All Collections
Lindsay, Michael Collection
Michael Lindsay (1909-1994) (林邁可), went to China in 1937 to teach at Yenching University, in what was then known as Peiping (Beijing). Starting in 1939, together with Li Hsiao Li (李效黎) (1916-2010), whom he married in June 1941, Lindsay became involved in smuggling medical and technical supplies out of the Japanese-occupied city to the Chinese communist underground. At the onset of the Pacific War in December 1941, Lindsay and Hsiao Li escaped the city to Communist-held areas, where they worked until the end of the conflict. They were based first in the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region, where Lindsay worked as technical advisor to the military’s Radio Department and Hsiao Li taught English language classes and gave birth to the couple’s first child. From May 1944 to November 1945, they lived in Yan’an, capital of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region. Lindsay worked as technical advisor to the Communists’ 18th Group Army and advisor to the Xinhua’s News Agency’s English News Service, while Hsiao Li taught English classes, tutored members of the U.S. Army Observer Group (also known as the Dixie Mission) in Chinese, and gave birth to the couple’s second child. The Lindsay Family Collection contains photographs taken by Michael Lindsay or collected and preserved by him. Many of the images below were published in Michael Lindsay, The Unknown War, North China 1937-1945 (1975), or in Hsiao Li Lindsay’s memoir, Bold Plum: With the Guerrillas in China’s War Against Japan (2006). After leaving China, Lindsay worked as an academic in Britain, Australia, and the United States. 638 images. HPC refs: ML01 through to ML09.
