Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
Due to the translation difficulties I had encountered in Japan, I had
decided I could not afford to speak in China unless I went over the
subject first with my interpreter and knew he understood the spirit as
well as the words. Therefore I showed Dr. Hu-Shih my lecture material in
advance. He suggested, “These students will want to know everything
about contraception as it is practiced.”
“But I’ve never given that except at medical meetings.”
“China is different from the West. Here you may discuss contraception as
an educational fact as well as a social measure. You will be listened to
respectfully, laughed at if you do not, and will surely be asked for
definite information. I think you should prepare yourself for this.”
It was not simple to digress from principles and theories and go into
methods that needed diagrams and technical knowledge to secure
understanding, and I felt diffident about following his advice. But
these young people, responsive and alert, received my first practical
lecture with earnest attention. Dr. Hu-Shih translated accurately and
quickly, interjecting amusing stories and improving, I imagine, upon my
own words.
Afterwards he and I were escorted across the campus to the home of Dr.
Tsai. I have always been interested in foreign foods. I like to try them
out, and have brought home dozens of Hawaiian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese
recipes which can be made at home. This dinner was an Arabian Nights
experience. It began at seven and lasted until one in the
morning—bird’s-nest and quail egg soup, fried garoupa, ducks’ tongues
and snow fungus, roast pheasant, rice and congee, lotus nuts and pastry,
sharks’ fins, and various kinds of wine.
There must have been well over thirty guests invited for the evening,
among them an American woman, Mrs. Grover Clark, whose husband was on
the faculty of the University. Some of the students had been to her
between the lecture and dinner time and given her the transcribed notes
which they had taken down in shorthand. Would she correct them? They
wanted to get the information published. When they came to the
Chancellor’s home to call for them so that they could deliver them to
the press, I could see at a glance that this was not at all what I
desired to leave behind me; my spoken words never sound adequate or
complete in print. Therefore, I sent a boy to the hotel for a copy of
the old stand-by, _Family Limitation_. The students set to work at once
to translate it. Mrs. Clark offered to pay the expenses, and the next
afternoon five thousand copies were ready for circulation.
This little incident was significant of Young China; an idea to them was
useless if only in the head. Their motto was to put it into concrete
reality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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