Writing a biography of Mavis Gock Yen (1916-2008)

Siaoman Yen & Richard Horsburgh

Image: Mavis, aged 18, on a boat to Tientsin, and in Beijing, early 1950s.
Source: Siaoman Yen & Richard Horsburgh

My wife, Siaoman Yen, and I have embarked on a project to write a biography of Siaoman’s mother, Mavis Yen. Some CAHS members will already be familiar with Mavis as the researcher and author of the Chinese Australian oral history book, South Flows the Pearl, in which we included a short biographical piece about Mavis and gave talks about her life at the time of the book’s publication in 2022.

The arc of Mavis’s story spans nearly the entire twentieth century. She happened to experience some of the century’s pivotal events personally – growing up under the White Australia Policy, being taken to her Chinese ancestral village as a child, living in Shanghai when it was occupied by the Japanese in 1937, the same in Hong Kong in 1941, witnessing the Peoples Liberation Army take over Shanghai in 1949, living under the rule of Mao Zedong during the chaotic 1950s, being sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and lots more. Not many Australians with Chinese heritage had that full range of life experiences. But turning it into a full-length biography is another matter.

Siaoman and I have some advantages. We already know Mavis’s family history in Australia, so we are not starting with a blank canvas. The family is well-documented in the National Archives of Australia. We are familiar with the family’s ancestral village in Zhongshan, as it is also the hometown of the founders of the Wing On company, on which much has been written. Siaoman can read and write Chinese, which helps with any Chinese language material we may encounter. Our missing pieces are the three decades Mavis spent living in Hong Kong and China from 1939. Travel between Australia and China was more difficult during the Second World War. After the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, many families lost touch with relatives in China. Mavis returned to live in Australia in 1981, so we can easily pick up the story again until her passing. So, how to convey those missing years?

Once again, we have been fortunate. When Mavis’s sister in Sydney moved to a nursing home about 10 years ago, the family discovered a bundle of approximately 250 letters written by Mavis during those years overseas, hidden in the house—a wonderful mixture of family gossip and firsthand reporting from China during those crucial years. Mavis also left behind a written account of her life during the Cultural Revolution, as well as other autobiographical writings. When we approached family members, we uncovered a huge photographic record from Australia and China, which has been invaluable.

Now the challenge for us is to turn all this material into what we hope will be a unique and fascinating biography. Fingers-crossed, it won’t be too long before you have the opportunity to read it.