At last, I am all but retired and can write full-time in order to complete two novels inspired by my work as a psychotherapist, and more urgently, to keep my promise to my 12 year old self; that I would one day tell my grandmother's story of her life in China. This book, 'Slender as the Willow', is the result of 20 years of research. The title, written in Mandarin, was the Chinese description of Lucy on her British Consular visiting card. I was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, writing a blog called In Grandmother's Footsteps during my 6 week trip to Canada and China. She, Lucy Ker, lived through a period of enormous change in China from the Boxer Rebellion and the Siege of Peking in 1900 until my grandfather retired as Consul General in Tianjin in 1928. She was clever and opinionated with enormous energy to match a big heart - she describes herself as being "born plain and obstreperous". I was 15 when she died a month short of her 101st birthday in Surrey.
I grew up hearing snippets of her stories, some deemed too gory for my young ears. They lived through the Siege of Peking, which their toddler son did not survive. Their farewell letters home were kept in the British Legation safe in case the thousands of Chinese troops and the Boxers killed them all. I have their original letters, contemporary photos and Lucy's memoir. Her eyewitness account formed the basis of the Hollywood epic '55 Days at Peking'. They had 4 more sons, two of whom died young, with my father being the eldest surviving child. She helped run a hostel to teach Chinese ex child prostitutes how to keep house so that they were marriageable. From 1917 she was the president of the Ladies' Benevolent Society and set about rescuing the 6,000 Russian refugees flooding into Tianjin to find sanctuary at a little church right opposite the British Consulate. "Her kind heart could not look with indifference to their plight" said the letter of gratitude written on behalf of the refugees whose lives she helped save. She was given this at a moving ceremony at the Russian Orthodox church in Tianjin in 1926. I have the beautifully carved and painted diptych and the treasured letter it still holds.
My month in China, travelling to 7 ports to try and find where they lived is a revelation. I am accompanied by a Chinese interpreter, staying with her family in their Tianjin apartment - an extremely rare privilege as a foreigner. I am an object of curiosity wherever I go, particularly when using the trains; a very different experience from my grandmother's, who rode in diplomatic carriages through stiflingly hot and crowded streets, "smiling and nodding" to every curious bystander. And every time Churchill's name is mentioned it is rewarded by a beaming smile and the Chinese person's feeling that he was a great man who did so much for his country. Stories from my journey are interwoven with Lucy's, quoting from her memoir when she vividly describes what life was like. I find her homes, and a canal she writes about, lined with tiny tumbledown houses, and visit the summer resort used by the foreign powers and now by the Communist Party elite. I skirt around the President's private army sprawled in combat fatigues in the sand as they pause their target practice with live rounds, to let me pass. I smile and nod for all I'm worth.
The Churchill Fellowship are keen to see this published and will help in any way they can with publicity, and it's possible that the Foreign Office would host a book launch in London. I give talks as a Churchill Fellow about my travels to interested groups and schools, to inspire others to follow their dream. My nearest book festivals are in Ullapool in Ross-shire, and Orkney, although I'm more than happy to travel further afield.
