The Chinese ‘Schindler’
Book reveals incredible bravery of young woman in wartime Belgium who saved more than 100 lives, Liu Hanlu reports.
The horrors of war can, ironically, bring out the best in humans. When faced with despicable deeds, people can show their innate humanity. For Qian Xiuling, often known as Madame Perlinghi-Tsien, the choice to save more than 100 Belgians from the Nazis during World War II was obvious. It was also incredibly brave. She was awarded the “Hero of the State” medal in Belgium after the war.
Although her actions were like those of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved 1,200 Jewish lives during the Holocaust, and whose tale was turned into a major Hollywood film, she hardly mentioned her heroics to others. Instead, she hoped the world would forget about her exploits and she could return to normality, to a life that had been cruelly interrupted by the savagery of war.
But Chinese author Xu Feng had other ideas. It took 16 years to gather all of the missing pieces and retell the inspirational, and at times almost unbelievable, story of Qian in his new book, appropriately titled, Forget Me, which was published in April.
“Qian was just an ordinary citizen in Belgium, unlike Schindler and Ho Feng-shan (a Chinese diplomat in Austria who saved tens of thousands of Jews by issuing them visas during the war), who already had a relatively high economic and political status,” says Xu. “It was harder for her to save so many people.”
Her memory lives on and still inspires. Honored and loved in Belgium, there is a street named after Qian in Ecaussinnes, a city in the south of the country, from where she saved 96 people.
“When I was given the task of interceding with the occupying authorities on behalf of the condemned, I realized that I was fighting for unfortunate people who had been subjected to the most odious arbitrariness,” Qian said when she was awarded the medal.
However, to date, few people know of her deeds. Forget Me is believed to be the first such book about this brave but modest woman.
Xu got to know about Qian back in 2002, through Zhang Yawen, writer of A Chinese Woman Under Gestapo Gunpoint, a novel based on Qian’s story. A TV series of the same title was also screened. Xu, then a TV station director in Yixing city, Jiangsu province — also the hometown of Qian — wanted to make a documentary on this great woman. He made an overseas call to Qian.
“I told Qian that someday we’d go to Brussels to make a documentary about her, but it’s a pity that I failed to keep my promise before she died in 2008,” Xu recalls. However, he did visit Qian’s former residence, met with people who knew her and decided to write a book about her.
Qian left for Europe to study chemistry in Belgium at the Catholic University of Leuven at a very young age. She then married a Belgian doctor,
after breaking her engagement to her Chinese fiance, and they went to live in Herbeumont, a small town 160 kilometers away from Ecaussinnes.
The first life that Qian saved was that of a friend’s son-in-law, who had been condemned to death, when she was a village clinic operator in Herbeumont in 1940. Qian realized that she knew of the German general Alexander von Falkenhausen, who was in charge of the occupying forces in Belgium at the time. He was a friend of one of her cousins.
Qian sent a telegram to the general, begging him to release the Belgian youth for humanitarian reasons. She also decided to visit the general in person — undertaking the 160 km journey to his office in Brussels — taking with her signed photographs and letters about him given to her by her cousin. After much persuasion, the general finally agreed to use his authority to spare the youth.
Four years later, Qian saved 96
more lives in much the same way. Despite being pregnant with her first child, she again traveled to visit the general and asked him for help. Once again he acquiesced. Three days later, all 96 people were released.
In an almost unbelievable twist of fate, Qian’s persuasiveness didn’t stop there. After the war, she actually pleaded for, and saved, the general’s life. “Her compassion went both ways,” Xu explains. “She did not just save prisoners facing death sentences, but also tried her best to plead for the general at the military court, which was far more difficult for a woman with little social influence.”
In the court, Qian showed the judge a joint letter of beneficiaries and invited many of those rescued to testify. She also held a news conference, explaining his role in saving the prisoners and published an article in the Belgian newspaper La Derniere Heure to rally public support for him.
“When I wrote this book, it was the light of humanity that I was concerned about,” Xu says. “No matter how cruel war is, humanity never dies, and can sometimes even be more prominent in such extreme circumstances.”
Through telling the story of Qian’s heroics, Xu portrays Qian, the general and her cousin, three characters of different races, nationalities and social status during the war. “Both the salvation offered by Qian and the assistance given by the general transcended ethnic beliefs and international boundaries,” says the author.
As well as the story of Qian’s rescue efforts, the book also tells her love story and that of her life studying abroad.
“The charm of the book lies in depicting how culture influences someone’s life and how personal destiny manifests in war,” commented literary critic Wang Zheng after attending the book launch held in Yixing on April 22.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Belgium, according to Wei Wei, the book’s editor from Yilin Press. “The publication of Forget Me is a commemoration of Qian Xiuling, a tribute to the friendship between the people of China and Belgium, and also the encouragement of a community with a shared future for mankind and international humanitarianism,” Wei says.
For the book, Xu carried out research in China, exploring Yixing and touring Taiwan and, finally, visiting Belgium. He interviewed many people and got firsthand information about Qian, including from a man named Morris, the only living survivor among the people that Qian helped rescue. He watched a touching documentary film made by Qian’s granddaughter, Tatiana de Perlinghi, entitled Ma grand-mere, une heroine (My grandma, a heroine), which provided some additional information about Qian.
“These materials have not been disclosed before. It was the first time that they were published,” says Xu.
What impressed Xu most was that a copy of the newspaper that first reported Qian’s rescue of the prisoners in 1946 has pride of place in a museum in Ecaussinnes. There are only two such copies of that edition in the world, and the museum curator gave one of them to Xu.
Talking about Qian, Xu considers her as “a woman with both Western and Chinese beauty”. “Different from other heroines in literature, who are strong and fearless, Qian was both soft and tender, and also firm and persistent. She’s a little woman and a good wife, but she’s also brave enough to stand up to save others,” says Xu.
Xu changed the book’s title several times until finally settling on Forget Me.
“As I learned more about Qian and got closer to her, I felt that she was telling everyone, ‘forget me’. But what I want to say is the opposite: That the world should remember her,” says Xu.