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Nadine Hwang, also Nadine Huong(born March 9 1902 in Madrid, died1972), was one of the first Chinese female pilots and served in the Chinese Air Force as an honorary colonel. The lawyer used her diplomatic skills and her versatile skills to live in different countries. She was the mistress of Natalie Clifford Barney and survived deportation to Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Early Years
Nadine Hwang was born in Madrid, her mother Juliette Brouta-Gilliard was from Belgium. Her father, Lühe Hwang (pinyin:Huáng Lǚhé), came from an influential Chinese family, was a diplomat and a high official. Fluent in Spanish, he was posted to Madrid early in his career as Secretary of the 1st Legation, where he met his wife Juliette Brouta-Gilliard.In 1904 he was briefly posted to Havana, where Hwang's sister Marcela was born in 1905, who later became a writer and translator, Marcela de Juan (died 1981). A few months later the whole family returned to Madrid, where Lühe had been appointed head of the Chinese embassy.

At school in Madrid, Nadine Hwang spoke Castilian as well as her native French fluently. She practiced Mandarin Chinese with the other families in the Legation and took English classes.

Emancipation
After the collapse of Manchu rule in 1911 and the founding of the republic, which was proclaimed on January 1, 1912, Hwang's father was transferred in 1913 to Beijing, to the European Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry when the family moved to China, where they moved among the political, intellectual and social elite. Nadine Hwang continued her education in an international school run by French nuns. She then studied law by distance learning at in the United States Hamilton College.

As a young girl from a family of high social status, Hwang had the privilege of meeting personalities of her time, such as Mao Zedong, Lin Yutang and Hu Shi, who were invited as guests to the family home.

Even as a girl, Hwang tried gender stereotypes to escape. She learned to drive and fly small airplanes at a very young age.

Everything about these Western mechanics fascinates me, she confided to a journalist from the Excelsior in 1928. "“I would like to sit on a locomotive and drive a train at full steam.”"She liked to wear men's clothes, be it for sports or at a festival, where she appeared, for example, in the traditional Aragonese costume jota to dance Japanese-American artist and designer Isamu Noguchi recalled meeting a handsome lieutenant in the army of young Marshal Chang Hsueh-Liang. He described them as piratical. She learned sports such as polo, cricket and horseback riding, unthinkable pursuits for the average Chinese woman of her day. Not long ago, Chinese women three-inch lotus feet had been liberated.

Career in China
Zhang Zongchang was the first warlord to enlist women in his army. When he met Nadine Hwang, he decided to make her an Air Force colonel and insisted that she wear short hair and a uniform. Although her rank of colonel was apparently only an honorary rank, Nadine was nevertheless given a position of trust as a liaison officer on the staff. It was during this period that she earned her nickname the Amazon of the North.

Nadine Hwang was stationed from 1929 as a lieutenant in the Chinese army under Marshal Chang Hsueh-Liang. She later obtained an important economic position in China's Beiyang government, working as Prime Minister Pan Fu.She had previously worked for him as press officer since 1927.

The modernization of Republican China under Nationalist rule in the early 1930s was threatened by domestic unrest and an increasingly aggressive Imperial Japan, so Hwang could never live the life she wanted in China. In 1933 she moved to Paris, where she led a bohemian life. On trips to the USA and through Europe, she gave lectures about her country and campaigned diplomatically for greater economic exchange.

Stay in Paris
In the early 1930s, Nadine Hwang moved to Paris, occasionally taking on the role of chauffeur and becoming her lover. Barney regularly organized literary salons (Le salon de l'Amazone), in which cosmopolitan, avant-garde Paris usually met in her temple of friendship (Template:FrS). Hwang enjoyed the bohemian lifestyle that the Parisian capital offered her. In one account of this particular period of Parisian history, she is described as a Piratical Asian beauty, while another account describes her as a transvestite.

Barney's drawing room brought together a large group of intellectuals and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature, as well as American and British modernists, the so-called Lost Generation of the early 20th century. There are indications that Nadine Hwang also spied as an agent for the French Resistance against the Nazis. As described in the writings of Helene Nera, Hwang suffered from stifling racism due to her Chinese identity and jealousies among Barney's many lovers and admirers.

In 1940, with all of Europe overshadowed by Nazi influence, Natalie Barney fled to Florence. Nadine Hwang was deported to the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp in 1944, shortly before liberated large parts of France were Allies.

Deportation
On May 13, 1944, the transport left the Gare de l'Est in Paris. Four days later, the 567 women reached Fürstenberg. In the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Nadine Hwang was given the prisoner number 39239 and had to wear the red that identified her as a political prisoner.

She had to go to Siemens forced labor and befriended Rachel Krausz and her nine-year-old daughter Irene Krausz, both British nationals who had lived in the Netherlands."“My mother and Nadine shared a love of poetry.”"as of 2018 South Africa lives To commemorate Nadine Hwang, after all she helped her and her mother to survive, Irene gave the first name Nadine to her daughter, who was born in 1971, just a year after Hwang's death.

Meeting Nelly Mousset-Vos
On Christmas Eve 1944, Nelly Mousset-Vos was asked to sing Christmas carols in the barracks with French prisoners. After a few songs a voice called out:"'Sing something by Madame Butterfly!'"Mousset-Vos sang Un bel dì vedremo, about waiting for a loved one. Nadine Hwang, who asked for the song, remained linked to Mousset-Vos from that moment. They became a couple and spent as much time together as possible. Nelly Mousset-Vo's diary entries reveal that it was thanks to her encounter with Nadine Hwang and this love affair that she was able to survive the horrors of the camp. Nelly Mousset-Vos had worked as a courier in the Belgian resistance against the Nazis.

They were separated in March 1945 when Nelly Mousset-Vos was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where she nearly died. In April 1945, shortly before the camp was liberated, Nadine Hwang, Irene and Rachel, along with thousands of other inmates, white were Red Cross to Sweden evacuated on April 28 Malmo was documented by Swedish news photographers.

After the war
In 1945, Nadine Hwang moved to Brussels via Sweden, where she began living in a lesbian relationship with Nelly Mousset-Vos. They soon left Venezuela to start a new life. They posed as cousins ​​and lived together in Caracas. Nelly Mousset-Vos had previously worked at the Venezuelan embassy in Brussels and Hwang worked in the secretariat of a bank in Caracas. Her apartment was a popular meeting place for friends and acquaintances.

An illness forced Hwang to take powerful medication, and she suffered a stroke before treatment was complete. Due to Nadine Hwang's deteriorating health, the couple returned to Europe in the late 1960s.

Nadine Hwang died in 1972, Nelly Mousset-Vos in 1985. They are buried in different graves in Brussels.

Literature

 * Alfonso Ojedas: Cinco historias de la conexión española con la India, Birmania y China: Desde la imprenta a la igualdad de género. Los Libros de La Catarata 2020, ISBN 978-8-41352-044-5.

Film
Der Schwede Magnus Gertten realisierte zwischen 2011 und 2022 eine Dokumentarfilm-Trilogie, die auch das Leben Nadine Hwangs behandelt:


 * Harbour of Hope (Originaltitel: Hoppets hamn, 2011)
 * Every Face Has a Name (2015)
 * Nelly & Nadine (2022)