imperial Japan's Order of the Sacred Treasure and Order of the Rising Sun, fourteen in all. Jean brings us into her experiences growing up in Mukden and Tientsin in a land resistant to Western culture and the modern world. Her China years come to life in the context of warlord: violence; life-threatening dangers of her immediate environment; friendships that matter most to her; British tutors who are uncompromising in their demands of her; Chinese employees of her parents who become mentors to her; social events in the adult world of her parents; care that she administers to those in need in her village; and the overarching concern of China's tension with the Great Powers over Treaty City Concessions amid rising nationalism Through her eyes, she shares with us the importance of her family growing up in China, the remarkable bond she was honored to have with Chang Tso-lin, himself, who considered her like his own daughter and with his sons, who named her "shiăo jyeh" (little sister); and most interesting of all, her unique relationship with her Chinese Amah by her side from birth to give her council and advice from the Chinese point of view. This is the story of a sensitive and caring young girl who steps into the limelight at an early age, achieves far more than is asked of her, builds loyal and lasting friendships with ease, overcomes daunting setbacks, and finds her own confidence to become an adult before being ready.

The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe
The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe

Author: Ann Morgan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2015-05-04

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1631490680

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A beguiling exploration of the joys of reading across boundaries, inspired by the author’s year-long journey through a book from every country. Ann Morgan writes in the opening of this delightful book, "I glanced up at my bookshelves, the proud record of more than twenty years of reading, and found a host of English and North American greats starting down at me…I had barely touched a work by a foreign language author in years…The awful truth dawned. I was a literary xenophobe." Prompted to read a book translated into English from each of the world's 195 UN-recognized countries (plus Taiwan and one extra), Ann sought out classics, folktales, current favorites and commercial triumphs, novels, short stories, memoirs, and countless mixtures of all these things. The world between two covers, the world to which Ann introduces us with affection and no small measure of wit, is a world rich in the kind of narratives that engage us passionately: we meet an irreverent junk food–obsessed heroine in Kuwait, an explorer from Togo who spent years among the Inuit in Greenland, and a former child circus performer of Roma background seeking sanctuary in Switzerland. Ann's quest explores issues that affect us all: personal, political, national, and global. What is cultural heritage? How do we define national identity? Is it possible to overcome censorship and propaganda? And, above all, why and how should we read from other cultures, languages, and traditions? Illuminating and inspiring, The World Between Two Covers welcomes us into the global community of stories.