Michael David Kwan
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Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China
Michael David Kwan
To grow up in Beijing in the 1930s was to become engulfed in the colossal struggle between ideologies, and between nations, that shaped modern China.
Born into privilege, separated from the filthy chaos of the city by servants and limousines and the stone walls of the Legation Quarter, Michael David Kwan felt his pampered life disintegrate as the Japanese overran China in 1938 and the world moved closer to war. Gradually, inexorably, the family was drawn into the maelstrom.
Kwan’s father, a wealthy railway administrator, became active in the resistance against the Japanese. Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalists and Mao Tse Tung’s emerging communists were united against the invaders, but Kwan’s father knew it wouldn’t always be so. He had to protect his interests, his family, and his future any way he could.
In Beijing, the Kwan household became a gathering place for high-level resistance members. At their summer villa in Baidahe, the family surreptitiously aided the guerrillas in the nearby mountains. In Qingdao, the Kwans lived next door to a Japanese admiral and his wife.
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