Hsiao Li Lindsay

Background

Hsiao Li was born Li Yueying in Taiyuan, Shanxi. Her father, Colonel Li Wenqi, was a rich nonconformist Chinese landowner who refused to bind her feet.

Career

She took part in student demonstrations at Taiyuan Normal University and was blacklisted by the authorities. She then fled to Beijing, where she changed her name. In Beijing, she entered Yenching University, where she met Professor Michael Lindsay.

Lindsay was using his protected status as foreign citizen to smuggle radio and medical supplies to the communists, who were resisting the Japanese occupation.

He needed a native speaker of Chinese to help him and Hsiao Li agreed to assist him. The couple were married on 25 June 1941.

The Japanese authorities soon came to arrest the couple, but they managed to escape. Two children were born to them during their 500-mile journey on foot to the communist headquarters in Yenan: Erica, born in a hut in the mountains in 1942, and James, born in a hospital cave in Yenan in 1945.

After the war, in 1945, Hisao Li"s father-in-law, Sandie Lindsay, was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lindsay of Birker.

Another daughter, Mary, was born in 1951. Lord Lindsay"s career brought them to Chevy Chase, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, District of Columbia, in 1959, where they remained after his retirement in 1975. The same year, Lady Lindsay became a United States citizen.

The pair visited China in 1949 and 1954.

In 1954, they functioned as official interpreters for an unsuccessful Labour Party delegation to China. Later, they were refused visas because of Lord Lindsay"s criticism of the communist leadership.

Lord and Lady Lindsay were only able to enter the country after the death of Mao Zedong. She lived there until 2003, when she returned to Washington, District of Columbia Lady Lindsay"s memoirs, written shortly after the war, were translated into English in 2007.

She was frequently admitted to hospital during the three years before she died, on 25 April 2010, at age 93.

Connections

enemy:

Pearl Harbor, Lindsay