Xiao Li

Pre-war and war years

She was born in Taiyuan ( Shanxi Province), and was given the name Li Yueying ( Chinese к ) at birth ^[2] . Father is Colonel Li Wenji, a wealthy Chinese landowner who opposes bandaging his feet . Li Yueying participated in student protests at Taiyuan Normal University, for which she was excluded from there. She fled to Beijing, where she changed her name ^[1] . In Beijing, she enrolled at Yanjing University and met with Professor Michael Lindsay ^[1] .

Taking advantage of his status as a foreign citizen, Lindsay secretly handed over medications and radio stations to the Chinese Communists to support military organizations that had fought Japanese invaders since 1937. Xiao Li became his assistant and translator from English to Chinese ^[2] , and on June 25, 1941, they got married ^[1] . After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese decided to arrest Lindsay as an American citizen, but Lee and Lindsay fled. Up until the end of the war, they were members of the underground helping the People’s Liberation Army of China , and Xiao Li taught the soldiers English. On the way to Yanan, they had to walk 500 miles. In 1942, Eric's daughter was born in a mountain hut; in 1945, a son, James, was born in a cave that served as a hospital ^{[1] [2]} .

Baroness Lindsay Birkerskaya

After the war, father-in-law Sandy Lindsay became Baron Lindsay Birkersky. Xiao Li and her husband moved to the UK to see her husband’s parents, Sandy and Erica Lindsay ^[2] , and then to Australia, where James Lindsay taught at Australian National University . In 1951, the third child, Mary, was born, and a year later, after the death of his father, James Lindsay inherited the title of baron, thus Xiao Li became Baroness Lindsay Birkerskaya. In 1959, the family moved to Chevy Chase in Maryland , near Washington , where they remained after Lindsay retired in 1975. Lady Lindsay in 1959 became a US citizen ^{[1] [2]} .

In 1949 and 1954, the spouses visited the People's Republic of China, and in 1954 they were translators of the delegation of the Labor Party, whose negotiations with the Chinese ended in failure. In 1958, due to the critical statements of Lord Lindsay to the country's communist leadership, Lord and Lady Lindsay were denied visas. In 1973, their regular visit took place, after which they expressed their discontent with the Cultural Revolution . After the death of Erica’s daughter in 1993 and her husband in 1994, Lady Lindsay moved to Beijing , where the PRC government allocated an apartment to her as a token of gratitude for her activities during the war. In 2003, Baroness Lindsay returned to Washington, lived with her granddaughter Susan Lawrence. In 2007, her memoirs about the war, written in the first years after the end of the war, were translated into English. Lindsay spent the last years of her life in the hospital, having died at the age of 93 on April 25, 2010 in Washington ^{[1] [3]}

• Lindsay, Hsiao Li: Bold Plum: With the Guerrillas in China; War Against Japan (2007); ISBN 1430302925