We’re back and in our second episode, we’re following the travels of Emily “Mickey” Hahn in 1930s China. Mickey Hahn was a writer, an adventurer, and a professional rule breaker whose wanderlust took her from the American Midwest to Europe and Africa and finally to China, all before she turned 30.

By the time she got to China, she had already established herself as an up-and-coming literary voice and one of the New Yorker’s earliest star writers. In her career, she published 54 books and over 200 articles, but her most famous book is China to Me, a memoir of the years that we’re going to talk about in this episode.

She partied with poets (and her pet gibbon) at Shanghai soirees. Wrote biographies while dodging bombs in wartime Chongqing, and did her best to keep herself and her family alive in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong. Along the way, she became famous (some might add “notorious”) for her affairs, including with Chinese writer Sinmay Zau (Shao Xunmei 邵洵美) and the head of British intelligence in Hong Kong, Charles Boxer.

Mickey lived through some of China’s most tumultuous moments. While many foreigners experienced these events, Mickey gave her readers an unvarnished look at what was happening, with a style all her own.

We’ll explore Mickey’s life, travels, and adventures, and we’ll also discuss how to follow in her footsteps today through the modern cities of Chongqing, Hong Kong, and especially Shanghai.

Thanks for listening. If you’d like to support our project exploring the crossroad between history and travel, consider a paid subscription. Every donation matters, and we appreciate your support.

Links:

Books referenced in the episode

* China to Me by Emily Hahn

* Nobody Said Not To Go by Ken Cuthbertson (biography of Emily Hahn)

* I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey by Langston Hughes

* The Soong Sisters by Emily Hahn

Tours & Resources:

* Historic Shanghai - walking tours (Patrick Cranley and Tina Kanagarathnam)

Further Reading:

* Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson by Paul French

* Hong Kong Holiday by Emily Hahn

* No Hurry to Get Home: A Memoir by Emily Hahn

* Mr Pan by Emily Hahn

If you know somebody who took a short trip to China and came back eight years later with a book deal, a baby, and an on-again-off-again opium habit, send them a link to this episode. We think they’ll enjoy it.

Transcript

By Their Own Compass: Emily “Mickey” Hahn in 1930s China

Hosts: Sarah Keenlyside and Jeremiah Jenne

Introduction

Sarah (00:07) Welcome to By Their Own Compass. Each week we explore history’s most fascinating travelers and their journeys. I’m Sarah Keenlyside, journalist and lifelong traveler.

Jeremiah (00:17) And I’m historian and writer Jeremiah Jenne. Together we dive into the remarkable lives of those who crossed borders, bridged cultures, and made the connections that built our world. It’s about the journey and the destination. After all, one person’s frontier is another person’s front door.

Sarah (00:42) In today’s episode, we’re exploring the travels of Emily Hahn—she was better known as Mickey Hahn—in 1930s China. She’s a writer, an adventurer, and a professional rule breaker whose wanderlust took her from the American Midwest to Europe, Africa, and finally China, all before she turned 30.

Jeremiah (01:01) That’s right, and you could call Mickey Hahn something of a patron saint of this podcast, even though she’d probably hate the idea of being made a candidate for sainthood. By the time she even got to China, she’d already established herself as a literary voice, as one of the New Yorker’s earliest star writers. She took an unconventional approach, both to her life and to her writing. Her most famous book is probably China to Me, a memoir of the years that we’re going to talk about in this episode.

Sarah (01:30) Yeah, after reading China to Me, she’s just ballsy and moreover she’s funny and who doesn’t want to engage with a writer like that, right? Also at the end of the episode, we’ll dive into the ways that you can follow in Mickey’s footsteps and we’ll talk a bit about what the destinations she visited are like today. But before we get to where she went—and in this episode we’re going to cover her adventures in three Chinese cities in particular: Shanghai, Chongqing and Hong Kong—let’s put her in a bit of context and talk a little about who she was, where she came from and why she’s so fascinating.

Early Life and Background

Jeremiah (02:07) Born in St. Louis in 1905, Emily “Mickey” Hahn grows up in a large, bustling, competitive family. Her father, Isaac Newton Hahn, is a dry goods salesman with a knack for storytelling. He’s a born raconteur. Her mother, Hannah, a strong-willed former suffragette, gives Emily her nickname Mickey after a popular comic character of the day. And no, not the mouse. It’s a name she will use throughout her life.

Later, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, when she tries to enroll in a geology class, she’s told it’s only open to mining engineering majors, a program no woman has ever entered at that university. In 1926, Mickey becomes the first woman to graduate with a mining engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

After graduation, her career as a mining engineer proves disappointing. Hired as a secretary with no chance of advancement unless she becomes her boss’s girlfriend, she quits and heads west to New Mexico. There, she works as a tour guide, spending her nights partying in bars and her days writing amusing letters home to her family, including a brother-in-law who sends some of them to his friends in publishing.

By the late 1920s, she’s in Manhattan, drinking with Dorothy Parker and writing for the New Yorker, emerging as a rising star among the bright young things. But Mickey’s wanderlust won’t let her settle. She sets off to explore Europe and then two years in Africa, traveling hundreds of miles on foot to the Congo and living in a remote camp where she adopts a baboon. Granted, not the best house pet, but it marks the start of her lifelong love of primates.

Back in New York, a cocktail-fueled affair with a married screenwriter flames out. Mickey decides it’s time for another adventure. Her sister Helen, who’s recently divorced, proposes a trip with a quick detour to Shanghai. But this brief stop will turn into an eight-year sojourn that will come to define her literary career.

Jeremiah (04:16) So I think before we get to China, it’s worth talking about where she comes from because she doesn’t exactly spring fully formed from the Missouri sod, but it does seem like there were the ingredients from the start. She’s headstrong, she’s whip smart. She had an absolute unwillingness to take even the littlest bit of crap from anyone. She had this very highly sensitive b******t detector and it became quite apparent to anyone that met her that this was somebody who was destined for more than hanging out in St. Louis or being a tour guide on the Grand Canyon.

Sarah (04:53) Yeah, I think the thing that most strikes me about her story is that she’s part of this really big family. She’s got all these sisters and you know, when you grow up sandwiched between sisters, you either develop a personality or you’re going to disappear, right?

Jeremiah (05:08) There’s this great biography of Mickey entitled, Nobody Told Me Not To Go. And it’s written by Ken Cuthbertson. By the way, “Nobody Told Me Not To Go”—great line. And Cuthbertson writes how the gender politics in the Hahn household must have been fascinating and at the same time, somewhat terrifying. Cuthbertson kind of argues she had already developed some sharp elbows. I mean, elbows that could cut glass. And I think that’s what I take away from his biography—that Mickey ends up carrying this chip on her shoulder. She was charming, but once you drop her in, say, genteel society, like a cocktail party in Shanghai or the club in Hong Kong, it didn’t always go over as well with the people that she interacted with. Whenever there is an obstacle, whenever a wall appears in front of Mickey, she goes right at it and leaves a Mickey-sized hole right in that wall. She may not have always made the best decisions, but when she’s confronted with something, she makes a choice and she goes for it with everything she’s got.

Sarah (06:11) And somehow her writing talent does get recognized, doesn’t it? First in the letters home, her brother-in-law, who’s a minor literary figure in Chicago at the time, he can tell that Mickey’s more than just a smart letter writer. There’s definitely some serious writing chops there.

Jeremiah (06:27) It’s a great story because some of these smaller publications, he sends them Mickey’s letters and over time the letters get circulated in the publishing community and she ends up writing for the New Yorker, which in this era was really in its infancy. This was the beginning of that magazine. The editors there were smart enough to snap her up. I think the problem for Mickey was that even when she’s writing for the magazine, even doing what really should have been a dream job, there seems to be this innate restlessness. She’s writing about pickup lines. She’s writing about cafe society and martinis and literary feuds. And she gets bored. And it seems over and over again in her life, when she gets bored, she gets the happy feet and she starts wandering. So she picks up, she hits Europe. She says, well, Africa is a place I’ve always wanted to go. Let me just go there, even though I don’t know a thing about where I’m going. And the same thing happens in 1935.

Things are not working out with the screenwriter guy. She’s been on and off dating him. It’s turning into a disaster. Her sister’s just got divorced herself. They’re commiserating. And Mickey thinks,

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Erscheinungs­datum: 4.12.2025, 13:00:00