Qian Xiuling

Qian Xiuling (13 March 1913 – 1 August 2008), or Siou-Ling Tsien de Perlinghi, was a Chinese-Belgian scientist who won a medal for saving nearly 100 lives during World War II in Belgium. She had a street named after her and a 16-episode TV drama was made of her life for Chinese television. She has been called the "Belgian Schindler".

Life

Qian was born on 13 March 1913 in Yixing in Jiangsu Province in 1912 to a large and well connected family.

In 1929, she left for Europe to study physics and chemistry in Belgium at the Catholic University of Leuven, along with her brother Zhuoru.

In 1933, she married Grégoire de Perlinghi, a Belgian doctor, after breaking her engagement to her Chinese fiancé, and they went to live in Herbeumont.

In 1939, one source suggests that she travelled to Paris in hopes of studying in Marie Curie's laboratory but the whole facility had been moved to the United States because of the war. and he worked closely with Qian's elder cousin, Lieutenant General Qian Zhuolun. She wrote a letter and travelled to see Falkenhausen, who decided to use his authority to spare the boy for reasons of humanity.

On 7 June 1944, Qian was contacted again when the Germans had taken 97 Belgians prisoner under sentence of death in revenge for three Gestapo officers who had been killed in the nearby town of Écaussinnes. He was sentenced for twelve years for executing hostages and deporting Jews, and deported to Germany to serve his sentence. After three weeks, when the minimum sentence according Belgium law had passed, he was pardoned by German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and retired. He died in 1966.

In 2005, she was thanked by Zhang Qiyue, the Chinese Ambassador to Belgium, who visited the rest home where she lived. Qian's husband had died in 1966. There is a street named Rue Perlinghi in her honour in the city of Écaussinnes. A novel by Zhang Yawen was published in 2003 with the English title of Chinese Woman at Gestapo Gunpoint. Another biography by Feng Wu was translated and published in English in 2023. The book was titled "Forget Me: Madame Qian Xiuling-The Belgian Schindler".