JMSC Author Talk: Helen Zia -- Last Boat Out Of Shanghai
Channel: HKU Journalism & Media
Date: 2019-04-04

28 March 2019, Main Library, The University of Hong Kong

Co-organized with the HKU Libraries and in partnership with the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong and Macau

Helen Zia is the author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, a finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize (Bill Clinton referred to the book in two separate Rose Garden speeches). Zia is the co-author, with Wen Ho Lee, of My Country Versus Me: The First-Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy. She is also a former executive editor of Ms. magazine. A Fulbright Scholar, Zia first visited China in 1972, just after President Nixon’s historic trip. A graduate of Princeton University, she holds an honorary doctor of laws degree from the City University of New York School of Law and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

About the book
The dramatic real-life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China’s 1949 Communist revolution—a heartrending precursor to the struggles faced by emigrants today.

Shanghai has historically been China’s jewel, its richest, most modern and westernized city. The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao’s proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war. Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to flee in every direction. Seventy years later, members of the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have revealed their stories to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed hundreds of exiles about their journey through one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. From these moving accounts, Zia weaves together the stories of four young Shanghai residents who wrestled with the decision to abandon everything for an uncertain life as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States.

Benny, who as a teenager became the unwilling heir to his father’s dark wartime legacy, must decide either to escape to Hong Kong or navigate the intricacies of a newly Communist China. The resolute Annuo, forced to flee her home with her father, a defeated Nationalist official, becomes an unwelcome exile in Taiwan. The financially strapped Ho fights deportation from the U.S. in order to continue his studies while his family struggles at home. And Bing, given away by her poor parents, faces the prospect of a new life among strangers in America. The lives of these men and women are marvelously portrayed, revealing the dignity and triumph of personal survival.

Herself the daughter of immigrants from China, Zia is uniquely equipped to explain how crises like the Shanghai transition affect children and their families, students and their futures, and, ultimately, the way we see ourselves and those around us. Last Boat Out of Shanghai brings a poignant personal angle to the experiences of refugees then and, by extension, today.

About the moderator
Nancy Tong has been producing documentaries for 30 years. She began her career as a news reporter in Hong Kong with TVB. In 1981, she moved to New York City where she has worked as an independent film producer.

Among her dozens of documentary projects are Who Killed Vincent Chin?, which was nominated in 1989 for an Academy Award; In the Name of the Emperor, which was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1995; and Cancer: From Evolution to Revolution, which won a George Foster Peabody Award in 2000. Her most recent project, Trailblazers in Habits, has raised more than US$500,000 for the Maryknoll Sisters at benefit screenings in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, and Hong Kong.