Han Suyin, pen name of Elisabeth Comber, maiden name Elizabeth Kuanghu Chow (Zhou Guanghu). Medical doctor and author of several books on modern China, novels set in East Asia, and autobiographical works.

Han Suyin was born on September 12th, 1917 in Xinyang, Henan province, China. Her father was a Chinese engineer, her mother was Flemish. Han Suyin married Pao H. Tang, a chinese militarist, in 1938 and they adopted a girl. After her first husband's death in 1947 she married L.F. Comber, a publisher, in 1952.

She started to work as a typist at Beijing Hospital when she was not yet fifteen years old. In 1933 she was admitted to Yanjing (Yenching) University (later Peking University). In 1935 she went to Brussels to study medicine. In 1938 she returned to China and came to london in 1944 and graduated in 1948. After that she returned to Hong Kong.

Works

• And The Rain My Drink (1956)

• Asia Today: Two Outlook (1969)

• Birdless Summer (1968)

• China In The Year 2001 (1967)

• The Crippled Tree (1965)

• Destination Chungking (1942)

• Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the making of modern China (1994)

• The Enchantress (1985)

• A Many-Splendoured Thing (1952)

• The Morning Deluge; Mao Tsetong and the Chinese Revolution 1893-1954 (1972)

• A Mortal Flower (1966)

• The Mountain Is Young (1958)

• My House Has Two Doors (1980)

• Till Morning Comes (1982)

• Wind In The Tower: Mao Tsetong and Chinese Revolution, 1949-1965 (1976)

• Wind In My Sleeve (1992)