Of Rats, Sparrows and Flies...: A Lifetime in China (review)

Reviews 121 Arthur W. Chung, M.D. OfRats, Sparrows and Flies . . .: A Lifetime in China. Stockton, California: Heritage West Books, 1995. vi, 231 pp. Hardcover $23.95, 1SBN 0-9623048-8-3. Although an eye-catcher, the misleading title ofthis book is by the publisher rather than by the author, who wanted (primarily for his grandchildren's sake) to put in writing his story of "a lifetime in China." This transparent autobiography by Arthur Chung is adorned with twenty well-chosen photographs from his family album, offering significant slices ofhis life in America and China. The story is that of an "American-Chinese," a hyphenated person who is as much Chinese as he is American, and vice versa—he is both. Arthur Chung was born in Los Angeles in 1913. His father, Y. H. Chung, a native of Hoi-ping county near Canton, came to the United States as an herbalist in 1900. After the death of his first wife in China (who bore him three sons), Arthur's father married Nellie Yee, a much younger woman from Ventura, California , in 1910. From this second marriage came three daughters, Lillian, Marian, and Marie, and one son, Arthur. It was apparently a combination of push-and-pull factors (his father's Confucian upbringing, strong family ties with China, racism in America, and the Great Depression) that led Arthur Chung to study in China after his graduation from Los Angeles High School in 1931. At Leighton Stuart's missionary Yenching University in Peking, Chung came into close contact with patriotic students caught up in the throes of Chinese nationalism in the face ofJapanese aggression. It was his involvement in radical student activities and demonstrations, largelywith Liang Ssu-yi, whom he later married (she was a daughter ofthe famous literary scholar, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao), that resulted in Arthur Chung's "conversion in becoming a true Chinese." After graduating from the National Medical College in Shanghai, Chung served as an intern with the Chinese Red Cross Medical Relief Corps until 1941, when he and Liang Ssu-yi (now his wife) returned to an America that was soon to be at war with Japan. After further internship at the Los Angeles County General Hospital and training in pathology at Harvard Medical School, Arthur Chung finally settled into pediatrics with specialized training at Bellevue Hospital in New York. In September 1949, Chung, his wife, and now two young children (Evelyn and Alvin) sailed for China on the eve of the Communist victory.© 1996 by UniversityIn the new China, Arthur Chung remained for the next quarter-century. He ofHawai'i Pressassumed his role as physician, which led to his becoming the head ofpediatrics at the Peking Friendship (formerly Sino-Soviet Friendship) Hospital. Caught in the sporadic frenzy ofChairman Mao's campaigns, from anti-pests to anti-rightists to 122 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 the Great Leap Forward to, finally, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution— which became for him the "straw that broke the camel's back"—Chung finally determined to leave China. During the cruelty and inhumanity of the Cultural Revolution he was accused ofbeing a "stinking spy," a primary target of the infamous Red Guards. Along with some ofhis close colleagues (one ofwhom was to commit suicide), Chung suffered physical and mental trauma and humiliation (imprisonment, "thought reform," and "volunteerism" as a manual laborer and later as a physician in a remote village in the countryside), which led to his clandestine departure from China in 1975. China's decision to join the World Health Organization (WHO) after gaining a seat in the United Nations found Arthur Chung being called to head the first Chinese delegation to its meetings in 1973. Very quickly Chung's unusual medical background was recognized by WHO, which judiciously requested his services from the People's Republic to be one of its assistant directors-general. It was from the WHO headquarters in Geneva that Chung later made his dramatic departure home to the United States. This book is an unvarnished account ofan honest (perhaps all-too-modest) person, who is just as much a "true American" as a "true Chinese": the latter what he felt...