Juliana Koo

Juliana Young Koo ( Chinese  嚴 幼 韻  /  严 幼 韵 , Pinyin Yán Yòuyùn , W.-G. Yen Yu-yün ; born September 26, 1905 in Tianjin , German Empire ; † May 24, 2017 in New York City , New York , United States ) was a Sino-US diplomat .

biography

Juliana Koo's great-grandfather, the Chinese visual artist Yan Xinhou (1838–1907)

Juliana Koo was born as Yán Yòuyùn (Yen Yu-yün) on September 26, 1905 into a wealthy family with business and government contacts in the city of Tianjin, which was part of the then Chinese Empire. Her father was Yan Zijun (1872-1931), whose grandfather was the Chinese visual artist Yan Xinhou (1838-1907). She started at the local Keen School at the age of 14 and later attended Fudan University , which was founded in the year of her birth, in the port city of Shanghai . During this time she was best known by the nickname Miss 84 (translated into English ) , which graced the license plates of the vehicle that always brought her to and from the university. In addition, she was one of the first women to graduate from Fudan University.

In 1929 she married Yang Guangsheng , also known as Clarence Kuangson Young, who was about five years her senior ; a Chinese diplomat, who was subsequently appointed as the Chinese Consul General in 1938 in the Philippine capital Manila . There his wife is said to have been of great help to her husband and to raise money for the fight against the Japanese. When Manila fell into the hands of the Japanese in 1942, during World War II , her husband, along with seven other consulate officials, was captured by the Japanese. She herself was driven out of the common house by the Japanese and moved with her daughters to an old villa in Manila, where she became a matriarch in the years up to the end of the war and supported numerous widows and their children. It was only after the US troops invaded the Philippines in 1945 that she found out that her husband had been killed by the Japanese shortly after his imprisonment after he refused to betray his homeland. After the end of World War II, she and her three daughters moved to New York City , where she became one of the first members of the United Nations Protocol and Liaison Service . She later worked her way up to head that department and was also involved in bringing Chinese immigrants to the United States.

In total, she worked for the United Nations in New York City for more than ten years and was also the first female diplomat in the young history of the organization. After she first met Wellington Koo, who was almost two decades older than him, in 1952 , she married him in September 1959 and was married to him until his death at the age of 98 in 1985. During this time she had largely withdrawn from public life, lived with her husband as a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and, after leaving there, spent her retirement in New York City. In 2015, she published her autobiography, 109 Springtimes: My Story , written in Chinese . She became a Supercentenarian on September 26 of the same year when she reached the age of 110. She cited the consumption of foie gras , beef, pork belly and lots of butter as the secret of her long life and advised against gymnastics and excessive consumption of vegetables. Juliana Young Koo died on May 24, 2017 at the age of 111 in the city where she had lived for decades. She left behind her two daughters Genevieve and Shirley Young, seven grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren as well as her extended family of around 200 people. Her third daughter, Frances Young, had died before her.

swell

• Liu Zhihua: Story of a century . China Daily USA , May 20, 2015 (English)
• Juliana Young Koo recalls the past in a new book . Global Times , May 18, 2015
• Wang Ruifeng: The legendary life of Tianjin-born diplomat Juliana Young Koo . Article from the Jin Wan Bao on the China Investment Promotion Agency website, September 21, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hong Xiao: Author and wife of diplomat celebrates 110th birthday . ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. China Daily USA , May 20, 2015, accessed May 30, 2017. 
2. ↑ Mimi Sheraton: 111-Year-Old's Secret Foie Gras Diet . The Daily Beast , December 10, 2016, accessed May 30, 2017.
3. ↑ Juliana Young Koo dies at 111 . ( Memento of the original from May 27, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. China Daily USA , May 27, 2017, accessed May 30, 2017.