It is from China, I am writing to you -- Years 05

Author: Boris Maltzan, translated by Zhang Yuling
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: In 1909, Jules Lefebvre, a 24-year-old French youth who had studied Chinese at the School of Eastern Languages, bid farewell to his unmarried mother and came to China to serve as his "student interpreter" (referred to as "vice-consul" in his letters), thus beginning his long 36-year diplomatic career in China. He died mysteriously in Harbin in 1945—officially said to have died of hypertension, but Father Chaleille, the French missionary who had last seen him, firmly believed he died of food poisoning, "poisoned by the Japanese who bribed his Chinese chef." From Chengdu, Chongqing, Hankou, Shantou, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai, to his final destination, Harbin, Jules Lefebvre experienced China's turbulent era of transition from imperial rule to a republic, Yuan Shikai's restoration, warlord chaos, and witnessed key historical moments such as China's two civil wars and the War of Resistance Against Japan. At the age of 24, while crossing Northeast China for the first time, Jules told his mother, "It is from China that I am writing to you." Over the 36 years, Jules wrote countless letters to his family. Before his mother also came to China, he wrote almost a letter every day, interspersed with photographs. "These letters were kept in a box on the attic for three or four decades," discovered by his daughter, who was born in Chongqing in 1921 and left China at the age of 16. This led to the creation of a biography that weaves together letters and narrative. Jules Lefebvre's letters are not just family correspondence, although "he modestly recounted his daily life in private," his occasional ability to recreate reality with the skill of a journalist, as well as the poet's sensitivity and the novelist's imagination, allow the past to "reappear vividly in the words."