coinkydinkies tween the blogosphere and meatspace

A while back, via the intertwingularity that is the very webbic essence of the blogosphere (probably, no doubt, via my good blogging buddy, Mr BaliHai of Eye of the Goof) I discovered Karl Esklund’s late-WW2 mémoir, My Chinese Wife. I saw a scan of the dust jacket, vide infra, which grabbed me by the lapels and said: go thou to Abebooks and buy this book, wait, and read it. Which I did. Had been waiting. After which I have done.

Karl Esklund [1918–1972] leaves Denmark as a young man and travels to Shanghai where his dad is working as a dentist. He decides to make a living as a journalist, and soon falls for a Chinese woman, Fei Chi-yun [1918–2002], and woos and weds her, much to the chagrin of his father and hers. Adventures include getting out of war-torn Europe, trying to live in Chongqing [then known as Chungking], Chiang Kai-shek’s wartime capital of China. The story ends with Karl and Chi-yun going to Mexico via San Francisco with their newborn girl Mei-mei. The latter seems to have been a model for a Playboy newstand special The Girls of Playboy 2 (1974).