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Introduction by Lin Yutang, 1962
Many books have been written about General Chennault of the Flying Tigers fame. Yet this is a book in a class by itself.
It is one of those rare books where the author has something very deep and very human and very sad and very beautiful to say and says it well. General Chennault is now in the clouds—he belongs in the clouds anyway—and his "Little Jade" (Madame Chennault) is still on earth, and she looked at his portrait in her bedroom, and the memories of their beautiful love floated back, compelling and sweetly sad, and being a writer, she just wrote these things, chips from her memories, the little things of life, with warmth and affection and tenderness, of their great, enduring love. In its simplicity and its art of cherishing the memories of the facets of domestic life, it recalls the immortal "Six Chapters of a Floating Life," which is also a record of an enduring love, written by a common Chinese scholar after his wife died.
The fact that the subject of this book is Claire Chennault adds luster to it, but is in my mind incidental. This is not intended as a full-bodied biography of General Chennault, yet in the end, what
comes out is the portrait of a man, indomitable and suffering, tough and tender, independent-minded, stubborn, yet essentially simple and unassuming. What the readers get is, in addition to the real core of the story, their wedded love and Chennault's sickness and death, so many glimpses into the war in China, the Flying Tigers, the 14th Air Force and the vignettes of the author's own ancestral home and her wonderful grandfather and Peking, Kunming and Shanghai.
The young widow of the General, our author, is a Chinese writer, who worked as a reporter when she met Chennault. She excels in little sketches which her Chinese readers find very moving. As to her own character, that too, comes out of the book and the readers will get the picture of a devoted, self-sacrificing and understanding Chinese wife.
LIN YUTANG
A thousand springs : the biography of a marriage
Anna Chennault : introduction by Lin Yutang.
New York : Paul S. Eriksson, 1962
Published simultaneously in Toronto : Burns & MacEachern.
Selected bibliographic
Chennault, Anna.
Uniform Title [ Thousand springs. Chinese.]
Title I chien ko chun tien : hun yin ti tzu shu / Chen Hsiang-mei chu.
Publisher Pei-ching : Chung-kuo wen lien chu pan kung ssu : Hsin hua shu tien tsung tien Pei-ching fa hsing so fa hsing, 1988.
Description 2, 198 p., [1] leaf of plates : ill. ; 19 cm.
ISBN 7505903810 :
Language Chinese
Note Translation of: A thousand springs.
Cover title also in pinyin: Yiqian ge chun tian.
Chennault, Anna.
Title The education of Anna / by Anna Chennault.
Publisher New York : Times Books, c1980.
Description 242 p., [4] leaves of plates : ill. ; 22 cm.
ISBN 0812908449
Language English
Chennault, Anna.
Title Chennault and the Flying Tigers. Introd. by Thomas G. Corcoran
Publisher New York : P. S. Eriksson, [c1963]
Description xx, 298 p. illus., ports., map (on lining papers) 21 cm.
Language English
Chennault, Anna.
Title A thousand springs : the biography of a marriage / Anna Chennault : introduction by Lin Yutang.
Publisher New York : P.S. Eriksson, [1962].
Description xiv, 318 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Language English
Georgetown University. Machine Translation Research Center.
Title Dictionary of new simplified Chinese characters, compiled by Anna Chennault.
Publisher Washington, Machine Translation, Chinese Section, Georgetown University [1962]
Description 88 ��. 28 cm.
Language English
Georgetown University. Machine Translation Research Center.
Title Telegraphic code Chinese-English dictionary : for machine translation / compiled by Anna Chennault.
Publisher Washington : Machine translation, Chinese Section, Georgetown University, [196-?]
Description 353 p. ; 30 cm.
Language English
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