| Adeline Yen Mah | |
|---|---|
| Born | Yen Jun-ling 1937 (age 74–75) Tianjin, China |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Other names | Adeline Mah, Adeline Yen |
| Education | Sacred Heart Canossian College (Primary School), St. Joseph's College |
| Occupation | Author, Doctor |
| Known for | Writing |
| Home town | tianjin,china |
| Title | Dr. Adeline Yen Mah |
| Religion | Christianity |
| Spouse | Byron Bai-lun Soon (1964-1970) Robert Mah (1972- present) |
| Children | Roger Mah (b.1966) Ann Mah (b.1974) |
| Parents | Joseph Yen Ren Yong-ping |
| Relatives | Five siblings Aunt Baba (aunt) Ye Ye (grandfather) Nai Nai (grandmother) Jeanne Virginie Prosperi (Niang, or step-mother) |
| Website | |
| [1] | |
Adeline Yen Mah (Chinese: 馬嚴君玲; pinyin: Mǎ Yán Jūnlíng) is a Chinese American author and physician. She grew up in Tianjin, Shanghai and Hong Kong with an older sister, Lydia (Jun-pei); three older brothers, Gregory (Zi-jie), Edgar (Zi-lin) and James (Zi-jun); and a younger half brother, Franklin and half sister, Susan (Jun-qing). She has stated in her book Falling Leaves that she has not used the real names of her siblings and their spouses in order to protect their identities; however, she used the real names of her father, stepmother, aunt and husband. Currently she divides her time between southern California and London. She is married to Professor Robert Mah and has two children including one from her previous marriage.
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Yen Mah was born in Tianjin, China on November 30, 1937, to Joseph Yen(formerly Tse-rung Yen), a businessman, and Ren Yong-ping, an accountant. Her Chinese name is Yen Jun-ling (嚴君玲). She has four siblings and two half-siblings (disguised Christian names and real Chinese names): Lydia (b.1926 as Jun-pei), Gregory (Zi-jie), Edgar (Zi-lin), and James (b. 1934 as Zi-jun), all older than she was, and two half-siblings, Franklin (b.1939) and Susan (b. 1941 as Jun-qing).
Her official birthday is 30 November, however this is not her 'true' birthday. Since her father did not record her birthdate he gave her his own (this was a common occurrence before the advent of Communism in China). Two weeks after her birth, her mother died of puerperal fever and, according to traditional Chinese beliefs, Adeline was labelled as "bad luck" by the rest of her family.
In 1938, when Yen Mah was a year old, Joseph Yen married a Eurasian (half-French, half-Chinese) girl, Jeanne Virginie Prosperi, who was only seventeen years old at the time. The children referred to her as Niang (娘, another term for mother.) They had two children, Franklin and Susan.
Prosperi doted upon Joseph and her son, while abusing the rest of the family, including her own daughter and particularly Adeline. Yen Mah's third brother protected her from some of her stepmother's actions, although in Falling Leaves it appears that her main refuge from Prosperi is her Aunt Baba, her father's older sister. This childhood conflict, involving emotional abuse and Yen Mah's attempts to gain her father's affection, are detailed in her second book, Chinese Cinderella. Throughout her childhood, she was emotionally supported by her paternal grandfather and paternal aunt. When her father became wanted by the Japanese, he left Tianjin for Shanghai. Soon afterward, her stepmother and her half brother joined him. After her father, stepmother, and half-brother disappeared, her grandmother, 'Nai Nai' died from a massive stroke.
When her father and step-mother were ready, Yen Mah and her three brothers and sister set off for Shanghai and moved into her father's house on Avenue Joffre. She was given a room of her own until her aunt and grandfather arrived, along with her half-sister, Susan, two months later. From then on she shared her room with her aunt. When Susan arrived, she did not recognize Prosperi, and for this, Prosperi beat her. Yen Mah attempted to protest and Prosperi declared that she would never forgive her.
At the age of eleven, Yen Mah and her family moved to Hong Kong. At the age of fourteen, as her autobiography states, Yen Mah won a play-writing competition at St Joseph's College (her play was called Gone With the Locusts), and her father let her study leave to in England. She went on to earn a medical degree from London Hospital Medical School, and eventually established a medical practice in California. Yen Mah has stated in an interview with the South China Morning Post that her father wanted her to become an obstetrician in the belief that only women would want to be treated by a female doctor.[1] She hated obstetrics and became an anesthesiologist instead.
She worked as an anesthesiologist at West Anaheim Community Hospital and eventually became chief of anesthesia. In her free time, however, she continued to write about the tragedies that had overshadowed her life. In 1964, she married waiter Byron Bai Lun-Soon but he proved to be violent and Yen Mah divorced him in 1970, 4 years after the birth of their son Roger and cut him off.
Later in 1972, she remarried Professor/abstract painter Robert A Mah and they had a daughter, Ann 2 years later. They moved to Huntington Beach. Roger disliked his stepfather Robert and his half-sister but he later married and started a family of his own.
According to her autobiography, whenever she did something that her stepmother considered wrong , such as attend a friend's birthday party, she was severely punished. When Yen Mah was elected class president, her friends came to her house, each of them bringing presents for her. She was summoned to her parents' room, where Prosperi beat her until her nose bled before commanded her to ask her friends to leave. Her father then made her open the presents and then throw them in the bin.
Once, one of Yen Mah's father's colleagues gave her and her siblings a brood of ducklings to raise. Yen Mah decided to name her duckling "Precious Little Treasure" (PLT for short). The family owned a ferocious dog called Jackie and one evening, when her father wanted to test out Jackie's training, he asked Gregory to select a duckling. He selected Adeline's, and the dog savaged the little duckling. PLT's leg was torn open, and it bled to death that night.
Eventually in a burst of rage Prosperi decided to send Yen Mah to a boarding school.
Her memoir, Falling Leaves, was published in 1997, shortly after Jung Chang's memoir Wild Swans . It made the New York Times Bestseller list, selling over a million copies worldwide, and has been translated into twenty two languages. Beginning with her traumatic childhood under her stepmother's cruelty, it goes on to recount how, after her father died, her stepmother prevented his children from reading his will, until her own death two years later. When the wills were read, Yen Mah had been disinherited. The success of Falling Leaves prompting Yen Mah to quit medicine and devote her time to writing.
Her second novel, Chinese Cinderella, was an abridged version of her autobiography, which sold over one million copies worldwide. It received numerous awards, including: The Children’s Literature Council of Southern California in 2000 for Compelling Autobiography Lamplighter’s Award from National Christian School Association in June 2002 for Contribution to Exceptional Children’s Literature.
Her third book, "Watching the Tree", about Chinese philosophy and traditional beliefs (including Traditional Chinese Medicine) was published in 2001.
Her fourth book A Thousand Pieces of Gold was published in 2002, and looks at events under the Qin and Han dynasties through Chinese proverbs and their origins in Sima Qian's history Shiji.
Yen Mah has written three further books for children and young adults. Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society, her first fiction book, is based on events in World War II, and Along the River, another fictional book based in Chinese history. China, Land of Dragons and Emperors is a non-fiction history book for young adults.
In 2004, Yen Mah was voted number 4 on the New Zealand Children's Best Seller lists.[2]
Adeline Yen Mah is Founder and President of the Falling Leaves Foundation, whose mission is to promote understanding between East and West and provides funds for the study of China’s history, language and culture. There is also a website dedicated to teaching Chinese over the internet for free, and the foundation has established a poetry prize at UCLA.