Ocean Devil, The Life and Legend of George Hogg

George Hogg came to China as a correspondent in 1937, the year Japan invaded China in World War II. A few years later, he became the school master of an industrial training school with 60 orphan students in Northwest China. Hogg hustled to move his students and equipment away from the invaders when the Japanese came near the school. After a 700-mile hard journey across mountains in cold winter, he finally led the school to a remote village called Shandan in Gansu Province, and he re-established the school there. Hogg hurt his foot when playing basketball with his students just weeks before the war ended. A few days later, he died of tetanus at the young age of 30.

Hogg was not a born hero, according to the book, but a puzzled young man who finally found his goal in life. As a young Oxford graduate who came to China to spread pacifist theory, Hogg often felt frustrated by the civil war in China. In his letters to home, sometimes he missed the middle class lifestyle in London. Other times, he wondered why he stayed in China while his own country was being bombed. When he finally decided to work for the school, he wrote to his mother: “Yes, I like these kids. They keep me from being cynical!”

The author of the book, James Macmanus, used to work as a reporter in Shanghai in the 1980s. Deeply touched by the story, he interviewed Hogg's family members in London, read Hogg’s letters and books, and conducted large-scale research on Chinese history of Hogg’s age. The book, Ocean Devil: The Life and Legend of George Hogg, is the result of his research. He later wrote a screenplay based on the book. The Children of Huang Shi, now a major feature film directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Jonathan Rhys Myers, which is scheduled to arrive in theatres in spring 2008.

Today there is a monument and a small museum in Shandan in memory of Hogg. Many students of Hogg’s school brought gifts to their most beloved school master. On one of the gifts they wrote: “George Hogg is still among us. Whatever we have learned from him will lead us to success”

 

Ocean Devil: The Life and Legend of George Hogg（《黄石的孩子》）

By James Macmanus

Shaanxi Normal University Publishing House (陕西师范大学出版社) January 2008, 25 yuan