Early Life
Yen Mah was born in Tianjin, Republic of China on 30 November 1937, to Joseph Yen (Yen Tse-Rung), a businessman, and Ren Yong-ping, an accountant. She had an older sister, Lydia (Jun-pei) and three older brothers, Gregory (Zi-jie), Edgar (Zi-lin) and James (Zi-jun). She has stated in Falling Leaves that that she did not use the real names of her siblings and their spouses to protect their identities but she did, however, use the real names of her father, stepmother, aunt and husband, while referring to her paternal grandparents only by the Chinese terms 'Ye Ye' and 'Nai Nai' .
Yen Mah also writes of her Ye Ye's younger sister, whom she calls either 'Grand Aunt' or 'Grand Uncle Gong Gong', and cites as founder and president of the Shanghai Women's Bank.
When Yen Mah was a year old in 1938, Joseph Yen became infatuated and married a half-French, half-Chinese 17-year-old named Jeanne Virginie Prosperi. The children referred to her as Niang (娘, another Chinese term for mother), and she is called so throughout the whole book. They had two children, Yen Mah's and a younger half brother, Franklin and half sister, Susan (Jun-qing).
Her legal birthday is 10 November, as her father did not record her birthdate and instead he gave her his own (a common practise prior to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949). Two weeks after her birth, her mother died of puerperal fever and according to traditional Chinese beliefs, Yen Mah was branded as 'bad luck' by the rest of her family.
Read more about this topic: Adeline Yen Mah
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)