陇山陇西郡
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美国女作家和民国才子的传奇恋情
(2016-03-01 08:48:30)
邵洵美是中国新月派诗人，著名的翻译家，出版家，他出身官宦世家，祖父邵友濂是清朝政治家，外交家，外祖父盛宣怀是著名的政治家、企业家，被誉为"中国实业之父"和"中国商父"。青年时期的邵洵美游学欧美，诗酒朋侪，与徐志摩、郁达夫、沈从文等文人是密友。坊间传言，邵洵美就是《围城》中赵辛楣的原型，因为钱钟书跟邵洵美亦是好友，将朋友的影子写入小说是钱钟书常用的惯伎。
1935年，项美丽作为美国著名杂志《纽约客》的撰稿人来到上海。在一次聚会上，风情万种的异国女郎和温文尔雅的民国才子一见钟情，坠入爱海，两人公然同居。邵洵美根据音译，给项美丽起了这个中国名字。当时的邵洵美已经结婚，妻子是他青梅竹马的表姐盛佩玉，表姐弟的爱情也曾经是民国风花雪月中的经典桥段。项美丽的加入，传奇了三个人的故事，“她是中国男人的妾！”据说，美国报纸曾以此作为头条，而在当时中国人的眼里，项美丽是邵洵美的外国情妇。
邵洵美给与项美丽爱情的同时，也教会了她吸食毒品。毒品改变了她的容颜，干扰了她的生活。以后的日子，她曾付出过很多的艰辛才得以戒掉毒品。
当时，邵洵美经常带着项美丽参加各种集会，结识很多文坛精英，人中翘楚，她由此获得了丰富的写作素材，文源汩汩不竭，同时，她对中国的认知和观察也在日益加深。在这期间，她认识了影响中国现代史的宋家三姐妹，邵洵美多次陪着她近距离的采访她们，一些资料都是邵洵美帮助她翻译成英文的。1941年，《宋氏三姐妹》在纽约出版，项美丽声名大噪。为此，她还和宋氏姐妹成为了异国闺蜜。
《宋氏三姐妹》完成之后，项美丽和邵洵美的感情也走到了终点。分手后的项美丽移居香港，不久，项美丽爱上了一名优秀的英国少校。1944年，项美丽发表了自传体著作《我的中国丈夫》，书中详细记录了她的中国轶事，中国情缘，包括她和中国情人发妻相处的故事。直到1997年去世，长达70年的写作生涯中，她创作了80多部书，中国一直是她关注的重点对象。中国，深刻的影响着她，因为，在这里，有她曾经爱过的一个人。
时间煮雨，岁月无痕。爱情，就如美丽的烟花，无痕烂过后终归于尘埃的静寂。只要深深的爱过，就能轻轻的放下。
With a love for reading and writing, she initially enrolled in a general arts program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but decided to change her course of study to mining engineering after being prevented from enrolling in a chemistry class predominately taken by engineering students. In her memoir, No Hurry to Get Home, she describes how the mining engineering program had never had a female enroll. After being told by a Professor in her mining engineering program that "The female mind is incapable of grasping mechanics or higher mathematics or any of the fundamentals of mining taught" in engineering, she was determined to become a mining engineer.[2] Despite the coolness of the administration and her male classmates, in 1926 she was the first woman to receive a degree in Mining Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her academic accomplishments was a testament to her intelligence and persistence that her lab partner grudgingly admitted, "you ain't so dumb!"[2]
In 1924, prior to graduating from mining engineering school, she traveled 2,400 miles (3,900 km) across the United States in a Model T-Ford dressed as a man with her friend, Dorothy Raper. During her drive across New Mexico, she wrote about her travel experiences to her brother-in-law, who, unbeknownst to her, forwarded the letters she wrote to The New Yorker.[1] This jump-started her early career as a writer. Hahn wrote for The New Yorker from 1929 to 1996[2].
China and Hong Kong[edit]
Her years in Shanghai, China (from 1935 to the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941) were the most tumultuous of her life. There she became involved with prominent Shanghai figures, such as the wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon, and was in the habit of taking her pet gibbon, Mr. Mills, with her to dinner parties, dressed in a diaper and a small dinner jacket.
Supporting herself as a writer for The New Yorker, she lived in an apartment in Shanghai's red light district, and became romantically involved with the Chinese poet and publisher Sinmay Zau (Chinese: 邵洵美; pinyin: Shao Xunmei).[4][5] He gave her the entrée that enabled her to write a biography of the famous Soong sisters, one of whom was married to Sun Yat-sen and another to Chiang Kai-shek.[1]
Hahn frequently visited Sinmay's house, which was highly unconventional for a Western woman in the 1930s. The Treaty of the Bogue was in full effect, and Shanghai was a city divided by Chinese and Westerners at the time. Sinmay introduced her to the practice of smoking opium, to which she became addicted. She later wrote, "Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can't claim that as the reason I went to China."
After moving to Hong Kong, she began an affair with Charles Boxer, the local head of British army intelligence.[1] According to a December 1944 Time article, Hahn "decided that she needed the steadying influence of a baby, but doubted if she could have one. 'Nonsense!' said the unhappily-married Major Charles Boxer, 'I'll let you have one!' Carola Militia Boxer was born in Hong Kong on October 17, 1941".
When the Japanese marched into Hong Kong a few weeks later Boxer was imprisoned in a POW camp, and Hahn was brought in for questioning. "Why?" screamed the Japanese Chief of Gendarmes, "why ... you have baby with Major Boxer?" "Because I'm a bad girl," she quipped. Fortunately for her, the Japanese respected Boxer's record of wily diplomacy.
As Hahn recounted in her book China to Me (1944), she was forced to give Japanese officials English lessons in return for food, and once slapped the Japanese Chief of Intelligence in the face. He came back to see her the day before she was repatriated in 1943 and slapped her back.
China to Me was an instant hit with the public. According to Roger Angell of The New Yorker, Hahn "was, in truth, something rare: a woman deeply, almost domestically, at home in the world. Driven by curiosity and energy, she went there and did that, and then wrote about it without fuss."[6]
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