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BUFFALO COURIER-EXPRESS, SUNDAY, JULY 27, 1941

Chinese Aviatrix Recounts Thrills In Training Ship

Former motion picture star, organizes emergency hospital when war ended civilian flying

By MARGARET MAGIE

ONE day high up in a blue California sky, a training ship from the Boeing Flying School looped and spun against a bank of white clouds, going through a routine of stunts guaranteed to pace the ship in every conceivable position.

Seated at the dual controls of the plane were two people, an instructor and a young Chinese student flier named Miss Lee Ya Ching.

Suddenly, as the ship twisted onto its back in a slow roll, something happened. As the girl's weight pressed against her safety belt, it gave, and she felt herself sliding, head downward, out of the cockpit, toward the earth 2,500 feet below.

As she fell, she tried to clutch the edge of the cowling, but her fingers wouldn't hold her. For what seemed an eternity, she tumbled through space, than her hand found the rip cord of her parachute. As the white umbrella blossomed above her, a shoe that had been scaped off in the fall slid on past her.

The involuntary Caterpillar Club member later became the first girl granted a pilot's license by the Chinese government. In Buffalo this week to aid the drive of the local chapter, United China Relief, Inc., she has been the house guest of Mr. and Mrs. David J. Howard in Lebrun Road, Eggertsville. Mrs. Howard is a former classmate and sorority sister of Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek at Wellesley.

As she chatted quietly in the living room of the Howard home yesterday, the slender Chinese aviatrix seemed like a girl perhaps a year or two out of college. Only she had a certain poise that comes, perhaps, from meeting emergencies and carrying on.

A linguist who can speak French and excellent English, as well as Chinese, Miss Lee was formerly a star in Chinese motion picutres. She gave up on acting and learned to fly in Switzerland, after the outbreka of the Sino-Japanese war. In Geneva, however, she could only get a private pilot's license, so she looked around for a school where she could get advanced training.

"American Schools were the best in the world, so in 1935 I came here," she explained.

At Boeing, she studied instrument flying, radio, meteorology, aerodynamics and serial navigation as well as engine mechanics. When she completed her year's course she received a transport pilot's rating, the only woman in her class.

Returning to China, she served as one of three instructors at Shanghai Municipal Air School, the only school of its kind in China. When the war put an end to all civilian flying, and hospital conditions in Shanghai became very bad, the black-haired flier set to work to organize an emergency hospital in a closed school house.

She secured doctors and nurses from the Belgian Radium Institute, and equipped the hospital with cots from nearby boarding schools. Sheets and blankets she begged from friends and neighbors.

The professional nursing staff worked through the day, but at night, while some of them slept, Miss Lee and other volunteers did relief duty.

Because of Japanese bombing raids during the day, wounded soldiers had to be brought into the hospital under cover of darkness. Emergency cases required prompt attention and more than once, the visitor confessed, although sight of blood and suffering, she had to stand by while a doctored amputated or dug for bullets. When the city finally was captured in 1937, Miss Lee fled with her family.

Asked about the future for women in aviation, Miss Lee declared she doubted woman would ever equal men as transport pilots, because of the job's nervous strain. However, she said she saw no reason why women shouldn't make as good flying instructors as men.

Although she came to this country intending to stay for six months, Miss Lee has now been here for 2 1/2 years. She is seeking to raise enough funds to take back several ambulance planes to China when she goes, possibly at the end of this year. She expects to leave Buffalo today for New York City.