Subject: Foreign martyrs and true friends of China [Print This Page]
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 10:05 AM Subject: Foreign martyrs and true friends of China
This thread dedicated to those came from foreign land and commited their lives for China.
They made sacrifice and huge contribution to our land and people. Chinese people shouldn't forget them.
I have the inspiration from Changabula, he made great works to compile and memorizing our foreign friends.
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 10:07 AM Subject: John Rabe
http://www.china.org.cn/english/news/187209.htm
Hero Rabe's House Turned into Museum
The former residence of John D. Rabe, who saved the lives of thousands of Chinese during World War II, opened to the public in Nanjing in Tuesday after being renovated.
The weather-worn house will serve as the twin "John Rabe and International Safety Zone Memorial Hall" and "John Rabe International Research and Exchange Center for Peace and Reconciliation", according to Zhang Rong, vice president of Nanjing University. Zhang also called it a platform not only to commemorate Mr. Rabe, but to serve research on world peace and cultural exchanges.
Dr. Wolfgang Rohr, German Consul-General in Shanghai, said, "It is with respect and humility that we view the achievements of John Rabe. We may rightfully be proud of a German who became a citizen of Nanjing and stayed on in difficult times to help protect his Chinese friends."
Rabe, as Siemens' business representative in Nanjing from 1932 to 1938, lived in the three-story house at No.1 Xiaofenqiao in downtown Nanjing.
The house, one of 25 Nanjing Safety Zones, served as a refugee shelter during World War II had saved over 600 Nanjing refugees in 1937 when the Japanese army occupied the city and slaughtered over 300,000 people.
As president of the Nanjing Safety Zones, Rabe is believed to have saved thousands more, but no precise official statistics exist. He recorded the atrocities committed by the Japanese troops, atrocities he witnessed on a daily basis, in the "Rabe's Diary" from September 1937 to February 1938.
Zhang Rong said that over 1,000 historical materials, photos, and more than 800 copies of original "Rabe's Diary" donated by the German Foreign Ministry, Rabe's relatives and other places in China have been put on display in the house.
Zhang added that to begin with, the house will also showcase over 300 pictures, 50 objects and four video documentaries.
"By renovating Rabe's former residence, we sincerely hope to promote Sino-German friendship," said Prof. Dr. Klaus Wucherer, member of the Corporate Executive Committee of Siemens AG. The company contributed a major part of the renovation funds which totaled 2.25 million yuan.
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 10:10 AM Subject: John Rabe
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1193091.ece
Schindler of Nanjing
He was a Nazi who saved 250,000 as Japanese troops ravaged China's capital in 1937. Now the story of John Rabe is to be made into a Hollywood movie. Clifford Coonan reports
Published: 24 July 2006
There was chaos on the streets of Nanjing in December 1937 when Japanese troops stormed the Ming dynasty walls of what was then the capital of China, bent on the slaughter still known as the "Rape of Nanking", after the city's former name.
Thousands of residents were killed by the Japanese army, but for some, a saviour was at hand - a member of the Nazi party who offered refuge in the garden of his comfortable, grey-bricked house near the city university and helped save the lives of more than 250,000 people.
John Rabe led a group of Western missionaries, businessmen and scholars in draping Red Cross flags painted on sheets around a two-by-three-kilometre area. The 250,000 people who were able to get inside the safety zone survived - another 300,000 people outside the international safety zone became the victims of the Nanjing massacre.
With his swastika armband, Rabe seems an unlikely or impossible hero, but his courage and the selfless way he administered the safety zone means for many people here he remains the "Living Buddha of Nanjing".
His story is soon to be turned into a Hollywood movie. And Nanjing University is turning Rabe's house into a memorial, with support from his former employer Siemens. It is due to open next month.
The Japanese ground assault began on 10 December and the city fell three days later, signalling the start of the six-week-long "Rape of Nanking". The Chinese say 300,000 people died, although the Japanese insist the figure is lower. Witnesses say Chinese captives were tortured, burnt alive, buried alive, decapitated, bayoneted and shot en masse, and up to 80,000 Chinese women and girls were raped and many more murdered or forced into sex slavery.
The incident has left enormous psychological scars in China and remains a huge stumbling block in relations between Beijing and Tokyo even today.
Rabe's account of the Nanjing massacre in his 1,200-page diary is moving and detailed, and despite being lost for many years, it has become a key historical account of the time.
"If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it. They (Japanese soldiers) smash open windows and doors and take whatever they like ... I watched with my own eyes as they looted the caf¨¦ of our German baker Herr Kiessling," he wrote.
Japan was Germany's ally and Rabe often resorted to waving his swastika armband in the face of a difficult Japanese soldier to try to get his way. The United States was not yet at war, although tensions were emerging and Rabe describes how it was dangerous work and how the foreigners were nearly killed on many occasions. In one case, some Japanese troops broke into the settlement to attack the women.
"We few foreigners couldn't be at all places all the time in order to protect against these atrocities. One was powerless against these monsters who were armed to the teeth and who shot down anyone who tried to defend themselves," Rabe wrote.
There were Chinese soldiers among the refugees and the Japanese forced their way in to arrest them.
"Of the perhaps one thousand disarmed soldiers that we had quartered at the Ministry of Justice, between 400 and 500 were driven from it with their hands tied. We assume they were shot since we later heard several salvoes of machine-gun fire. These events have left us frozen with horror," Rabe wrote.
Fu Bin, from the university's history department, shows me the sections of walled garden where 650 people lived, huddled as refugees in their own city, where Rabe handed out rice and beans.
"Five families lived in the house itself, and many more lived on the grounds," he says.
Fu was one of three historians who went to Germany this year to meet Rabe's grandchildren and others who knew him, to collect relics and files for the museum.
Some of the artefacts held by his grandchildren, who live in Heidelberg and Berlin, are astonishing - beautiful jade necklaces and Chinese dolls. The intimate sepia photographs of this bastion of the German community and his family is a touching testament to expatriate life in the 1930s. But his descendants cherish the memory of what their grandfather did most of all.
The parallels with Oskar Schindler, the entrepreneur who saved the lives of 1,200 Jews, are obvious but Rabe is a more challenging figure in so many ways. He joined the Nazi party early on, was the head of the local branch and does not seem to have doubted his Nazi beliefs.
Tang Daoluan, the director of Nanjing University's archive department, believes Rabe was essentially apolitical and joined the party only to get support for a German school he set up in Nanjing. For her, it was Rabe's humanity that moved her most.
"He is only a businessman, not a priest or a humanitarian worker. What he did here - protecting citizens of another country without regard for his own safety went far beyond his duty. He was a good man who understood human dignity," said Tang.
The son of a sea captain, Rabe was born in Hamburg in 1882 and arrived in China in 1908, joining Siemens two years later. He worked in Beijing until November 1931 when the firm transferred him to its office in Nanjing.
As the company's senior China representative he sold telephones, turbines and electrical equipment to the government.
Photographs show Rabe's ingenuity. An air-raid shelter he built in his courtyard in August 1937, when the Japanese air attack began, was covered with a giant swastika flag to dissuade attackers.
By 1937 it was clear the Japanese were coming, and the foreign community and much of the Nanjing's Chinese population, including the government, evacuated the city in November.
Rabe sent his family home to Germany but he stayed behind with several dozen other foreigners to set up the safety zone. Shortly before the Japanese arrived, Rabe was elected chairman of the 15-member committee of the international safety zone.
"He was reluctant at first and concerned about the safety of his family; but as soon as he took the position, he shouldered the responsibility and didn't turn back," said Tang.
Huang Huiying has written a biography of Rabe and interviewed many survivors.
"Rabe was praised as a living bodhisattva, or living saviour, by those survivors, which is really high praise in Chinese culture," she said.
Even at the time his fame was such that 3,000 women from Jinling Women's University knelt by the roadside in gratitude when Rabe was finally forced to leave the city early in 1938.
After returning to Berlin, Rabe gave lectures about the massacre and tried to get Hitler to intervene. He was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo for three days and told to shut up. He left for Afghanistan and then went back to Berlin to work for Siemens. After the war, he was de-Nazified and was kept alive by food parcels and money sent from grateful colleagues in China and he died of a stroke in 1950.
But one entry in his diary, around Christmas 1937, sums up his motivation. He had just received a Christmas card, in German and Chinese, from the refugees thanking him for all he had done.
"The best Christmas present I could ever have is to save the lives of over 600 people."
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 10:12 AM Subject: "The living Budha of Nanking" - John rabe
http://www.answers.com/john%20rabe
John Rabe
John Rabe (November 23, 1882 ¨C January 5, 1950) was a German businessman whose Nanjing Safety Zone sheltered some 200,000 Chinese from slaughter during the Nanjing Massacre.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, Rabe pursued a career in business and went to Africa for several years. In 1908 he left for China, and between 1910 and 1938, he worked for the Siemens AG China Corporation in Shenyang, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and later Nanjing.
On November 22, 1937, as the Imperial Japanese Army advanced on Nanjing, Rabe, along with other foreign nationals, organized the International Committee and drew up Nanjing Safety Zone to provide Chinese refugees with food and shelter upon the impending Japanese slaughter. He explained his reasons thus: "..there is a question of morality here.. I cannot bring myself for now to betray the trust these people have put in me, and it is touching to see how they believe in me." The zones were located on all of the foreign embassies and at Nanjing University. Rabe also opened up his properties to help 650 more refugees. The following massacre would allegedly kill hundreds of thousands of people, while Rabe and his zone administrators tried frantically to stop the atrocities. Although he tried to appeal to the Japanese by using his Nazi membership credentials, this had little effect.
On February 28, 1938 Rabe left Nanjing, traveling to Shanghai and then back to Germany. He showed films and photographs of Japanese atrocities in lecture presentations in Berlin and wrote to Hitler to use his influence to persuade the Japanese to stop any more inhumane violence. Instead, Rabe was detained and interrogated by the Gestapo and his letter to Hitler never sent. Due to the intervention of Siemens AG, he was released. He was allowed to keep evidence of the massacre, excluding the film, but was not allowed to lecture or write on the subject. Rabe would continue working for Siemens, which posted him briefly to the safety of Afghanistan. Until 1945 Rabe worked in the Berlin headquarters of the company.
After the war, Rabe was denounced for his Nazi Party membership and arrested by the Russians first and then by the British. However, investigations exonerated him of any wrongdoing. He was formally declared "de-Nazified" by the Allies in June 1946 but thereafter lived in poverty. Rabe was partly supported by the monthly food and money parcels sent by the Chinese government for his actions during the Rape of Nanjing.
In 1950, Rabe died of a stroke. In 1997 his tombstone was moved from Berlin to Nanjing where it received a place of honour at the massacre memorial site.
His war-time diaries are published in English as The Good German of Nanking (UK title) or The Good Man of Nanking (US title) (original German title: Der gute Deutsche von Nanking).
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 10:21 AM Subject: Indian doctor - Dwarkanath Kotnis
http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/141496.htm
Indian Doctor's Selfless Service Remembered
No single Indian has been more revered by ordinary Chinese than a doctor from a middle class family in northern India.
On the day when the Chinese pay respect to their ancestors, the grave of this doctor on the plains of North China is covered with flowers donated by the local Chinese.
Early last week, as honored guests, the doctor's extended family comprising 11 members of three generations, arrived in Beijing to join the national commemoration of the 60th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45).
On September 4, the family stood before his grave in North China Martyrs' Memorial Cemetery, Hebei Province. The family also toured Shijiazhuang early this week and visited the Dr Bethune International Peace Hospital, where Kotnis once served as its director.
In exclusive interviews with China Daily in Beijing and Shanghai, the family members shared their memories of the doctor, not only as a hero but also as a loved brother, husband and an adventurous young man.
Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis was born to a doctors' family in Sholapur, Maharashtra in 1910. He had two brothers and five sisters. He studied medicine at the medical college of the University of Bombay in the early 1930s.
"He was very young when he left home. He had just graduated from medical school and was doing his post-graduation internship," recalled his sister Manorama Kotnis.
"He wanted to travel around the world and to practice medicine at different places. His first stop was Viet Nam, and then further away, Singapore and Brunei. Finally he went to Hong Kong," she said.
From every place he stayed the young doctor wrote home letters.
"He sounded very happy in the letters. People used to come to thank him for his help. He was telling the good part," said the sister.
In 1937, after the breakout of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the young doctor wrote a letter home and mentioned a team of physicians being sent by the Indian Government to China. He asked his family what they thought about him joining it.
"Most members of the family knew little about China at that time. We only knew that people used to come and sell Chinese silk," said the sister.
She and Vatsala Kotnis, the youngest sister, said they were in their teen years at the time and thought what he was going to do was great.
"But mother was very sad because he was going that far and China was in a war situation," she added.
The son promised his mother in a second letter that he would be away for just one year, and his father persuaded her to "let him go and help people," Manorama quoted their father as saying.
In 1938, a medical team of five doctors (M. Atal, M. Cholkar, Kotnis, B.K. Basu and D. Mukerji) was dispatched as the Indian Medical Mission Team.
All, except Dr Kotnis, returned to India safely.
Dr Kotnis stayed on in China working in mobile clinics to treat wounded soldiers. He was eventually appointed as director of the Dr Bethune International Peace Hospital built by the Eighth Route Army, led by the Communist Party of China on the plains of North China.
"Every place he went in China, he described it in detail in his letters home. The whole family found them to be great fun because what he described was so different from our life," said Vatsala Kotnis.
But for one-and-a-half years before his death in 1942, the family received no letters from the young man.
"We were very stressed, and wrote to both the Indian and the Chinese governments for their help to find him. And all of a sudden this letter came to inform us of his death," said Manorama Kotnis.
The letter from Zhou Enlai and Commander Zhu De explained how he died of a sudden seizure and what he had done for thousands of wounded soldiers.
Kotnis' Chinese wife
To the family's relief, the doctor spent his last years happy in his work, his wife Guo Qinglan told them after the war.
His job as a battlefront doctor was stressful especially in Yan'an, where there was always an acute shortage of medicines.
In one long-drawn out battle against Japanese troops in 1940, Kotnis did operations for 72 hours non-stop, without any sleep. He treated more than 800 wounded soldiers during the battle, according to his widow Guo, a nurse who joined Kotnis' hospital.
Guo first met Kotnis at the inauguration of Dr Norman Bethune's tomb and was immediately attracted to the Indian doctor. Kotnis could speak Chinese and even knew how to write Chinese characters. Guo was amazed.
It spurred her to interact more with him. Guo's family and educational background also certainly helped the development of a romantic relationship, even in the harsh climate of war.
Born to a Christian family in North China's Shanxi Province, she had an open-minded mother, "who did not force me to bind my feet as other mothers did to their daughters in their home town," Guo recalled.
And her mother sent her to a church-sponsored school first, and later to a nursing school. In both places, the teachers were American missionaries.
"He was vivacious, and liked singing. Sometimes I couldn't stop laughing when he told his jokes," said Guo, recalling Kotnis with a smile.
In December 1941, Guo and Dr Kotnis were married.
The birth of their son Yinhua (meaning India and China) brought a lot of joy to the couple. But only three months after Yinhua's birth, epilepsy struck Dr Kotnis. It had struck once earlier, mildly, but this time it proved fatal for the young doctor. Guo was left alone with her baby son.
The doctor became famous in his hometown after his death with the publication of his best-selling biography "One Who Did Not Come Back" in 1945 and the screening of the 1946 Bollywood movie "Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani."
The two families from India and China also met after the war.
Guo, who continued her medical career until her retirement several years ago, has been to Kotnis' hometown in India five times and retains a good relationship with the Kotnis family.
Guo's most memorable trip was in 1958 when she took the 16-year old Yinhua to India.
Dr Kotnis' mother hugged them as soon as they entered her home. His brothers and sisters broke down and wept. Guo and Yinhua jointly planted a tree in memory of the doctor before their departure.
"His two sisters never stop corresponding with me in English," said Guo, adding that second and third generations of the Kotnis family have visited China several times in the past couple of decades.
Vatsala studied acupuncture at the Bethune hospital in Shijiazhuang in the early 1980s and started an acupuncture clinic in India. At least four members of the Konis family are medical workers in India.
Yinhua, who was to become a doctor, died at the age of 24 owing to medical malpractice.
Today, Dwarkanath Kotnis is commemorated together with the Canadian Dr Bethune in the Martyrs' Memorial Park in Shijiazhuang. The entire south side of the memorial is dedicated to Dr Kotnis.
A small museum there has a handbook that contains vocabulary words that Kotnis wrote on his passage from India to China, some of the instruments that the surgeons used at that time and many photographs of doctors, some with the Communist Party of China's most influential figures, including Mao Zedong.
China also made a movie on Dr Kotnis in 1982, called "Dr DS Kotnis."
"Now that it is more than six decades since he died, we really appreciate how the government and the people are giving him so much respect after so many years," said Manorama Kotnis.
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-18 10:28 AM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 10:25 AM
Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20061217/spectrum/main6.htm
The recent visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to India has refreshed public¡¯s memory about Dr Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis, the most revered Indian in China. Rajesh C. Bali pays tribute to the man who went on a mission to China and stayed on to serve the locals
DR Dwarkanath Kotnis is still being remembered and loved in China and we shall never forget him for his services, the Chinese President Hu Jintao told the family members of Dr. Kotnis when he met them in Mumbai on November 23, 2006.
A memorial for the Indian physician in North China
Kotnis was one of the five Indian physicians dispatched to China to provide medical assistance during the second Sino-Japanese war in 1938. It was during the Japanese invasion of China in 1938 when Communist General Zhu De requested Jawaharlal Nehru to send Indian physicians for providing medical assistance to Chinese soldiers. A medical team of five doctors, including Drs M. Atal, B.K. Basu, M. Cholkar, D. Mukherji and Kotnis was sent as a part of the Indian Medical Mission Team in 1938. Except Kotnis, all others returned safely to India. He remained there to give his services and became an icon in China.
He stayed there for four years working in mobile clinics to treat wounded soldiers. In 1939, he joined the Eight Route Army, led by Mao Zedong at the Jin-Cha-Ji border near the Wutai Mountain Area. During his stay, Kotnis provided medical aid to thousands of soldiers and conducted "more than 800 major operations". He was appointed director of the Dr Bethune International Peace Hospital. However, the hardships of suppressed military life finally started to take its toll on him. On December 9, 1942, at the age of just 32 years, he died of epilepsy. He was buried in the Heroes Courtyard in Nanquan Village. At that time, Mao Zedong mourned his death by observing that "The army has lost a helping hand, the nation has lost a friend. Let us always bear in mind his internationalist spirit." In the Northern Chinese province of Hebei, in Shijiazhuang city, a famous attraction is the Martyr¡¯s Memorial park. The north and south sides of the park are dedicated to the veterans of the Korean and the Japanese wars. The west side is dedicated to Norman Bethune, a Canadian who fought for the Chinese, and the South side to Dr Kotnis. There is a great statue in his honour. A small museum there has a handbook of vocabulary that Kotnis wrote on his passage from India to China; some of the instruments that the surgeons used in their medical fight for life, and various photos of the doctors, some with the Communist Party of China¡¯s most influential figures, including Mao.
Born to Shantaram and Sita on October 10, 1910 in Sholapur, Maharashtra, he had two brothers and five sisters. "He was the second in hierarchy and was lovingly called Baba", said his youngest sister Dr Vatsala Kotnis (79) in a choked voice when she was contacted on phone at her residence at Model House in South Mumbai. He studied medicine at the G.S. Medical College of the University of Bombay in 1930.
While in China, Kotnis married a Chinese woman Qinglan Guo. They had a son, Yinhua which means India and China (¡®Yin¡¯ means India and ¡®Hua¡¯ means China). He died in 1967. However, the sapling of Asoka tree which he and his mother planted during their visit to Dr Kotnis¡¯ hometown Sholapur in 1958 in his memory, still stands tall.
He was immortalised in the 1946 V. Shantaram¡¯s movie Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani. China too had its own dedication to Dr Kotnis in the 1982 movie Dr D.S. Kotnis. There was also a best-selling biography/novel by K.A. Abbas,And One Did Not Come Back (1945). In 1982, China released two postal stamps on the 40th anniversary of the doctor¡¯s death, and then again in 1992 on the 50th anniversary. In 1993, India also released a stamp depicting his photograph and showing him conducting an operation, in the background.
He is such a towering and respected figure in China that when ever any Chinese Premier or President has visited India he has made it a point to visit or send flowers to Dr Kotnis¡¯ relatives. They include the Zhou En Lai in June, 1954, the then President Jiang Zemin in 1996, he sent flowers to his family, the then Premier Li Peng in 2001 and Zhu Rongji in 2002. Recently, on November 23. the President Hu Jintao met his relatives including his two sisters on the last day of his visit to India and while paying rich tributes to Kotnis, describing him as "a bridge between China and India".
During the visit, President Jintao presented a large album documenting Dr Kotnis¡¯ life in China, treating soldiers and his meeting with Mao. "We have presented the President a video of 1946 Hindi Film of V. Shantaram¡¯s Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahanis and his biography Bridge Forever, written by Mangesh Kotnis, his elder brother and a cotton bedsheet, made in Solapur", said Vatsala Kotnis, who has studied acupuncture at the Bethune hospital in Shijiazhuang in the early 1980s and started an acupuncture clinic in India which she still runs. "Though our beloved brother always lives in our hearts but with such visits by Chinese Premiers his memories are refreshed. We really feel honoured that our brother is so respectfully remembered in China because of his dedication towards his work for saving or treating Chinese soldiers during the aggression", said the proud sister. However, she said that she is missing her sister-in-law Guo Qinglan, 91, who was to visit India along with President Jintao for the sixth time but could not due to bad health.
On December 9, 2006 when Dr Kotnis was remembered by both the nations on his 64th death anniversary for his yeoman¡¯s service to humanity. imbibe his morals for making this world a place to live with peace and harmony and work selflessly for the betterment of humankind. "This would be a real tribute to him", saidVatsala.
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Author: schreiber Time: 2007-7-18 10:37 AM
http://sinoam.com/
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 10:38 AM Subject: The Flying Tiger
http://english.peopledaily.com.c ... 0050804_200266.html
The Flying Tigers
Flying Tigers, or the American Volunteer Group was made up of American volunteer pilots who were drafted by Colonel Claire L. Chennault from 1941 to 1942 to fight with Japanese air force in China and Burma. At that time the harbors and transportation system in China were under control by the Japanese army, isolating the Kuomintang government from outside world.
The small squadron of Flying Tigers, driving old and shabby fighters kept defeating the Japanese air force, which was well equipped and much bigger in scale.
The Flying Tigers transported supplies, provided cover for the Burma highways, and fought with Japanese in most regions in China.
On July 4, 1942, the American Volunteer Group was incorporated into the 10th Air Force and became the backbone of the China Air Task Force of the United States Army Air Forces. In 1943, the 14th Air Force was activated and replaced the China Air Task Force.
During WWII, the Flying Tigers transported ammunitions and material for China and fought against Japanese invaders. From 1941 to 1943, the Flying Tigers shot down 193 Japanese aircrafts and destroyed 75, hence an important force supporting China's war of resistance against Japan.
By People's Daily Online
"At last I am in China where I hope to be of some service to a people who are struggling to attain national unity and new life"
-May 31, 1937; Claire L. Chennault diary entry
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-18 12:00 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 11:59 AM Subject: Brief history of Flying Tigers
Official site of Flying Tigers - American Volunteer Group
http://www.flyingtigersavg.com/tiger1.htm
The Flying Tigers
American Volunteer Group - Chinese Air Force
A BRIEF HISTORY WITH RECOLLECTIONS AND COMMENTS BY GENERAL CLAIRE LEE CHENNAULT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In April, 1937, Claire L. Chennault, then a captain in the United States Army Air Corps, retired from active duty and accepted an offer form Madame Chiang Kai-shek for a three month mission to China to make a confidential survey of the Chinese Air Force. At that time China and Japan were on the verge of war and the fledgling Chinese Air Force was beset by internal problems and torn between American and Italian influence. Madame Chiang Kai-shek took over leadership of the Aeronautical Commission in order to reorganize the Chinese Air Force. This was the beginning of Chennault's stay in China which did not terminate until 1945 at the close of World War II. Chennault's combat and other experiences between 1937 and 1941 in China are another story, but it was these experiences together with the knowledge he attained of combat tactics and the operations of Japanese Air Force over China that laid the ground work for the organization of the American Volunteer Group in 1941.
The official status of Claire L. Chennault in China prior to 1942 was always a subject of speculation. Chennault himself states that he was a civilian advisor to the Secretary of the Commission for Aeronautical Affairs, first Madame Chiang and later T.V. Soong. Until he returned to active duty with the United States Army in the spring of 1942, four months after Pearl Harbor, he had no legal status as a belligerent and held no rank other than retired captain in the United States Army. Even while he commanded the American Volunteer Group in combat, his official job was adviser to the Central Bank of China, and his passport listed his occupation as a farmer.
In the summer of 1938 Chennault went to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in Western China, to forge, at the request of Madame Chiang, a new Chinese Air Force from an American mold.
SELF IMPOSED EXILE
It was during these years of self-imposed exile in the Chinese hinterland, that Chennault laid the foundation for the unique American air operations that featured the final three years of the Japanese war in China. In addition to his solid relations with Chinese of both high and low estate, these operations were based on clusters of strategically located air fields and an air-raid warning system that covered Free China. Without those three solid supports American air power could hardly have functioned in China.
"All over Free China these human ant heaps rose to turn mud, rocks, lime and sweat into 5,000 foot runways to nest planes not yet built in Los Angels and Buffalo factories*"
AIR-RAID WARNING
Describing the Chinese air-raid warning net, Chennault states:
"The Chinese air-raid warning system was a vast spidernet of people, radios, telephones, and telegraph lines that covered all of Free China accessible to enemy aircraft. In addition to continuous intelligence of enemy attacks, the net served to locate and guide lost friendly planes, direct aid to friendly pilots who had crashed or bailed out, and helped guide our technical intelligence experts to wrecks of crashed enemy aircraft."
"Most efficient sector of the net was developed in Yunnan as a dire necessity. It was the Yunnan net that was a key to the early A.V.G. successes and the defense of Chinese terminals on this side of the Hump against fantastic numerical odds."*
Early in 1939 the Japanese began their tremendous effort to break the back of Chinese resistance by sustained bombing of every major population center in Free China. It was the virtually unopposed and continuous bombing of the major centers of Free China by Japanese Air Force that directly led to the organization of the American Volunteer Group. In the fall of 1940 the Generalissimo instructed Chennault to go to the United States for the purpose of obtaining American planes and American pilots to end the Japanese bombing.
Chennault's original plans called for the injection of a rejuvenated Chinese Air Force spearheaded by American volunteers to upset the Pacific stalemate.
ATTACK SUPPLY LINES
Concerning the proposed American Volunteer Group, Chennault states:
"My plan proposed to throw a small but well-equipped air force into China. Japan, Like England, floated her life blood on the sea and could be defeated more easily by slashing her salty arties than by stabbing for her heart. Air bases in Free China could put all of the vital Japanese supply lines and advanced staging areas under attack.
"This strategic concept of China as a platform of air attack on Japan offered little attraction of the military planners of 1941. It was not until the Trident Conference of 1943 that I found any appreciation of my strategy or any support for the plans to implement it. This support came from two civilians, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and was offered against the strong advise of their military advisers."*
Unfortunately, the only salvage out of all Chennault's plans and efforts during 1940-41 was the First (and only) American Volunteer Group of fighter pilots and fighter planes. In discussing the genesis of the American Volunteer Group, Chennault states:
"Methods of implementing the fighter-group plan developed faster than I expected. It became evident during the winter that China had a small but powerful circle of friends in the White House and Cabinet. Dr. Lauchlin Currie was sent to China as President Roosevelt's special adviser and returned a strong backer of increased aid to China in general and my air plans in particular. Another trusted adviser of the President-Thomas Corcoran-did yeoman service in pushing the American Volunteer Group project when the pressure against it was strongest."
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-18 12:12 PM ]
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Author: schreiber Time: 2007-7-18 12:09 PM Subject: They were among the best of America.
Author: pandamonium Time: 2007-7-18 12:09 PM Subject: Accounts of some good spirited people
Thank you.
Maybe you can't say, but who are the two people in Image Attachment: museum-2.jpg (2007-7-18 10:07, 71.84 K)?
Looks familiar
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 12:21 PM
QUOTE:
Originally posted by
pandamonium at 2007-7-18 12:09
Thank you.
Maybe you can't say, but who are the two people in Image Attachment: museum-2.jpg (2007-7-18 10:07, 71.84 K)?
Looks familiar
I lost the Chinese news sources, but it should be John Rabe's grandson and his wife.
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 12:25 PM Subject: American Goddess in Nanking - Minnie Vautrin
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/DH24Ad01.html
An American hero in Nanking
American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin
by Hua-ling Hu
Reviewed by Victor Fic
Illinois native Minnie Vautrin must rank as one of America's greatest unsung heroines. This excellent biography of Vautrin vividly recounts how her superhuman courage prevented Japanese soldiers, wild-eyed with lust and anger, from raping women when they plundered the doomed Chinese city of Nanking in December 1937. That Vautrin stood for dignity during the Rape of Nanking makes her an American idealist in war; her lonely death makes her a tragic figure.
Vautrin was born in Secor, a small farming town in the center of Illinois. Dreaming of being a teacher, Vautrin worked her way through high school and entered college in 1910. The God-fearing prairie girl eventually decided to spread the Bible; she came to the "heathen" Middle Kingdom in 1912.
Here, the author sidetracks to provide an excellent synopsis of modern Chinese history. She briskly reviews how the corrupt Qing dynasty finally fell in 1911. Also, she recounts the important names and events in missionary history before 1912. This sets the context for Hu's main topic, namely Vautrin's presence in a tumultuous country where this angel of hope would have her grave dug by the demon of disillusionment.
Vautrin became president of Ginling's College for women in Nanking (now officially known as Nanjing) in 1919. She taught critical thinking, and she had her students perform social work. Ginling soon became a famous school under her idealistic tutelage.
On December 13, 1937, the Japanese army conquered Nanking, and for the next several weeks murdered, looted and raped with abandon. Vautrin bravely turned Ginling into a safety zone. Originally, she wanted to shelter only young and unwed women, but the raping was so severe - some women were violated with beer glasses - that Vautrin's compassion moved her to accept all women.
Japanese soldiers tore down the US flags that Vautrin flew in the safety zone and raped women on the premises. Irate soldiers sometimes slapped Vautrin, thrust their bayonets or waved pistols at her. But she refused to surrender. Unwittingly proving that war can be as absurd as it is violent, a Japanese photographer taking propaganda pictures asked the women, some of whom were likely already victims, to look happy.
With many women too afraid to leave Vautrin's side, she displayed immense creativity by organizing homecraft and small trade workshops, theology lessons, an Easter show and a ten-week curriculum spanning nine subjects. She also negotiated the release of Chinese prisoners of war slated for execution. Though her salary had been cut, she bought quilts for the exposed and tired.
The biography is best when it covers the years 1937-38. Hu comprehensively reviews Vautrin's many projects, and effectively quotes from her diaries; for instance, on December 16, Vautrin said, "There is probably no crime that has not been committed ... today."
As a direct result of her altruism, countless thousands of women escaped rape. Unfortunately, Vautrin's mental health was a casualty. She left China in 1939 to see doctors at home. They said that her wartime experiences had unnerved her. She blamed herself, however, and added that she was a burden and a failure. The woman who had fended off the real threat posed by the Japanese army failed to defeat her own illusions. On May 14, she gassed herself to death.
Overall, the book is a straightforward biography, without theorizing on the meaning of the era. Methodologically, Hu must be praised for reading the subjects entire correspondence from 1919-41, resulting in detailed, credible treatment. The analysis rings true because of the rich sources. Hu writes in crisp yet unadorned language that allows the drama and pathos of the neglected tale to stand out.
The book makes a contribution to our understanding of the Rape of Nanking, taking its place alongside Iris Chang's work (The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II) and her discovery, the diaries of John Rabe, as key works; Hu's special contribution is her focus on the ordeal of Chinese women, and the US relief effort posed by Vautrin. This biography is the first, indicating that Hu had vision.
As for its apparent faults, Hu did not talk much to those who knew Vautrin - was this possible?
One hopes that in the United States, Hu's book will call attention to Minnie Vautrin as an icon of female leadership in peace and outright courage in war. If Americans give her the respect that people in Nanjing still do, it would generate goodwill and prove that not every American World War II hero wore combat boots.
American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, by Hua-ling Hu (University of Southern Illinois Press: 2000)
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-18 03:49 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 12:35 PM Subject: Minnie Vautrin
http://english.peopledaily.com.c ... 0050722_197646.html
Massacre museum adds 100 new memories
More than 100 copies of documents and photos from the time of the Nanjing Massacre have been added to the Memorial Hall in the city.
The original papers have been loaned to the museum courtesy of a relative of the American "patron saint" of Nanjing refugees, Minnie Vautrin, who laboured tirelessly to help keep the victims from harm in 1937.
Cindy Vautrin, who presented the pieces on Wednesday morning, is the granddaughter of Minnie Vautrin's brother. She gave 21 file photographs, 47 letters, Vautrin's passport and the Red Cross armband Minnie Vautrin wore as she worked.
"I feel so sorry about that history, and so proud of what my ancestor did," said Cindy Vautrin, quoted by local media.
Minnie Vautrin (1886-1941) was an American missionary.
After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1912, she went to Hefei, capital of Anhui Province, teaching and doing missionary work.
Between 1919 and 1940, she taught at Nanjing Jinling Women's College, when the Nanjing Massacre happened.
Working with more than 20 foreigners at the college, Vautrin set up refugee camps and saved the lives of at least 10,000 women and children, who called her their "Goddess of Mercy."
While guarding the camps, her famous comment was: "Whoever (Japanese soldiers) wants to go through this gate will have to go over my dead body."
From August 12, 1937 to April, 1940, Vautrin kept a daily diary.
She sent the diaries and letters to her relatives and friends in the United States, giving them an accurate record of what was going on in China at the time.
"On the morning of December 13, 1937, the Japanese invaders entered the city from Zhonghuamen Gate, they raped women, burnt houses and killed people. Many women and children escaped to the refugee camp at Nanjing Jinling Women's College, all of them were extremely frightened..." she wrote in her diary.
Vautrin went back to the United States to get medical treatment for an illness on May 14, 1940. Exactly one year later she committed suicide.
Ai Delin, an official from the Memorial Hall, said some reproductions will be shown to the public during the "December13 - Nanjing Massacre Historical Fact Exhibition" in Beijing this August.
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-18 03:50 PM ]
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Author: markwu Time: 2007-7-18 12:35 PM Subject: humbly added
my great granduncle...
brief
http://tinyurl.com/2hg9vf
opening as:
MEMORIES OF DR WU LIEN-TEH, PLAGUE FIGHTER
by Dr Wu Yu-Lin (formerly with RELC)
Dr Wu Lien-teh (1879 ¨C 1960) was a distinguished scientist and Cambridge-trained Chinese physician who, at the age of 31, was sent to Manchuria in the severe winter of 1910 to fight the terrifying pneumonia plague which then threatened the world and claimed a deathtoll of 60,000 victims. The successful ending of this major plague epidemic, covering a distance of 2,000 miles from the north-western border of Siberia to Peking, within a short period of four months, brought him international fame and marked the beginning of almost thirty years of devoted humanitarian service to China.
In 1912, Dr Wu established the Manchurian Plague Prevention Service, and it was on this foundation that he, despite immense difficulties, began to modernise China's medical services and medical education. Some twenty modern hospitals, laboratories and research institutions, including the Peking Central Hospital, built by Dr Wu in different parts of China are memorials to his work. He founded the Chinese Medical Association and established the first national quarantine service in China. He embarked on arduous work for the League of Nations and became a world authority on plague.
This volume contains more than 200 historically important photographs vividly depicting the medical scenes and anti-plague work in China during the years 1908 ¨C 37 that came from Dr Wu's private collection ¡ª an extraordinary collection filled with unforgettable images. This book, written with sensitivity and tenderness, is a worthy companion to Dr Wu Lien-teh's autobiography entitled Plague Fighter: The Autobiography of a Modern Chinese Physician, published by Heffer, Cambridge, in 1959.
[ Last edited by markwu at 2007-7-18 01:14 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 12:37 PM
QUOTE:
Yes of course, patriotic overseas Chinese also made selfless contribution to China. Welcome to post the whole article.
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-18 12:39 PM ]
Author: fatdragon Time: 2007-7-18 01:05 PM Subject: Thank you northwest.
QUOTE:
Originally posted by northwest at 2007-7-18 10:05
This thread dedicated to those came from foreign land and commited their lives for China.
They made sacrifice and huge contribution to our land and people. Chinese people shouldn't forget them.
...
Good to get an acknowledgement that we are not all bad.
Author: schreiber Time: 2007-7-18 01:13 PM
Mark,
That's great!
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 04:02 PM
QUOTE:
Originally posted by fatdragon at 2007-7-18 13:05
Good to get an acknowledgement that we are not all bad.
These are heavy words, of course we know not all came from foreign lands are bad.
Those mentioned above made selfless sacrifice and contribute hugely to our cause.
I just like to pointed out some that I knew. For example, the word 'Nazi' in western world often related to negative things, but John Rabe as a Nazi member is one of our greatest benefactor. He was worshipped as 'Boddhisatva', for some Buddhist Chinese this considered greater respect than own's parents.
Just providing Chinese perspectives.
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 04:03 PM
QUOTE:
Originally posted by
schreiber at 2007-7-18 12:09
They were among the best of America.
Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 04:19 PM Subject: Overseas Chinese shouldn't be considered 'foreign', but...
http://www.xmu.edu.cn/english/founder.asp
MR. TAN KAH KEE - Chen Jia Geng (1874-1961)
Overseas Chinese leader contributing to resistance war. Also the founder of Xiamen university.
An overseas Chinese legend, Mr Tan Kah Kee's legacies have inspired many in Southeast Asia, by Comrade Mao Zedong as the "Flag of the Overseas Chinese and Glory of the Nation." From humble immigrant origins, he rose to a prominence, which few can match. Best remembered as an eminent entrepreneur, social reformer, political activist, philanthropist, community leader, and educationist, he died at the age of 87 in Beijing on August 12 1961 and was accorded a national funeral by the Chinese Government for his contribution to the society.
The Legend
Born on October 21 1874 in Fujian, China, Mr Tan arrived in Singapore to join his father, Mr Tan Kee Peck, in the family's rice business in 1890. He was only 17.
Business responsibilities came early as his father's business failed in 1904, leaving him much on his own. With extraordinary fortitude and risk-taking abilities, he set about establishing a business of his own which began in pineapple canning and later, rice milling. He eventually found the mainstay of this fortune in rubber plantation. The switch from rubber plantation to rubber manufacturing was a bold move, and it made him one of the most successful Chinese overseas businessmen in the whole of Southeast Asia. Profits made during the World War I expanded his horizons.
By the 1920s, he came to preside over a huge business empire, which extended into most East and Southeast Asian cities, employing over 10,000 people. It spanned areas as diverse as rubber plantation and manufacturing, shipping, import and export brokerage, real estate and rice trading. As one of the earliest industrial pioneers in the region, Mr Tan Kah Kee earned himself the accolade "Henry Ford of Malaya".
The Philanthropist
Mr Tan's business success put him in the forefront of the leadership of the Hokkien community. He held advanced views about social reform and criticised several outmoded practices then prevalent, like gambling, opium-smoking and ritual extravagance. As a result of his initiative in 1927, the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan was reformed and democratised. His social concerns, however, were not confined to the Hokkiens but extended to the larger Chinese community in Singapore. This was demonstrated in his efforts to reform the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce. In 1929, he established a Chinese Associate to enable different linguistic and regional groups to rise above sectarian interests and serve the larger community along progressive and democratic lines.
As Mr Tan Kah Kee's life in China and Southeast Asia encompassed a vast and exciting era of revolutionary change and rapid social and economic transformation, he could not keep himself aloof from the ebb and flow of political currents of his times. He kept a close interest in political developments in China in general and Fujian in particular. In 1928, he raised $1.34 million for the Shandong Relief Fund, following the Jinan Incident in May 1928 between the Japanese forces and the Kuomintang army. In 1937, when the Sino-Japanese war broke out, Mr Tan found himself heading the Singapore China Relief Fund (1937-46) and the Southseas China Relief Fund Union (1938-49).
The Educationist
An abiding interest that underpinned Mr Tan Kah Kee's multi-faceted public activities sprang from his firm commitment to educational philanthropy. In 1894, at the age of 21, he established a school in his village in Jimei. In the following decades, his enthusiasm and passion for educational philanthropy grew, culminating in his endowment of the Xiamen University in 1921. The founding of this University enhanced his reputation nationally and internationally.
In Singapore, Mr Tan's educational endeavours were impressive. Through his inspiration, five primary and secondary Chinese schools were founded, chief among them being the Chinese High School. He also donated generously to schools which imparted English education. For instance, he donated $30,000 to the Anglo-Chinese School in 1919.
Teacher education occupied a special place in Mr Tan's vision of educational philanthropy. He generously supported teacher education in China and Singapore. In 1918, he established a normal school to train teachers in Fujian. When he founded Xiamen University, he ensured that education enjoyed the status of a full-fledged faculty in its structure. In Singapore, he campaigned from 1930 onwards for the establishment of a Nanyang Chinese Normal School to train qualified teachers for Chinese schools. This school was eventually established in 1941.
In addition to being a successful entrepreneur and supporter of education, Mr Tan was deeply interested in historical scholarship. Well-versed in Chinese historiography from the classical to the modern period, he enjoyed drawing anecdotes and quotations from Chinese history in his speeches and writings. This love for historical scholarship is amply reflected in his own memoirs, Nanqiao Huiyilu, which has been described as "undoubtedly one of the best documented autobiographies ever written by an immigrant Chinese in Southeast Asia".
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-18 04:21 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-18 04:23 PM
BIRTH AND FAMILY
http://www.tkk.wspc.com.sg/tkk/biography/bio_eng.shtml
Tan Kah Kee - Chen Jia Geng
An overseas Chinese legend, Mr Tan Kah Kee's legacies have inspired many in Southeast Asia. From humble immigrant origins, he rose to a prominence which few can match. Best remembered as an eminent entrepreneur, social reformer, political activist, philanthropist, community leader, and educationist, he died at the age of 87 in Beijing on 12 August 1961 and was accorded a national funeral by the Chinese Government for his contribution to society.
Born on 21 October 1874 in Fujian, China. At the age of 17, Mr Tan arrived in Singapore to join his father, Mr Tan Kee Peck in the family's rice business.
Business reponsibilities came early as his father's business failed in 1904, leaving him much on his own. With extraordinary fortitude, enterprise and risk-taking ability, he set about establishing a business of his own which began in pineapple canning, then diversified into rice milling. He eventually found the mainstay of his fortune in rubber plantation. The switch from rubber plantation to rubber manufacturing was a move he made boldly, and it established him as one of the most successful Chinese overseas businessmen in the whole of Southeast Asia.
By the 1920s, he thus came to preside over a huge business empire which extended into most East and Southeast Asian cities, employed over 10,000 persons. It spanned areas as diverse as rubber plantation and manufacturing, shipping, import and export brokerage, real estate and rice trading.
His business success put him in the forefront of the leadership of the Hokkien community from which he originated. He held advanced views about social reform and criticised several outmoded practices then prevalent, such as gambling, opium-smoking and ritual extravagance.
An abiding interest that underpinned Mr Tan Kah Kee's multi-faceted public activities, sprang from his firm commitment to educational philanthropy. In 1894, at the age of 21, he established a school in his village in Jimel. In the decades, thereafter, his enthusiasm and passion for educational philanthropy grew, culminating in his endowment of the Xiamen university in 1921.
In Singapore Tan Kah Kee's educational endeavours were impressive, imbued by the same missionary zeal and vision that had inspired him to found the Xiamen University. Through his inspiration, five primary and secondary Chinese schools were founded here, chief among them being the Chinese High School. He also generously donated to schools which imparted English education. For instance, he donated $30,000 to Anglo-Chinese School in 1919.
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-18 04:27 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-7-29 10:36 AM Subject: Bernhard Alp Sindberg
http://www.china.org.cn/english/Life/167037.htm
Nanjing's Greatest Dane Remembered - Bernhard Alp Sindberg
Relatives of a man who helped prevent 6,000 Chinese civilians from being brutally slaughtered by invading Japanese troops during the notorious 1937 Nanjing Massacre are visiting the city.
Bernhard Alp Sindberg sheltered people at Jingnan Cement Factory in Qixia Mountain in east Nanjing, where he was manager.
His relatives were invited to the city by Nanjing municipal government to commemorate the 95th anniversary of his birth.
During their visit, which ends tomorrow, they have toured the site of the factory and met those he helped protect.
"Without his help, we would have had no chance of living. We hope the kindness of people like Sindberg will live on, and there will never be another war," said Wang Yongli, an 82-year-old who stayed in Sindberg's factory for more than 100 days as a teenager.
Wang recalled that whenever Japanese troops assembled to break into the factory, Sindberg would run to the gate and wave the Danish national flag to ward them off.
Denmark was not at war with Japan at that time.
In addition to providing shelter to the local residents, Sindberg also risked his life every day by venturing outside to bring back medical materials from the Red Cross to treat any injured people in the factory, said Wang.
On hearing the accounts of local residents, Sindberg's sister, Betrian Alp Andersen, said she was touched to see that so many Nanjing residents still remembered her brother so clearly.
She said she brought the younger generation of the family on the trip "to let them learn about their ancestor and remember this part of history."
The family brought along seeds of a commemorative yellow rose called the "Nanjing Forever Sindberg Rose" with them from Denmark.
"This kind of rose grows with nobility and bravery, and carries our memories of those whose lives were lost in the war and our hope for justice," said Andersen.
According to Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Nanjing Memorial Hall of Compatriots Murdered in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, the hall will plant a number of the seeds in its grounds.
Sindberg's relatives also presented the hall with a silk cloth, which was inscribed with messages of thanks from residents to Sindberg when he was forced by Japanese troops to leave Nanjing in March 1938.
"That piece of silk was the only thing passed down to us by Bernhard on his death. But I think it is more meaningful if it stays in the hall," said Marian Stenvig Andersen, his niece.
Sindberg wrote a series of eyewitness reports about his experiences in China in the late 1930s, which are now exhibited in Yale University in the United States and considered of high value in studying the war crime, said Gao Zuxing, an expert in war studies at Nanjing Normal University.
More than 300,000 Chinese died in the Nanjing Massacre.
Sindberg's written accounts provided further evidence of the atrocities carried out by Japanese troops.
They were published in the Danish press in 2003.
One of Sindberg's reports, among those found in a Danish public library, was quoted as saying: "Blood, blood, everywhere here was drenched in blood."
German John Rabe was also instrumental in saving the lives of people in Nanjing.
From 1931 to 1938, Rabe was in the city.
His house was a refugee camp at the time of the massacre. Rabe also kept diaries recording more than 500 atrocities made by the Japanese invaders, which is used today as important evidence of the Nanjing Massacre.
(China Daily April 27, 2006)
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-7-29 10:43 AM ]
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Author: scribbler Time: 2007-8-1 02:48 AM
Canadians can be thankful for the contribution of Dr. Norman Bethune in China.
Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-1 06:30 PM
QUOTE:
Originally posted by scribbler at 2007-8-1 02:48
Canadians can be thankful for the contribution of Dr. Norman Bethune in China.
Thank you for the info. 
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-8-1 07:12 PM ]
Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-1 06:37 PM Subject: Dr. Henry Norman Bethune
The Greatest Canadian - Norman Bethune
Dr. Henry Norman Bethune, MD (March 3, 1890 ¨C November 12, 1939) was a Canadian physician, medical innovator, a member of the Communist Party of Canada, and humanitarian. In Chinese, he is known as "Bai Qiu-en" (°×Çó¶÷).
The son of Christian missionaries, Dr. Bethune was born in Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada. His grandfather, Norman Bethune was also a noted Canadian physician and founder of one of the first medical schools in Toronto.
After completing his medical studies at the University of Toronto (having also, mid-program, worked for a year as a labourer-teacher with Frontier College), Bethune moved to Montreal where he was associated with McGill University and taught thoracic surgery. Bethune was an early proponent of universal health care, the success of which he observed during a visit to the Soviet Union. As a doctor in Montreal, Bethune frequently sought out the poor and gave them free medical care. In 1915, he joined the the No.2 Field Ambulance Medical Corps in France, where, as a stretcher-bearer, he was hit by shrapnel and spent three months recovering in an English hospital.
As a thoracic surgeon, he travelled to Spain (1936-1937), aiding the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and to China (1938-1939), aiding the Chinese in their war with Japan, in both cases performing battlefield surgical operations on war casualties.
Bethune's work in Spain in developing mobile medical units was the model for the later development of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units. The need to provide blood transfusions in a battlefield led him to develop the first practical method for transporting blood. In China, he worked with carpenters and blacksmiths to forge new surgical tools, and established training for doctors, nurses and orderlies. He redesigned packing containers to serve as operating tables.[1] He treated wounded Japanese prisoners.[2]
Bethune died on November 12, 1939, of blood poisoning from a cut he received when performing surgery, while with the Communist Party of China's Eighth Route Army in the midst of the second Sino-Japanese War.
Memory
Virtually unknown in his homeland during his lifetime, Doctor Bethune finally received international recognition when Chairman Mao Zedong of the People's Republic of China published his essay entitled In Memory of Norman Bethune (in Chinese: ¼oÄî°×Çó¶÷), which documented the final months of the doctor's life in China. Mao went ahead and made the essay required reading for the entire Chinese population. Mao concluded in that essay: We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very useful to the people. A man's ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people.
Statue of Bethune in MontrealBethune College at York University, and Dr Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute (a secondary school) in Scarborough, Ontario, were named after Dr. Bethune. Heroic statues of Bethune have been erected throughout China.
Memorial House in GravenhustThe Canadian government purchased his father's and his neighbour's house in Gravenhurst and restored the houses into the Bethune Memorial House in 1976. The house is a National Historic Site of Canada. In August 2002, then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who has Chinese ancestry, visited the house and unveiled a bronze statue of him.
Montreal created a public square and erected a statue in his honour, near Guy-Concordia metro station.
Bethune improved upon a number of surgical instruments. His most famous instrument was the "Bethune Rib Shears"[2].
Dr. Bethune (Chinese: °×Çó¶÷´ó·ò), One of the most successful Chinese movies was made in 1964 in memory of him, in which Gerald Tannebaum (Traditional Chinese: ×TŒŽ°î; Simplified Chinese: Ì·Äþ°î; Pinyin: T¨¢n N¨ªngb¨¡ng), an American humanitarian, played Bethune.
Donald Sutherland played Bethune in two biographical films: Bethune (1977), made for television on a low budget, and Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990). The latter was a co-production of Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, FR3 TV France and China Film Co-production.
In March 1990, to commemorate the centenary of his birth, Canada and China each issued two postage stamps of the same design in his honour.
In 1998, he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.
In the CBC's The Greatest Canadian program in 2004, he was voted the 26th Greatest Canadian by viewers. In 2006 China Central Television produced a 20-part drama series, Dr Norman Bethune, documenting his life, which with a budget of Yuan 30 million (US$3.75 million) was the most expensive Chinese TV series to date. [3]
He attended Owen Sound Collegiate in Owen Sound, Ontario, now known as Owen Sound Collegiate And Vocational Institute. He graduated from OSCVI in 1911 along with William Avery "Billy" Bishop. Both names are inscribed on the School's Great War Memorial.
He is buried in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China, where his tomb along with that of Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis lie next to great memorials and statues to their honour. His ideals and teachings were instrumental in the formation and growth of the Medical College Democratic Students Association.
The 2006 novel The Communist's Daughter, by Dennis Bock, is a fictionalized account of Bethune's life.
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-1 06:47 PM
http://english.peopledaily.com.c ... 0041223_168381.html
Chinese still cherish memory of Norman Bethune
Before Louis, a Canadian lady traveled to China this August, Qi Ming, a visiting Chinese scholar to Canada and teacher of a military academy in Beijing, wrote the Chinese words "I'm from the hometown of Bethune" on her traveling bag. Back from China, Louis told Qi Ming emotionally: These words were really better than a passport, whether when I was at the airport, hotel or on the train, people looked at me friendlily as they saw these words on my traveling bag, the boss of a restaurant even declined to take the payment for my meal!
December 21 marked the 65th anniversary of the publication of Mao Zedong's work "In Memory of Norman Bethune". On November 12, 1939, the great international communist fighter Norman Bethune died of disease at Huangshikou Village in Tangxian County of Hebei Province. On December 21 the same year, Comrade Mao Zedong published his "In Memory of Norman Bethune". Now 65 years have elapsed, but the Chinese still cherish deep memory of him.
A forum marking the 65th anniversary of the death of Norman Bethune and the publication of the work "In Memory of Norman Bethune" was held today in Beijing jointly by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Ministry of Health and several other departments. At which people deeply recalled the noble medical ethics of Comrade Bethune and reviewed the important significance of the publication of Chairman Mao's work "In Memory of Norman Bethune". Medical departments nationwide were called to remember with their actual deeds this internationalist fighter.
Li Meng, vice-chairperson of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said that carrying forward the Bethune spirit, being Bethune-styled scientists, and abiding by vocational ethics are of important significance under the new situation of the new century. Executive Vice-Health Minister Gao Qiang said the Bethune spirit, our valuable spirit wealth, has educated revolutionaries and medical workers of one generation after another We should use the Bethune spirit to guide our own actions and put devoted service to the masses, easing the pain of their illness reducing their burden of expenses and safeguarding their vital interests in the first place.
Ordinary people of Hebei Province have never for a moment forgotten Dr. Bethune, this is because during the 22 months of his service for the Chinese army and people in their fight against Japanese aggression, Dr. Bethune mainly worked in Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border areas, busy himself for about 10 months on the land of Hebei Province. His former residence and memorial hall at Huangshikou Village in Tangxian County receive group after group of visitors each year.
The Bethune Military Medical College grown out of the Health School in Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei military region was initiated and founded personally by Bethune in September 1939 at Niuyangou Village in Tangxian County, Hebei Province. Bethune also personally compiled a syllabus and nine kinds of teaching materials for the school, and created medical apparatuses in light of the needs of battlefields, he was determined to leave behind a permanent medical team to China.
A hope primary school named after Bethune was completed on December 21 last year in Niuyangou Village where this Canadian once worked. It was built with the 230,000 yuan donated by nearly 4,000 people from all walks of life, but engraved on the "Donators" name list on the walls of the schoolhouse are the words "Disciples of Bethune". Kang Ke, a retiree who once worked together with Bethune asked somebody from Changchun of northeast China's Jilin Province to take 1,000 yuan to this said village, as an expression of the goodwill of this 98-year-old veteran comrade-in-arms of Bethune.
Wang Yuemin, secretary-general of the Bethune Research Society that has organized six symposiums on the Bethune spirit, said feelingly that the Bethune spirit has not only inspired army and local medical workers, but has also moved the ordinary people throughout the country. Thanks to Bethune's role as a linkage, exchanges between many Chinese cities and Bethune's hometown Gravenhurst have become increasingly frequent, scholars, culture and language are exchanged between the two sides, many domestic tourists mentioned by name the former residence of Bethune as their destination of visits.
Mayor John Klink of Bethune's hometown who paid a special visit to China in September 2002 for the unveiling ceremony of Bethune's bronze statue inside the military school said emotionally: In the notes left by Bethune wrote 'I'm very happy here, my only hope is that I can make more contributions'. Only people who have personally come to China are aware how Bethune was deeply loved by the people here. This great humanitarian would feel happy if he knew this today.
This article carried on the front page of People's Daily (Overseas Edition) December 22, 2004 was translated by People's Daily Online
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-8-1 06:50 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-1 07:04 PM
Outstanding internationalist - Israel Epstein
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Epstein
Israel Epstein (April 20, 1915 in Warsaw, Poland ¨C May 26, 2005 in Beijing, China, Chinese name: ÒÁ˹À׶û¡¤°®ÆÃ˹̹, Pinyin: Y¨©s¨©l¨¦i'¨§r Àip¨s¨©t¨£n) was a naturalized Chinese journalist and author. He was one of the few foreign-born non-Chinese to become a member of the Communist Party of China.
Early life and education
Israel Epstein was born to a Jewish family in April 20, 1915 in Warsaw, which was at the time under Imperial Russian control (currently part of Poland). His father had been imprisoned by the authorities of czarist Russia for leading a labor uprising and his mother had been exiled to Siberia. Epstein's father was sent by his company to Japan after the outbreak of the World War I; when the German Army approached Warsaw, his mother and Epstein fled and joined him in Asia. After having experienced anti-Jewish sentiment in several places, in 1917, Epstein came to China with his parents at the age of two and they settled in Tianjin (formerly Tiensin) in 1920.
Journalism
Israel Epstein began to work in journalism at age 15, when he wrote for the Peking and Tientsin Times, an English-language newspaper based in Tianjin. He also covered the Japanese Invasion of China for the United Press and other Western news agencies. In the autumn of 1938, he joined the China Defense League, which had been established by Soong Ching-ling, Sun Yat-sen's widow, for the purpose of publicizing and enlisting international support for the Chinese cause. In 1941, he faked news about his own death as a decoy for the Japanese who were trying to arrest him. The misinformation even found its way into a short item printed in the New York Times.
After being assigned to review one of the books of Edgar Snow, Israel Epstein and Snow came to know each other personally and Snow showed him his classic work Red Star Over China before it was published.
In 1944, Israel Epstein first visited Britain and afterwards went to live in the United States with his first wife Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley for five years. During this time, he worked for Allied Labor News and published his book The Unfinished Revolution in China in 1949. Many years later, Ms. Cholmeley would become known to a generation of Chinese language students in China and around the world as a contributor to one of the most widely used Chinese-English dictionaries published in the PRC.
'China Today' magazine
In 1951, Soong Ching-ling invited him to return to China to edit the magazine China Reconstructs, which was later renamed China Today. He remained editor-in-chief of China Today until his retirement at age 70, and then editor emeritus. During his tenure at China Today, he became a Chinese citizen in 1957 and a member of the Communist Party of China in 1964.
Imprisonment
He was imprisoned on grounds of suspicion for 5 years during the Cultural Revolution, but remained loyal until his death to the ideals of Communism. Israel Epstein was elected as a member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People 's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body, in 1983.
Honours
During his life, Israel Epstein was honored by Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and current Chinese President Hu Jintao. His funeral was held at the Babaoshan Cemetery for Revolutionaries, in Shijingshan District, Beijing on June 3, 2005 at 9:30 A.M. The ceremony was attended by many officials, among them President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, as well as Politburo Standing Committee members Jia Qinglin and Li Changchun. After the service, his body was cremated.
Published works
The People's War, 1939
A Memoir of More than 80 Years in China
My China Eye: Memoirs of a Jew and a Journalist, Long River Press, 2005
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-8-1 07:05 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-1 07:07 PM
Israel Epstein
http://en.tibet.cn/people/til/t20050421_25196.htm
Israel Epstein was born to a Jewish family in Poland on April 20, 1915.
In 1917, his parents moved to China, and settled in Tianjin in 1920, a decision that was to change Epstein's life.
He participated in China's revolution in the 1930s as a journalist, going to front-line revolutionary bases and writing eyewitness accounts of the bravery of the Chinese people as they fought for national independence and liberation.
In autumn 1938, he joined the China Defense League that Soong Ching Ling had established for the purpose of enlisting international support for the Chinese cause.
At the end of China's War of Resistance Against Japan, Epstein went to the USA with his second wife, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley, and worked for the Allied Labor News. He and other progressive thinkers united in urging the US government not to interfere in China's internal affairs. He also made creative and pioneering efforts to strengthen friendship between the two peoples. One example is his help in translating the Yellow River Cantata into English and in getting it performed in the US.
Shortly after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Epstein and his wife returned to China to help Soong Ching Ling set up China Reconstructs (now China Today) magazine in Beijing.
In 1957, with the approval of Premier Zhou Enlai, Epstein became a Chinese citizen. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1964. Since 1983, he has been a member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
As an accomplished journalist and writer, Epstein has traveled throughout China. He has devoted his life to the study of Chinese history and society, and written many influential works, including The People's War; Unfinished Revolution; From Opium War to Liberation; Tibet Transformed; and Woman in World History: Soong Ching Ling. His latest work, A Memoir of More than 80 Years in China, is a distinctive, personal view of the tremendous changes that have taken place in China during the past century.
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-8-1 07:31 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-1 07:09 PM
Hu, Wen say final farewell to Epstein
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/eng ... /content_448475.htm
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao were among 1,000 mourners to pay their last respects yesterday to Israel Epstein, the celebrated journalist.
Family, friends and colleagues attended the ceremony at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing.
A distinguished Chinese citizen who devoted his life to journalism and to reporting on China, Epstein died in Beijing at age 90 on May 26.
Lying amidst white lilies and covered with the flag of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Epstein in his life time won admiration and love from people who worked with him.
President Hu praised Epstein for his "outstanding contributions" to China's progress and "his sincere affection for China and the Chinese people."
Arriving in China with his Jewish parents at the age of two in 1917, Epstein witnessed all the phases of modern Chinese revolution and of New China's efforts in construction and reforms under the leadership of the CPC.
During the Chinese War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945), he was war correspondent for the (US) United Press in Guangzhou, where he met Soong Ching Ling, who invited him to join the China Defence League she established in Hong Kong.
When serving as a correspondent of the United Press and the Allied Labour News of the United States, Epstein visited Northwest China's Shaanxi Province and Shanxi-Suiyuan Anti-Japanese Base Areas, and interviewed Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other CPC leaders.
Permanently settled in Beijing in 1951 with his first wife Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley and becoming a Chinese citizen in 1957, Epstein wrote and edited for China Reconstructs (China Today) magazine.
From 1983 on, he served as an elected member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top advisory body in China.
As a veteran journalist, Epstein also concerned himself with the development of China's foreign language news media, including China Daily, which launched its first issue 24 years ago.
"He often called me to praise some of the good works the paper carried and point out the things that we missed," recalled Zhu Yinghuang, former editor-in-chief of China Daily and a member of the CPPCC national committee.
During his lifetime, he penned the books "The People's War in China" (1939), "The Unfinished revolution in China" (1947), "From Opium War to Liberation" (1956), "Tibet Transformed" (1983), "Women in World History: Soong Ching Ling" (1993), "I Visit Yan'an" and "My China Eye -- Memoirs of a Jew and a Journalist" (2005).
He and Cholmeley did not have children of their own but adopted two Chinese children. Cholmeley died in 1984.
Epstein's body was cremated after the funeral service.
He is survived by his second wife, Wan Bi, two children and two stepchildren.
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-1 07:49 PM
The people's doctor - George Hatem (Ma HaiDe)
http://www.answers.com/topic/ma-haide
Ma Haide (George Hatem)
Ma Haide (Âíº£µÂ)Ma Haide (Chinese: M¨£ H¨£id¨¦ Âíº£µÂ; 1910-1988), born George Hatem, was a doctor and public health official in China from 1933 until his death.
Early life
Ma was born in Buffalo, New York to Lebanese immigrant parents, attended pre-med classes at the University of North Carolina and medicine at the American University in Beirut and the University of Geneva. While in Geneva, Ma became acquainted with students from East Asia, and learned much about China. With financial help from the parents of one of his friends, he and several others set off to Shanghai to establish a medical practice to concentrate on venereal diseases, as well as basic health care for the needy.
Shanghai
Ma set up the practice in Shanghai in 1933. It was in Shanghai that he met the well known journalist, Agnes Smedley, who introduced him to Liu Ting, a member of the Communist Party of China. Disgusted by the corruption of Shanghai and the Chinese Nationalists, he closed his practice there three years later, and, with the help of the earlier established Communist contacts, was smuggled across Kuomintang lines to provide medical service to Mao Zedong's Communist troops in Sian.
Yenan
Later on, Ma travelled to the Communist headquarters at Yenan. He was accompanied by the pioneering American journalist Edgar Snow. At Hatem's request, he was not explictly mentioned in the first edition of Snow's famous book, Red Star Over China. He is there anonymously as a western-trained doctor who had examined Mao and determined he was not dying of some mysterious disease, which was the rumour at the time.
He was present at Yenan, when the Dixie Mission, an American civilian and military group, arrived in July 1944. Ma was a source of surprise and comfort for many of the Americans when they met the American born physician. Many accounts of the mission make reference to Haide, though often incorrectly stating his home state to be North Carolina. Known commonly to the group as "Doc Ma," Ma periodically assisted Major Melvin Casberg in studies of the state of medical treatment in the Communist territories.
Post War Life
He remained a doctor with the Communists until their victory in 1949, and then became a public health official. He is credited with helping to eliminate Leprosy and many venereal diseases in post-war China for which he received the Lasker Medical Award for his efforts in 1986. He was one of the few non-Chinese persons to hold a position of trust and authority in the People's Republic of China. His Chinese name can be loosely translated to mean,"Horse" and "Virtue From the Sea".
He died in China in 1988.
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-1 07:57 PM
The People's Doctor: George Hatem and China's Revolution
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/ca ... 9550e9f01bab40a3137
by Edgar A. Porter
"Superior to all other accounts of Hatem's life." --Choice
"At last Ma Haide, a major figure in American non-governmental interaction with 20th-century China, has found a rigorous and painstaking biographer... The portrait Porter paints of "Dr. Ma," the first Westerner to join the Chinese Communist Party, is memorable: an idealistic yet prudent adventurer, a medical man with a feel for politics, a one-filial son who turned his back on his family for the cause of revolutionary China. Porter has done prodigious research and conducted revealing interviews. He has empathy for his subject yet a searching gaze. He nicely balances the private and public faces of this enigmatic American-Chinese physician who penetrated the heart of Communist China. No one interested in America's relation to the Chinese Revolution should miss this book." --Ross Terrill, Harvard University
"In Porter¡¯s adept hands, Hatem becomes a window on some of China¡¯s most important events this century. The revolutionary era of the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese military offensive, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and reforms of the 1980s are all examined through the eyes of an American doctor trained in a completely different health care system." --The Lancet
"There is little evidence of ambition or arrogance in Hatem's story, which surely sets him apart from many other foreigners working in China; and the genuineness of his service as a health worker seems indisputable.... Few can claim a life so well spent." --China Review International, Fall 1998
"Very good ... written in a lucid and interesting style.... I definitely recommend this book." --Journal of Oriental Studies, 1997
The young George Hatem journeyed to Shanghai in 1933 to practice medicine and see the sights. The deplorable health and social conditions he found there caused his sympathies to veer quickly to the revolutionary efforts of the Chinese Communist party, and before long he joined the underground Party members in conspiratorial meetings and activities. In 1936 he left Shanghai on a secret Province after completing the Long March. For the next 14 years, Hatem served the Communist troops as physician and adviser. He took the name Ma Haide and became the first foreigner admitted into China's Communist Party. After the Communist victory in 1949, he became the first foreigner granted citizenship in the People's Republic. Over the next 40 years, his reputation grew as one of the leading public health physicians in the world. Until his death in 1988, he showed absolute allegiance to the Party. Few foreigners have been accepted into Chinese society as readily as he and certainly none have had such intimate access to 20th century China's most powerful figures.
[ Last edited by northwest at 2007-8-1 07:59 PM ]
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-20 08:05 PM
http://www.china.org.cn/english/LivinginChina/220798.htm
An American with Chinese heart - Eunice Moe Brock
'I Am an American, But I Have a Chinese Heart'
In Liumiao Village of Yanggu County, Shandong Province, there lived a 90-year-old American woman, Eunice Moe Brock. Eunice has been living in here for more than eight years. "Yes, I am an American, but I have a Chinese heart." Eunice said.
"Help the poor"
Early last century, Eunice's parents came to Liaocheng, Shandong Province. Eunice was just born here. In Eunice's memory, the old China stands for war, poverty, pestilence and suffering. When she was 13, she secretly determined, "I will return to China to help the poor people after growing up."
In 1998, Eunice sold her 40 acres of woodland, her villa, garden, car and other belongings in the US and moved to China. She settled down in Liumiao Village. Informed that the village's primary school has not yet established any computer class, she immediately donated US$30,000 to build a computer room. In the following three years, she donated a total of nearly 20,000 yuan to buy toys and teaching equipments for kindergartens and schools in Liumiao Village.
In 2001, Eunice bought glasses for short-sighted persons in the village and funded surgery for five elderly people who have been suffering from cataract. She also served as honorary president of Liaocheng International peace hospital and invited foreign experts to give lectures in there. In 2006, Eunice became the most special one among those elected as the "Top ten people touching Shandong."
"Road in the village expanded"
During the past eight years, Eunice has written more than a hundred of letters to her family in the US, in which she has told all the changes that have taken place around her in China.
In her first letter written right after she arrived, Eunice described, "Quite a few cement roads in Liumiao Village have been broadened. People planted shrubs and trees along one of the very wide main road."
In 2002, Eunice found out that because of instable power supply, students cannot use the computer room quite often. Two months later, the government invested 4 million yuan in reconstructing 5,000 meters of electronic lines and installing broadband. The computer room can be used now. Eunice also started to write e-mail instead of sending letters. In her email, Eunice said, "I am pleased to have a reliable power supply here. And I don't have to rewrite my emails because there is no longer a sudden power outage or computer shutdown. I think the same thing happened in other villages. The Chinese government made a lot of efforts to improve rural infrastructure to help the poor."
Eunice's neighbor Aunt Zhang told Eunice that she has got the first reimbursement for medical expense from the government. Eunice wrote in the email then, "I was told that the villagers joined the cooperative medical insurance service in May. They will only need to pay 10 yuan per person to get a half of their medial expense reimbursed by the government."
Eunice said that she was very happy these years because she can witness the changes brought by China's rapid development along with other villagers.
"I will donate my remains to China"
Villagers like to visit Eunice and bring her some fruits such as dates and pears. Many come to her to celebrate her birthday every year. In the Spring Festival, Eunice will hang up red couplets in front of the door to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Now Eunice is already accustomed to the Chinese rural life style. She even grows vegetables by her own and turns some abandoned land in the village to beautiful garden.
American woman, Eunice Moe Brock celebrates her 89-year-old birthday with an old lady in In Liumiao Village of Yanggu County, Shandong Province.
Nearly everybody in Liumiao Village has received Eunice's greetings. Nearly every child has visited her family, playing toys and taking photos with her. Every Christmas, Eunice would love to buy a bunch of candy and pull on her donkey to school. Every time she met some villagers on her way to the school, she said in Chinese: "Have you eaten?"¡¡
Eunice used Chinese to express her wish, "I hope I can get a 'green card' so that I can always live in China. I am an American, but I have a Chinese heart. I would never leave here. After death, I would like to donate my body to the Chinese medical institute."
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Author: northwest Time: 2007-8-20 08:13 PM
A Venerable Love of China - Eunice Moe Brock
Text by Mu Shuang
http://www.rmhb.com.cn/chpic/htdocs/english/200705/4-1.htm
Mu visits primary school kids.
by Song Shiliang
American citizen Eunice Moe Brock, 89, today lives happily in a village in ShandongProvince. Seven years ago, she sold all her property in the US and came to settle in the rural area. "I love China and the Chinese people and I'd like to stay here for the rest of my life".
Enduring Affection
In 1917, Eunice Moe Brock was born in Beidaihe of Hebei Province, and until the age of 13 years she lived in Liaocheng of Shangdong Province. Her Chinese name, Mu Lin'ai, was given to her by her father who was once a missionary in China. In 1930, by ship Mu Lin'ai returned to America with her parents. "At that time, I promised myself that I would again return to China."
Mu often exercises and travels by tricycle. by Song Shiliang
Mu obtained her undergraduate and graduate degrees in nursing from VanderbiltUniversity and the University of Colorado. After graduation, Mu engaged in nursing education and became the director of nursing education at the Children's Hospital in Denver, Colorado. However, her deep attachment to China always drew her attention back to the nation. "My experience in China, especially the kindness of the Chinese people, influenced me throughout my life. I always looked forward to returning," says Mu.
"It was not until 1992, when I was 75, that I had the chance to return to Liaocheng with my husband. Most of my childhood playmates had passed away, including my best friend. But I was warmly welcomed by her children." In 1998, after her husband Edwin passed away, Mu decided it was time to return to China.She sold her forty-acres of land, house, car and other properties and, with the blessing of her children, she returned to China in September of 1999. In November after a home was made ready for her she moved to Liumiao Village of Liaocheng. After more than 50 years, her dream of returning to China finally came true.
During the Christmas holiday, Mu leads a donkey cart full of gifts for the school kids. by Song Shiliang
Welcome Back
Mu's arrival created a stir in the quiet village, and still villagers and children often drop in for a visit. Mu welcomes them into her house and speaks in her returning Chinese "My home is yours. Whenever you want, you can come to play," she says. Mu bought some toys and English books for them. She also plays badminton and reads cartoons with the kids, and builds toy blocks with English words to teach them the language.
"I always had a dream of setting up a HopePrimary School to help the poorer children who are unable to go to school," says Mu. When she learned there were no computers in the local primary school, she devoted $30,000 to buy computers. And at Christmas she never forgets to prepare presents for the kids. "I love kids so I often go to school to visit them. After school, they will come to my house to play," Mu continues. "Madam Mu is so kind that all the children regard her as their own nana. If on occasion she misses a visit, the kids miss her very much."
In 2001, Mu bought glasses for more than 130 senior villagers and later sent five aged people suffering from cataracts to have operations. In Chongyang Festival (a festival for senior citizens in China), the village had new suits made for 78 elders above 70 years of age, one of which she proudly wears on special occasions. In LiumiaoVillage, almost everyone has received her blessing in some form. Certainly, she has won the respect and love of the villagers.
The villagers celebrate Mu's 89th birthday. by Song Shiliang
Due to her educational background, she holds the position of Honorary President of Liaocheng International Peace Hospital. She not only contributed medical appliances but invited foreign experts to deliver lectures. Every weekend, it takes her more than one hour to go to the urban district of Liaocheng by bus to help people learn English in a discussion group and host the "English Corner" at LiaochengUniversity, which has earned her many fans. No matter the weather conditions, Mu is never absent. "Even if there is only one person present for the discussion group I will be there," she remarks.
At the advanced age of 89, Mu is even busier than the young. With rich knowledge and broad interests, she makes many resolutions every year. "I plan to introduce a treatment apparatus from the US to help the students overcome their stress and nervousness during exams. She also plans to build a library for the farmers of adjacent villages."
In August 2006, conferred with the title "Philanthropy Ambassador of China" by the China Charity Federation at the Great Hall of the People, Mu's philanthropic acts are recognized by all walks of life. In January of 2007 she was named as one of "The Top Ten People Who Moved Shandong in 2006." She says, "I am very glad to receive honors in China ... it all has been really beyond my expectations."
At her 89th birthday, Mu and a Chinese grandma embrace. by Song Shiliang
Versatile Nana
Mu seems as full of energy as a young woman. In her courtyard, she painted murals and designed fountains on the rockwork as well as a tiny waterfall. For months, Mu rode a tricycle to carry materials as a part of her effort to convert a deserted field into a luxuriant garden, a popular spot where the villagers often take photos. "I had the wall built, but set up the greenhouse myself. I like doing things by myself. I can use electric drill, saw, plane and a lot of other tools." "Her work is gorgeous," even a local carpenter admits.
Mu loves reading books, especially scientific and philosophic books. Magazines concerning the development of China, like China Pictorial, are also among her favorites. Good at writing lyrics, Mu wrote poems for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in her leisure time. In all, nana Mu is living a satisfied and substantial life. "What I want most now is the'green card' of China. I'd like to stay in Liumiao and China the rest of my life. Here I feel happy."
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Author: stellarray Time: 2007-8-20 08:53 PM
They are all good griends to China.
Thanks for your hard work northwest.
Author: mencius Time: 2007-8-20 09:07 PM Subject: Charles George Gordon
Just a little something I whipped up from the internet.
Charles George Gordon, also known as "Chinese Gordon", was a British officer who led the "Ever Victorious Army" against the Nien and Taiping Rebellions.
Gordon first arrived in China in September 1860. In April 1862, he went with General William Staveley's troops to Shanghai in order to protect the city against a Taiping army. A militia had been raised from the inhabitants of Shanghai to protect it, led by an American, Frederick Townsend Ward. Ward was killed at the Battle of Cixi in September 1862.
The governor of the Jiangsu province, Li Hongzhang, had asked Staveley to appoint a British officer to lead Ward's force (now called the "Ever Victorious Army"), and Gordon was appointed to that position. Without waiting Gordon led his force the relief of Chansu, successfully driving away the besieging forces. He subsequently took Kunshan and Suzhou in November.
After falling out with Li Hongzhang, Gordon remained inactive until February 1864. At that time relations were restored with the governor and the "Ever Victorious Army" resumed its fighting. In May, it took control of the Taipings main base in the region at Chanchufu. It was disbanded later that year.
In recognition of Gordon's achievements, he was promoted to "titu" (the highest rank in the Chinese army) by the Emperor of China and decorated with the Yellow Jacket. The British Army promoted Gordon to lieutenant-colonel, and he was also made a Companion of the Bath. It was after his exploits in China that he gained the nickname "Chinese" Gordon.
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Author: northwest Time: 2008-2-26 10:28 PM
http://www.answers.com/edgar%20snow
American journalist who introduced Chinese Communist Party to the world
Edgar Snow
An American journalist and author, Edgar Snow (1905-1972) acquainted the Western world with the Communist movement in China and was for many years the only American writer with regular access to Chinese Communist leaders.
The son of a printer and editor, James Edgar, and Anna Catherine (Edelman) Snow, Edgar Parks Snow was born on July 19, 1905, in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1923 he attended Kansas City Junior College; then transferred to the University of Missouri, from which he graduated in 1926; and in 1927 went to Columbia University's School of Journalism for a year. Eager to travel, he began work as a foreign correspondent for the New York Sun in 1928, visiting Hawaii and Central America. Snow then went to China, where he remained for the next 12 years. Travelling extensively, Snow became acquainted with many of China's future leaders and wrote many firsthand reports of major news events, including the Sino-Soviet hostilities in Manchuria during 1929 and 1930, the agrarian revolt in Indo-China in 1930, and the Tharawaddy uprisings against British rule in Burma.
In 1936, when the regime of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek was reporting the rumor that Mao Tse-tung had died, Snow trekked across China, slipped through the Nationalist lines, and crossed the hills of Shensi to enter a village just south of the Great Wall where he met with the Red Army that had just concluded its historic Long March from southern China. For the next five months he travelled with the Chinese Red Army and lived with Mao in the caves of Yenan. His articles and photographs for various publications broke a news blockade on the Communist leaders and on their war tactics and objectives.
The publication in 1937 of his book Red Star Over China quickly earned Snow the reputation of the Western world's expert on Communists in China. An international bestseller, Snow's prophetic account of the guerrilla movement and its leaders predicted that they would ultimately win the civil war. He reported with exuberance on the discipline and idealism of the insurgents; he recounted Mao's version of his pre-1936 career and of the Communist program for China; he suggested that Mao's policies enjoyed widespread support in the countryside; and he depicted the Communists as a formidable nationalist and anti-Japanese force, not the bandits claimed by Chiang Kai-shek.
Another prophetic work, The Battle for Asia, published in 1941, predicted many of Japan's military victories and foresaw the challenge to the whole colonial system that would result from World War II. Although not a Communist himself, Snow actively sympathized with the Communist movement in China. During the Cold War, he was blacklisted in the United States and had to earn his livelihood on free-lance sales to foreign journals. He continued to travel extensively in China after the successful Communist revolution in 1949, and Snow was the only American journalist to be granted frequent interviews with Chairman Mao and Premier Chou En-lai. His favorable impressions of the new society in China and of the progress made toward improving the quality of Chinese life were published in 1962 in The Other Side of the River.
In 1970, during his last trip to China, the Chinese showed their admiration for Snow by inviting him to stand atop the Tienamen Gate in Peking with Chairman Mao during the celebration of National Day. On this final visit, moreover, Chow told Snow that "the door is open" for improved relations with the United States, hinting that the Chinese leaders would welcome a summit meeting with President Nixon. When the president began to prepare for his visit to the People's Republic of China, Snow was in Switzerland dying of cancer. Premier Chou En-lai sent a special medical team to attend his friend, but Snow died on February 15, 1972, almost at the very time of President Nixon's triumphant arrival in Shanghai.
Snow's final book, The Long Revolution, an account of his last trip to China and his many talks with Mao, was published posthumously in 1972. He was survived by his second wife, Lois Wheeler, a stage and film actress whom he married in 1949, and two children of his second marriage, Sian and Christopher. Wanting to belong partly in China and partly in the United States, Snow directed that his remains rest in a garden at Peking University and also near "the Hudson River, before it enters the Atlantic to touch Europe and all the shores of mankind of which I felt a part."
Further Reading
Snow's major writings on China include Red Star Over China (1937), Random Notes on Red China (1957), Journey to the Beginning (1958), The Other Side of the River (1962), Red China Today (1971), and The Long Revolution (1972). He also authored The Battle for Asia (1941), People on Our Side (1944), The Pattern of Soviet Power (1945), and Stalin Must Have Peace (1947). Biographical data appear in his obituaries in the New York Times (February 16, 1972) and Nation (February 28, 1972).
Additional Sources
China remembers Edgar Snow, Beijing, China: Beijing Reviewistributed by China Publications Centre (Guoji Shudian), 1982.
Farnsworth, Robert M., From vagabond to journalist: Edgar Snow in Asia, 1928-1941, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
Hamilton, John Maxwell, Edgar Snow, a biography, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Thomas, S. Bernard, Season of high adventure: Edgar Snow in China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
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Author: northwest Time: 2008-2-27 09:57 AM
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2004/607/31345
Edgar Snow: a star that still blazes
Edgar Snow: A Biography
By John Maxwell Hamilton
Louisiana State University Press, 2003
343 pages, $40 (pb)
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
¡°Revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries or their propaganda¡±, wrote US journalist Edgar Snow. ¡°Revolutions are caused by intolerable conditions under bad, incompetent and corrupt governments¡±. For saying that the Chinese Revolution in 1949 was justified and popular, Snow was vilified as a ¡°communist stooge¡± during the Cold War and his writings pilloried as ¡°glorifying the evils of Communism¡±.
The Stalinist regime in China has book-ended the distortion of Snow, officially revering him in name but dishonouring his legacy by refusing to let Chinese journalists write like him.
John Hamilton¡¯s biography of Snow reconstructs the life of this gentle man and passionate humanitarian. A thirst for adventure and a loathing of the government press release drove the young journalist Snow in 1928 from his Missouri home to the world of anti-colonial rebellion in Asia. In China, Snow found Western exploitation and Chinese poverty, hardship and misery. China¡¯s pro-colonial government, the Kuomintang (KMT), profitably shared in the plunder.
Snow condemned the KMT as a ¡°militaristic regime which for callous indifference, tyrannous oppression and ruinous incompetence has not been surpassed anywhere in this era¡±. Japan¡¯s invasion of China sealed Snow¡¯s total disillusionment with the KMT. Snow saw too many massacres and a KMT better at applying militaristic zeal to ¡°annihilation campaigns¡± against China¡¯s communists than to defeating the occupation. Snow became a politically engaged journalist, translating the works of banned, imprisoned or executed authors, supplying forbidden literature and sheltering hunted dissidents.
The most determined opponents of the KMT were attracted to the Chinese Communist Party. Snow wanted to see why. Slaughtered in the cities, the CCP survived in the country. Snow visited their north-western Shensi province stronghold in 1936, breaching a KMT blockade to get there. These were the CCP leaders¡¯ first interviews with a foreign journalist, Snow was chosen because of his perceived fairness and his access to mass-circulation magazines.
Snow¡¯s report of his stay, Red Star Over China, and its vibrant portrayal of a people in revolution, has ensured its longevity beyond its value as a unique historical record. Its message that it is right and possible to rebel inspired anti-colonialists in the Philippines, India, Burma and Malaya, and a trio of Russian women guerillas Snow met in Smolensk during World War II. Hundreds of Chinese youth read it and joined Mao¡¯s forces.
Most fascinating to Snow were the conversations he had with the soldiers and peasants of ¡°Mao¡¯s army¡±, an army of the poor. Life was primitive and hard but it was their future they were fighting for. Factory workers had food and pay and ¡°they knew nobody was making money out of them¡± compared to Shanghai where children worked 13 hours a day. Unlike the KMT-controlled parts of Shensi province, 65% of income did not go on taxes. They learnt to read. There was no opium, beggars, domestic violence, prostitution, polygamy or foot-binding. There was a spartan egalitarianism of soldier, peasant and party leader.
The pervasive party propaganda was irritating to Snow but criticism of, and within, the party was freely offered and received, and Snow¡¯s movements were unrestricted during his four-month stay. If Red Star is strongly positive in its depiction of the communists, it is because there was much to be positive about.
Red Star, as both Snow and his biographer acknowledge, contains errors of fact and judgement but these problems are mitigated by Snow¡¯s basic journalistic integrity. He rejected information if he could not verify it, he was cautious of grand claims and sceptical of rosy statistics. He noted the early seeds of authoritarianism in the ¡°rectification¡± campaigns. Snow did not let CCP leader Mao Zedong vet the content of the book and Snow was a relentless questioner.
In the US, Red Star was positively received, although the praise was driven by a myopic view that CCP was simply an agrarian reformer that might keep the US out of a war against Japan, its main imperialist rival in the Asia-Pacific region. Ironically, it was the US Communist Party which was almost the lone critic ¡ª dutifully Stalinist, The US CP pounced on Snow¡¯s criticisms of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, whose attempts to dictate the course of the Chinese revolution had been disastrous.
The ending of reluctant war-time alliances with communists allowed US imperialists to turn on Snow. Snow had justified the Chinese Revolution, and although not embracing Marxism, he had adopted much of its language and analysis. The FBI set up a watch on Snow and his name came up repeatedly, accompanied by wild speculation, at Congressional committees. Snow was effectively blacklisted from the corporate publishing world.
Snow looked dismally on a 1950s political climate where ¡°we are forced more and more to become all of a piece, as like peas in our politics, nobody daring to contradict the conventional views expressed in the great conservative or reactionary press, and in this respect becoming more and more like automatons in Russia¡±.
In 1960, Snow returned to China where advances had continued in land reform, women¡¯s status, education, literacy and health. The United Nations reported that life expectancy rose from 36 to 57 years between 1949 and 1957. The World Bank acknowledged that the poor were better off than before 1949 and relative to other Third World nations. In Red China Today, Snow did not hold back from criticism but a reticence to speak openly to Snow in the presence of officials or interpreters limited his investigations.
Snow was, in fact, frustrated with party bureaucrats who put up a wall of positive statements that were difficult to penetrate ¡ª ¡°I can¡¯t recall visiting any mine or factory where ¡®underfulfillment¡¯ of production quotas was predicted¡±. He chafed against China¡¯s official party press.
In subsequent visits to China, Snow was increasingly concerned over the ¡°nauseating¡± cult of Mao, the ruling regime¡¯s authoritarianism and the repression of dissidents, although he did not plumb the terrible depths of Mao¡¯s Cultural Revolution. Snow also underestimated the grim cost of Mao¡¯s Great Leap Forward, which since 1958 had resulted in 30 million dead from famine.
Back in the US, Snow was targeted by conservatives as a ¡°public danger¡±, his talks picketed and heckled. His vocal opposition to the Vietnam War made many enemies and his publishing outlets dried up completely. He was forced into exile in Switzerland where he lived until his death from cancer
Hamilton¡¯s biography is a balanced account of Snow¡¯s limitations and strengths. Snow occasionally overemphasised the positives to preserve his unique access to China and to counter politically motivated anti-communist propaganda about China. His later reporting could have been more sceptical and pointed. Snow needs to be read critically to make the most of his strengths ¡ª his journalistic skill as an acute observer with an eye for telling detail, and his warm sympathy for people in struggle.
Snow was a liberal who believed that reforms were needed to head off revolution. If reforms were not forthcoming, however, then he supported revolution and anti-imperialist rebellion. Edgar Snow¡¯s star blazed with a fierce love of people and their struggles.
From Green Left Weekly, November 24, 2004.
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Author: seneca Time: 2008-2-27 10:24 AM
Elsie Tu, British-born wife of a Chinese, now a Hong Kong resident; she came to China as a missionary.
Author: seneca Time: 2008-2-27 10:26 AM
Han Suyin, novelist and essayist, born to a Belgian and a Chinese parents; author of, among other works, "Many-Splendoured Thing", and an essay on Mao Zedong.
I have a letter from her in reply to a query I had sent her.
Author: northwest Time: 2008-2-27 10:29 AM
QUOTE:
Originally posted by seneca at 2008-2-27 10:24
Elsie Tu, British-born wife of a Chinese, now a Hong Kong resident; she came to China as a missionary.
Thank you for the info, almost forget her.
Author: northwest Time: 2008-2-27 10:37 AM
http://www.answers.com/elsie+tu?cat=entertainment
Elsie Tu
The Honourable Elsie Tu (Chinese: ¶ÅÒ¶Îý¶÷; June 2, 1913-), GBM, CBE, (previously known as Elsie Elliott, nee Hume) is a prominent social activist, former elected member of the Urban Council of Hong Kong, and former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, northern England, she moved to Hong Kong in 1951 following a period as a missionary in China. She became known for her strong antipathy toward colonialism and corruption, as well as for her relentless work for the underprivileged.
Early life
Following her graduation in 1937 as a Bachelor of Arts in Durham University, Elsie Hume worked as a teacher in England. During World War II she was a Civil Defence volunteer.
She married William ("Bill") Elliott in 1946, and went with him to China as a missionary in 1947 (having become a Christian in 1932). After the Communist takeover in 1949, foreign missionaries were expelled from the Mainland and the couple moved to Hong Kong in 1951. Shocked by the poverty there, Elliott became disenchanted with her husband's extreme Protestant faith and the refusal of their church, the Plymouth Brethren, to become involved in social issues. The couple eventually separated during an abortive trip back to England, and later divorced. Tu left the Plymouth Brethren and returned to Hong Kong alone.
In 1954 Tu set up a school for the children of squatters in Kwun Tong, remaining a school principal for many years thereafter until 2000.
Political career
Becoming politically active, Elliot was elected for the first time to the Urban Council (then the only public body with a partially publicly elected membership) in 1st April 1963 as a member of the Reform Club. Later she left the Reform Club and ran as an independent candidate.
In 1965, the Star Ferry applied for an increase of First Class fare by 5 Hong Kong cents (from 20 cents to 25 cents). This was widely opposed in Hong Kong. Elliott collected over 20,000 signatories opposing the plan, and flew to London in an attempt to arrest the plan. The increase in fare was given its go-ahead in March 1966 by the Transport Advisory Committee, where the only vote opposing was Elliott's. Public outcry to the fare increase sparked the Kowloon riots in April 1966. Elliott was persecuted by the government as a result, accused of instigating the riots. Though never convicted of any charge, she remained under suspicion in the eyes of many.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Elliott was a fierce opponent of the corruption then endemic in many areas of Hong Kong life and the influence of the Triads. She also campaigned for better working and housing conditions for the poor. Though many in ruling circles disliked Elliott "rocking the boat", her campaigning is credited with leading to the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 1974.
In 1980 it was revealed by investigative journalist Duncan Campbell that she was under surveillance by the Special Branch of the then Royal Hong Kong Police. This, however, did not worry Elliott as she stated: I know my telephone was tapped and probably is at this moment but I have done nothing wrong and have no political affiliations. Later, Elsie Tu wrote in her semi-autobiographical work, Colonial Hong Kong in the Eyes of Elsie Tu, that her phone line was already tapped in 1970.
In later years, Elliott married her long time partner in her education work, Andrew Tu, on 13 June 1985; he died in 2001. In 1988 she was elected to the Legislative Council as a representative of the Urban Council.
In the period leading up to Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty, Tu disappointed many of her former allies and supporters by becoming an advocate of gradual democratisation (as preferred by China's leadership) rather than the much faster pace advocated by many democrats in Hong Kong, like Emily Lau and Martin Lee. She lost her Urban Council seat in the 1995 direct election to Szeto Wah, whose campaign was targeted mainly on Tu's perceived pro-communist stance.
Tu left active politics and closed her surgery (office) in 1999 after having failed in her bid to be elected to the Legislative Council. Since then, she has continued to comment on social issues.
Tu has written two volumes of autobiography (one co-written with Andrew Tu), as well as other works. She also completed for publication her husband Andrew's autobiography of his childhood in Inner Mongolia, Camel Bells in the Windy Desert.
Honours
Tu has received numerous honours in recognition of her services to Hong Kong. In 1975, she was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, often called Asia's Nobel Prize. She was awarded the CBE in 1977, and the Grand Bauhinia Medal in 1997. A number of honorary degrees have also been conferred on her.
External links
Hong Kong Newspaper Clippings Online
Ramon Magsaysay Award citation
Elsie Tu papers in Hong Kong Baptist University - includes biographical material
The Elsie Tu Digital Collection - a selection from the Elsie Tu Papers in Baptist University, available online free of charge
References
Elsie Elliott (1971) The Avarice, Bureaucracy and Corruption of Hong Kong
Urban Council, Urban Council Annual Report, 1974
Elsie Elliott (1981) Crusade For Justice: An Autobiography - covers her early life and her campaigns in Hong Kong
Elsie Tu (2003), Colonial Hong Kong in the Eyes of Elsie Tu (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press) ISBN 978-962-209-606-6
Elsie Tu and Andrew Tu (2005) Shouting At The Mountain: A Hong Kong Story of Love and Commitment - focuses on the couple's relationship and their work together
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Author: seneca Time: 2008-2-27 11:22 PM
Is it possible you didn't think of EDGAR SNOW before I have to mention him?
"Red Moon over China" - a major and most interesting read.
Also: Pearl Bucks, daughter of Usanian missionary parents to China, a novelist;
several former governors of Hong Kong can be described as sinophiles; Wilson (first name?), who left in 1992, was a fluent Mandarin speaker.
Also Lord Mclehose - who promoted the greening of HK through creating country parks with trails "McLehose trails") was very popular.
Joseph Rock, born in Austria, a botanist and researcher who spent many years in Yunnan, writing about - among other topics - the Nakhi people of Lijiang.
Was James HILTON a friend of the Chinese? His "Horizon" depicted an imaginary Buddhist retreat in a fictitious part of T.ibet, but the characters he lines up are an eclectic and friendly mix of T.ibetans, Chinese and westerners (not all of whom were "friendly").
Author: northwest Time: 2008-2-27 11:41 PM
QUOTE:
Originally posted by seneca at 2008-2-27 23:22
Is it possible you didn't think of EDGAR SNOW before I have to mention him? ...
When and where did you mention about Edgar Snow? I posted about him unrelated to what you thought or brought about him.
Author: northwest Time: 2008-2-28 01:46 AM Subject: The Long March Missionary
http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/e2006/e200610/p36.htm
Rudolph Alfred Bosshardt: The Long March missionary
Among Red Army troops trudging through the high mountains of eastern Guizhou Province 70 years ago was one fair-haired, gray-eyed foreigner. He was Rudolph Alfred Bosshardt, a missionary from Britain born of Swiss parents. The only other non-Chinese person to have taken part in the Long March was Otto Braun, known as Li De, a German tactician.
In the 1930s, China was torn by military conflict between the Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist Party, and the Communist Party of China (CPC). In 1934 the CPC-led Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army broke through KMT armies and began a strategic transfer from areas south and north of the Yangtze River to Yanan in northwestern China. There they established revolutionary bases. More than 100,000 Red Army soldiers joined the Long March, which traversed 14 provinces and took two years. Bosshardt marched with the Sixth Army Corps for 560 days on its 2,500-mile journey through the five provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan and Yunnan. His book: The Restraining Hand, in which he described his experiences, was published in London in November 1936, one year earlier than Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China.
Encounter With the Red Army
Alfred Bosshardt went to Zunyi in Guizhou, southwestern China, as a missionary in 1923. After marrying Rose Piaget in 1931, he was transferred to the Zhenyuan Church in Guizhou.
On October 1, 1934, Bosshardt and his wife were returning from a conference with a group of other missionaries when they encountered the Sixth Army Corps -- vanguard of the Red Army on the Long March. These soldiers had never seen a foreigner before and, suspecting they were imperialist spies, sent Bosshardt and his wife to their headquarters.
Up to the point when Red Army soldiers returned to Bosshardt all the possessions they had taken from him and his wife, including some silver dollars, he had thought they were bandits. The soldiers told him that their troop was part of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. It was when Bosshardt and his wife were given a bed and chair to sleep on while the soldiers slept on the damp ground that he realized he could trust them.
The Sixth Army Corps allowed Bosshardt's wife Rose to leave, but not him. As Bosshardt was a physician as well as a missionary, they hoped he might be able to help them obtain badly needed medicine.
The march was an ordeal for all concerned, and Bosshardt tried, unsuccessfully, to escape. When the Sixth Army Corps captured Huangping, they found a French map of Guizhou Province in a church. Together with Xiao Ke, the commander of the Sixth Army Corps who after the founding of the People's Republic of China was awarded the rank of general, Bosshardt translated all of the main place names of mountains, villages and rivers, into Chinese. This painstaking work took the two men ten or more hours.
During the course of this grueling work a strong bond formed between the British missionary and the Chinese commander. Xiao Ke later recalled, "This foreign missionary helped to translate the map, and also provided topographical information that was vital for deciding which direction the army marched. Our troops particularly depended on the map when moving from eastern Guizhou to western Hunan." Bosshardt was also impressed with the bounding energy and irrepressible enthusiasm of Xiao Ke, at that time aged 25.
On April 12, 1936 Bosshardt was finally released by the Red Army and went to Kunming, provincial capital of Yunnan.
The Restraining Hand
On his arrival in Kunming, Bosshardt began compiling a book from the diary he had kept on the Long March. Upon completion, his 288-page-long, The Restraining Hand: Captivity for Christ in China was published by Hodder and Stoughton in London in November 1936. It was the first book on the Long March ever to be published in the West. In it, Bosshardt recorded the similarities he had discerned on this epic journey between Christianity and communism. The 12-chapter record also truthfully described his agonizing experience of being arrested and kept as a prisoner, he and his fellows' hunger and thirst, and the eventual fulfillment of the Red Army's promise to release him.
Along with his truthful description of his hardships on the Long March, Bosshardt also recorded the mutual understanding and friendship that developed between him and the Red Army troops. During his 560 days of marching Bosshardt witnessed firsthand the army's strict discipline, bravery in battle, and the help they gave to the poor. As Red Army leaders practiced the principles of Marxism-Leninism in which they and their men believed, the troop was actually a mobile Soviet.
The KMT authorities had imposed an intelligence as well as economic blockade, and Bosshardt's was the first book on the Long March to be published in English. Understandably, The Restraining Hand aroused a storm of attention and was reprinted three times. In the book Bosshardt recorded what he had personally witnessed and experienced during the Second Front Army's passage through Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan. It therefore provided a well of data for Sinologists and researchers.
The original manuscript of The Restraining Hand was lost during the war, and in 1973, at the suggestion of his publishers, Alfred Bosshardt rewrote his account and had it published under the title The Guiding Hand: Captivity and Answered Prayers in China.
Unforgettable Friendship
In October 1936, Bosshardt and his wife went back to Britain to be with their relatives in Britain and to recuperate. During this period Bosshardt attended various rallies at which he recounted his experiences in the Long March. The British media reported on his speeches with the comment: "Mr. Bosshardt spoke of the Red Army's incredible enthusiasm, yearning for a new world, and unquenchable faith."
In 1939, Bosshardt was sent to Panxian, Guizhou Province by an international religious organization to act as commissioner. Besides carrying out missionary work, he also practiced medicine and ran a school. In his spare time he studied Chinese herbal medicine with the help of an English book on homeopathy. In the early days of China's liberation, Bosshardt helped treat wounded PLA soldiers. From 1948 to 1949, he ran the Ming'en Primary School in Panxian, which had more than 50 students, most of them children of Christian believers and the poor.
In 1951 Bosshardt returned to Britain. He was the last Western missionary to leave Guizhou Province.
In 1984, General Xiao Ke mentioned Bosshardt during an interview with an American journalist, and was moved to find out where he had gone upon his return to England. In early 1985, Chinese diplomats finally located Bosshardt in the suburbs of Manchester, at which time he was 88 years old. In May 1986, General Xiao Ke requested Ji Chaozhu, Chinese ambassador to London, to visit Bosshardt and convey a letter to him. In the letter Xiao Ke wrote, "Although we have been separated for half a century, your helping me to translate that French map 50 years ago is firmly etched in my memory. Now that we are both of an advanced age I'm afraid it will be difficult for us to meet again. I wish you good health and a long life." Bosshardt was thrilled at receiving this letter and a copy of the PLA Photo Album. He told his friends, "At this stage of my life I am delighted to be called an old friend of the Chinese people."
In late 1987, a journalist from the People's Daily stationed in Britain interviewed Bosshardt in his sitting room, whose furnishings featured Chinese mementoes including a tablecloth, palace lantern, calendar, and pictures. At that time Bosshardt was in his early 90s, but his mind was still sharp and his memory good. He talked about his legendary experience on the Long March and unforgettable friendship with the Chinese people. Alfred Bosshardt passed away in 1993, his experiences on the Long March having become part of the world canon on the creation of New China.
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Author: scarylaowei Time: 2008-2-28 02:06 AM
Thank you for this enlightening and positive thread.
Hopefully the bridges laid between East and West will continue to strengthen following the examples you describe and those of the many Chinese who have contributed to the success of Western nations.
Author: northwest Time: 2008-2-28 12:54 PM
A lot of foreign friends mentioned above suffered different level of misunderstanding in mainstream western society.
John Rabe, considered a Nazi, a sin in the west. But he's a living Budha to those saved by him.
Edgar Snow considered a communist friend, but he's highly regarded here.
Elsie Tu considered as *whatever* etc etc, many more... just hope majority foreigners could have fairer, more positive attitude toward them.
Author: seneca Time: 2008-2-28 09:29 PM
Kevin Sinclair, New Zealand-born Hong Kong journalist, columnist for the South China Morning Post, compiler of a Cantonese-English dictionary, wine connoisseur, died in December, 2007.
The CD had a short piece about him several years ago. But otherwise it might be hard to come by any biographical facts on him.
Author: seneca Time: 2008-2-28 09:30 PM
Would Armand Hammer, Usanian business tycoon and philanthropist, qualify? The Chinese government certainly counts on him in delicate situations...
Author: seneca Time: 2008-2-29 12:30 PM
QUOTE:
Originally posted by northwest at 2008-2-27 23:41
When and where did you mention about Edgar Snow? I posted about him unrelated to what you thought or brought about him.
My mistake. Overlooked that part in your thread.
Author: northwest Time: 2008-3-7 06:35 PM
http://www.china.org.cn/features ... content_1181271.htm
German in the Long March: Otto Braun (Li De)
A small temple with white walls and black tiles bakes under the hot sun in a green paddy-field. No frogs or cicadas can be heard in the still, silent landscape.
The temple is located in Ruijin, more than 400 kilometers from Nanchang, capital city of eastern China's Jiangxi Province. Ruijin was the capital of the first state established by the Communist Party of China (CPC) in the 1930s.
According to locals, the small temple was demolished and rebuilt several times. More than 70 years ago, it was called "solitary house" because there were no other buildings nearby. In his bestseller, The Long March--The Untold Story, the American writer Harrison E. Salisbury described it as bleak.
The man living in the house during the tumultuous events of the 1930s was Otto Braun, a German military consultant assigned to Red China by the Comintern, the Soviet Union's policy maker for communist parties in other countries.
"Never heard of him"
Otto Braun, an agitator and street fighter after World War One and a graduate of Frunze Military Academy in the Soviet Union, had a Chinese name, Li De, which he thought meant "Li the German".
In 2006 when China commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Long March victory, Otto Braun was chosen by a newspaper in Beijing, in partnership with scholars from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as one of 50 influential foreigners in modern Chinese history.
The small temple is now named Fuzhu (god of good luck). A pair of couplets pasted on either side of the temple door are resolutely optimistic: "Let thousands of families flourish in weather propitious for crops and let them rejoice at the nation's prosperity and the happiness of all the people."
In the main room of the temple, a horizontal board hanging from the ceiling is inscribed with the words "The gods will help you fulfill your every wish". Underneath the board, there is a niche containing small statues of five cereal gods--rice, two kinds of millet, wheat and beans. Yellow tables and chairs are piled up in a corner of the room, which make the temple look like a restaurant. Round tables and square stools are also heaped up in the side room.
The temple watchman sits on a bamboo chair on the threshold, resting. A peasant woman with her five-year-old son is also taking a break at the temple. They have never heard of Li De, or Otto Braun.
People are still debating where exactly the German military consultant lived.
Some CPC history experts believe Otto Braun did not live in the small temple. They think a house was built specially for him some 100 meters southeast of the temple. But no trace of the house remains.
Daily life recalled
At Guanshan village, half a kilometer from the temple, lives 84-year-old Yang Shixiang. He said that when he was 13 years of age, he often went to Otto Braun's residence to play with the German's helpers. Yang remembers a red-haired, red-bearded, powerfully built foreigner. He always rode a yellow horse and was accompanied by his bodyguards when he entered or left his house.
"We never had the chance to talk to him and were not allowed to go inside his rooms," said Yang Shixiang.
"But Deng Xiaoping was different. I often collected paper cigarette packs dropped on the ground in Deng's room. When Deng saw me, he called me naughty boy."
The peculiar political life inside the CPC, with its almost unconditional obedience to the Comintern, meant that Otto Braun exercised virtual supreme authority for military command and had enormous prestige. Initially, even Zhu De, one of the founders of the CPC's Red Army and an experienced commander, visited Braun's home almost every day to ask his advice.
Despite the harsh living conditions in Ruijin with the Red regime beleaguered by military units loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, then paramount leader of Old China, the CPC central committee spared no effort to look after Braun. He was provided with secretaries, interpreters, bodyguards, an exclusive doctor and chefs. Coffee and cigars which he loved were obtained for him from big cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou.
"Li De (Braun) had the most nutritious and delicious dishes. He ate a duck every day," said Yang Shixiang.
According to Liu Liang, a local expert on CPC history, Mao Zedong quarreled with Braun, who despised Mao's ideas about guerrilla warfare, on each of the five visits he paid to the German's home. Mao was then deprived of power and his influence curtailed.
As Braun's interpreter Wu Xiuquan recalled, Braun did not speak a word of Chinese, nor did he possess any background information about China. Instead of carefully analyzing the real situation on the ground, he simply applied military academy doctrines. The results of his foolish command were disastrous: heavy casualties and a substantial part of Communist territory lost to Chiang Kai-shek in his fifth Campaign.
Braun's last residence and days
In July 1934, CPC central organizations were moved from Shazhouba to Mount Yunyan.
Today at Yabei Village on Mount Yunyan, tourists can see a two-storey Jiangxi-style building. A plaque on its yellow brick wall states that Otto Braun lived in the building from July to October 1934. Living with him were two senior CPC leaders, Zhu De and Wang Jiaxiang. They started their Long March from there. Braun was the only foreigner in the Red Army to complete the 12,500-km long trek.
Ling Buji, a CPC history expert in Jiangxi, said, "Actually it was Braun who came up with the evacuation idea that was later called the Long March. That was a wise decision, which should be recognized. Chinese historians have reached consensus on the point."
Braun's last residence was also called "solitary house".
In January 1935, a meeting was held in Zunyi, in southwest China's Guizhou Province.
At the meeting the CPC, for the first time since its inception in 1921, made an independent decision about the destiny of the revolution in China.
The Zunyi Meeting, free from Comintern intervention, is regarded as a critical turning point in CPC history. It was the first time the CPC made an independent strategic decision about the direction of the Chinese revolution. Braun was dismissed from military command and the first CPC leadership with Mao at the core began to take shape for New China, according to Shi Zhongquan, a CPC history expert in Beijing.
Braun returned to the Soviet Union in 1939 and lived a peaceful life in East Germany after World War Two. He died aged 73 in 1974.
According to Liu Liang, since 2000 he has received more than a dozen journalists and scholars from the United States, Canada, Israel and other countries and regions. Most of them were interested in Otto Braun, even in details of his daily life in China, including what he looked like when he lost his temper.
Since the beginning of 2006, Chinese media have flocked to Ruijin to collect information for stories about the Long March. Xinhua, however, is the only agency to have released a story about Otto Braun.
(Xinhua News Agency September 15, 2006)
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Author: northwest Time: 2008-5-17 01:33 PM Subject: Foreign friends assistance after earthquake
A 53 years old Canadian donating his blood. Sorry couldn't spell his name.
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Author: northwest Time: 2008-5-17 01:34 PM
American couple as medical team.
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Author: northwest Time: 2008-5-17 01:36 PM
American PhD in Doctoral (Do I write this correct?) helped a victim.
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Author: northwest Time: 2008-5-17 01:38 PM
American student work as volunteer.
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Author: northwest Time: 2008-5-17 01:39 PM
American couple as medical team.
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Author: zglobal Time: 2008-5-17 01:49 PM
Great pictures North......not all foreigners are arrogant and self righteous..... thankfully...
Author: northwest Time: 2008-5-17 01:51 PM
Our deep appreciation toward those sincere assistance.
Author: 413pinoy Time: 2008-5-17 01:53 PM Subject: Yes nice threat to keep the balance a bit
Author: huang262 Time: 2008-5-17 05:51 PM
May I add my thanks to all the foreigners who have helped China and the Chinese people! I salute you!
Author: zglobal Time: 2008-5-17 05:53 PM
...and all those that would like to accuse Northwest of this and that....
might like to note the title and author of this thread.
Author: manaoag Time: 2008-5-17 05:58 PM Subject: Hey, I saved one Chinese girl from being robbed ..
QUOTE:
Originally posted by zglobal at 2008-5-17 17:53
...and all those that would like to accuse Northwest of this and that....
might like to note the title and author of this thread.
by a Chinese guy. Not everybody would do that.
Author: augusten Time: 2009-5-18 05:12 PM
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 ¡ª March 6, 1973) also known as Sai Zhen Zhu (Simplified Chinese: ÈüÕäÖé), was a prolific American sinologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer. In 1938, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces." With no irony, she has been described in China as a Chinese writer.[1]
Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia to Caroline (Stulting; 1857-1921) and Absalom Sydenstricker, a Southern Presbyterian missionary. The family was sent to Zhenjiang, China in 1892 when Pearl was 3 months old. She was raised in China and was tutored by a Confucian scholar[2] named Mr. Kung.[3] She was taught English as a second language by her mother and tutor.
The Boxer Uprising greatly affected Pearl Buck and her family. Buck wrote that during this time, ¡her eight-year-old childhood ¡ split apart. Her Chinese friends deserted her and her family, and there were not as many Western visitors as there once were. The streets [of China] were alive with rumors- many ¡ based on fact- of brutality to missionaries ¡ Buck¡¯s father was a missionary, so Buck¡¯s mother, her little sister, and herself were ¡evacuated to the relative safety of Shanghai, where they spent nearly a year as refugees¡ (The Good Earth, Introduction) In July 1901, Buck and her family sailed to San Francisco. Not until the following year did the Sydenstrickers return to China.
In 1910, she left China once again for America to attend Randolph-Macon Woman's College [4], where she would earn her degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1914. She then returned to China and married an agricultural economist missionary, John Lossing Buck, on May 13, 1917. She lived with him in Suzhou, Anhui Province, a small town on the Huai River (There are two cities in China with the same English name 'Suzhou', one in Anhui while the more famous one is in Jiangsu Province. The one where the Bucks had spent several years was in Anhui). It is the region she described later in "The Good Earth" and "Sons"; her book was very much based on her experience in Suzhou, Anhui. She served in China as a Presbyterian missionary from 1914 until 1933. Her views later became highly controversial in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, leading to her resignation as a missionary.
In 1920, she and John had a daughter, Carol, who was afflicted with phenylketonuria. The small family then moved to Nanjing, where Pearl taught English literature at the University of Nanking. In 1925, the Bucks adopted Janice (later surnamed Walsh). In 1926, she left China and returned to the United States for a short time in order to earn her Masters degree from Cornell University.
From 1920 to 1933, Pearl and John made their home in Nanking (Nanjing), on the campus of Nanking University, where both had teaching positions. In 1921, Pearl's mother died, and shortly afterwards her father moved in with the Bucks. The tragedies and dislocations which Pearl suffered in the 1920s reached a climax in March 1927, in the violence known as the "Nanking Incident." In a confused battle involving elements of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops, Communist forces, and assorted warlords, several Westerners were murdered. The Bucks spent a terrified day in hiding, after which they were rescued by American gunboats. After a trip downriver to Shanghai, the Buck family sailed to Unzen, Japan, where they spent the following year. They later moved back to Nanking, though conditions remained dangerously unsettled.
In 1935 Pearl got a divorce. Richard Walsh, president of the John Day Company and her publisher, became her second husband. The couple lived in Pennsylvania.
Humanitarian efforts
Buck was an extremely passionate activist for human rights. In 1949, outraged that existing adoption services considered Asian and mixed-race children unadoptable, Pearl established Welcome House, Inc., the first international, interracial adoption agency. In the nearly five decades of its work, Welcome House has assisted in the placement of more than five thousand children. In 1964, to provide support for Asian-American children who were not eligible for adoption, Buck also established the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which provides sponsorship funding for thousands of children in half a dozen Asian countries. When establishing the Opportunity House Foundation to support child sponsorship programs in Asia, Buck said, "The purpose...is to publicize and eliminate injustices and prejudices suffered by children, who, because of their birth, are not permitted to enjoy the educational, social, economic and civil privileges normally accorded to children." [5]
While the historic site works to preserve and display artifacts from her profoundly multicultural life, many of Buck's life experiences are also described in her novels, short stories, fiction, and children's stories. Through them she sought to prove to her readers that universality of mankind can exist if man accepts it. She dealt with many topics including women's rights, emotions (in general), Asian cultures, immigration, adoption, and conflicts that many people go through in life.
Pearl S. Buck died of lung cancer on March 6, 1973 in Danby, Vermont and was interred in Green Hills Farm in Perkasie, PA. She designed her own tombstone, which does not record her name in English; instead, the grave marker is inscribed with Chinese characters representing the name Pearl Sydenstricker.[6]
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Author: augusten Time: 2009-5-18 05:26 PM
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-09/24/content_7055655.htm
The Man who loved China - Joseph Needham
Biography tells secrets of Joseph Needham's China love
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-09-24 13:50 Comments(0) PrintMailLONDON -- In China, Li Yuese, the Chinese name for an English intellectual Joseph Needham, is at least a household name among the well-educated -- his Science and Civilization in China, a twenty-four-volume masterpiece, is known as the most important books telling the west what Chinese have contributed to the world.
The 17th-century philosopher-statesman Francis Bacon declared that nothing had changed the world more profoundly than three great inventions: gunpowder, printing and the compass. But what the philosopher didn't know was that all the three had already been conceived of and successfully employed by a single people -- the Chinese.
And it was not until over 300 years later, that one young man in Cambridge gave these people the credit they rightly deserved. The man was Joseph Needham, or better known in China, Dr. Li Yuese.
"Needham was the first bridge builder between China and the rest of the world," Simon Winchester, writer of the biography on Needham said on Tuesday in London.
In his book titled Bomb, Book & Compass -- Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China, Simon is trying as he said "to bring the human side of the great man to the world, and let the world know better what Needham was as a human being."
As a charismatic young biochemist, working towards a glittering career at Cambridge, he fell in love with a young Chinese student and his passion for his mistress, Lu Gwei-djen, led quickly to a fascination with her country's language and history and soon he developed an astonishing reputation as a self-taught, albeit eccentric, scholar of Chinese culture, Simon said.
When in 1943, the British government sent him on a diplomatic mission to help save China's universities from the occupying Japanese forces, Needham began the research that would occupy him for the rest of his life and which ended up to create the greatest work on China ever created in the Western world, the biography said.
The cover of Bomb, Book & Compass -- Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China.
None have succeeded in finding out what the first ever Chinese characters Needham learnt under Lu Gwei-djen, Simon said on the launching of his biography in central London's British Library, revealing that "cigarette" was first Chinese words the heavy smoker learned under the Chinese lady.
Lu Gwei-djen, a brilliant biochemist from Nanjing, married Needham in 1989, more than half a century after they first met.
Two years after the half-century delayed wedding, Lu died, but Needham's work on Chinese culture continued, and is still going on, Simon said to the audience-packed conference room in British Library.
Needham's 24-volume Science and Civilization in China, remains an unrivaled account of the nation's astonishing history of invention and technology, and Simon's book on the Cambridge scholar is a story of the man and the "extraordinary rise of the Chinese nation that continues to this day."
The Chinese version of Needham's biography is to be published in Shanghai in January 2009.
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Author: augusten Time: 2009-5-18 05:30 PM
http://www.nri.org.uk/joseph.html
Joseph Needham (1900-1995)
JOSEPH NEEDHAM will be remembered for his massive achievement embodied in the continuing Science and Civilisation in China series, the successive parts of which have been published by Cambridge University Press since 1954. This great work is planned as a history of science, technology and medicine in China, seen in its fullest social and intellectual context, and illuminated by a deep and sympathetic understanding of the cultures of both East and West. Through his writings he has radically changed the ways in which scholars and scientists evaluate both the history of Chinese culture, and the history of science medicine and technology understood as part of the common cultural heritage of the human race. He was undoubtedly the greatest Western sinologist of this century, and is probably the British historian best-known on a world scale. He has rightly been called "the Erasmus of the twentieth century".
HE WAS BORN on December 9, 1900, as the only son of a Harley Street physician and a musically talented mother. After attending Oundle School he went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and read biochemistry. Caius College was to remain his academic home for the rest of his life; he was successively a research fellow, tutor, fellow and finally (1966-76) Master. For most of the first half of his life Needham was engaged in establishing himself as a chemical embryologist of distinction. The major works of this period are his Chemical Embryology (1931) and Biology and Morphogenesis (1942). But by the time this second book appeared he was already moving in the direction which was to lead him towards his life's work.
IN THE MID 1930's he met three young Chinese researchers who had come to work in Cambridge. The interest these bright young people aroused moved him to begin learning Chinese, and when war broke out in Europe and the East it was this connection that led him to propose that he should be commissioned to establish a Sino-British Science Co-operation Office in Chongqing, to where the Chinese government had withdrawn in the face of the Japanese onslaught. During this time he was ideally placed to study what had been accomplished by the Chinese people in the field of science and technology over their long history. What he began to learn astonished him. It became clear (for instance) that printing, the magnetic compass and gunpowder weapons were all Chinese in origin, despite the puzzlement that Francis Bacon had expressed over their beginnings when in the seventeenth century he pointed to "the force and virtue and consequences of discoveries" (Novum Organon, Book 1, aphorism 129).
AFTER THE WAR he worked with UNESCO in Paris for a while, but on his return to Cambridge he had already planned the years of work that lay ahead. He set out to answer a question that had been presenting itself to him ever more clearly for some time: why was it that despite the immense achievements of traditional China it had been in Europe and not in China that the scientific and industrial revolutions occurred? He approached Cambridge University Press with a proposal for a one-volume treatment of this subject, which they accepted, but as time went by this plan swelled to seven volumes, the fourth of which had to be split into three parts - and so it went on. Twenty-three parts in all have so far been published, and five more are still on the way.
MOST OF THE EARLIER volumes were written in their entirety by Needham himself, but as time went by he gathered an international team of collaborators, to whom the completion of the project is now entrusted. As the project has broadened, so has the range of questions under investigation. It is now clear that no simple answer to Needham's original question will be possible. The quest has opened out into an investigation of the ways in which scientific and technical activity have been linked with the development of Chinese society over the last four millennia.
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Author: augusten Time: 2009-5-18 05:38 PM Subject: The man who loved China
Book description:
The extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China--long the world's most technologically advanced country. This married Englishman, a freethinking intellectual, while working at Cambridge University in 1937, fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He became fascinated with China, and embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations--including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper--often centuries before the rest of the world. His dangerous journeys took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people. After the war, Needham began writing what became a seventeen-volume encyclopedia, Science and Civilisation in China.--From publisher description.
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Author: satsu_jin Time: 2009-5-18 06:11 PM
NW,
Thanks for bringing up this thread again. Highly interesting. I didn't see it before.
Att. mods, I believe that this thread should be sticked on top of this section, just my two cents.
Author: augusten Time: 2009-5-18 07:22 PM
Hope more members contribute to enrich this thread too.
[ Last edited by augusten at 2009-7-28 07:27 PM ]
Author: oioioi Time: 2009-5-18 08:57 PM Subject: Henry Kissinger
Wouldn't call him a "foreign martyr" but he certainly qualifies as "true friend of China" for well over 30 years now.
China would be a very different country today had it not been for Kissinger...
Good Thread!!!
Author: oioioi Time: 2009-5-18 09:00 PM Subject: Kissinger...
From: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/06/content_10611808.htm
"Called in China "an old friend of the Chinese people" and one of the few foreigners who have the privilege to be received by all the four generations of Chinese leaders, Kissinger told Xinhua that he now feels China has become an integral part of his life, though he barely knew anything about that remote country when he first visited it.
"China is important for political reasons to America. But for me, it is important because I have come to admire the dedication of the Chinese people and the historic achievement of the Chinese people," said the 85-year-old man with emotion."
Author: satsu_jin Time: 2009-5-19 04:18 PM
Tkx to the mods for sticking this to 'recommended threads'.
Author: karinjp Time: 2009-5-20 01:59 AM
haven't read all yet but great thread!
Author: ganzhuolin Time: 2009-6-15 11:37 AM Subject: Movies & TV shows
QUOTE:
I think there were 4 (movies and tv shows done on Bethune. As a film buff I keep track of this kind of stuff. The first was a movie done in China in 1964, I believe. Then in 1977 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation produced a TV series starring Donald Sutherland. Sutherland repeated the role in 1993 in the Canadian movie Bethune: The Making of a Hero. Finally, there was a Chinese TV series produced in the last two years or so.
Author: augusten Time: 2009-7-28 07:26 PM
QUOTE:
Originally posted by ganzhuolin at 2009-6-15 11:37
I think there were 4 (movies and tv shows done on Bethune. As a film buff I keep track of this kind of stuff. The first was a movie done in China in 1964, I believe. Then in 1977 the Canadian B ...
It's a pity that Norman Bethune is virtually unknown to his compatriots.
Author: ganzhuolin Time: 2009-8-5 12:35 AM Subject: Sad...but true...
QUOTE:
Originally posted by augusten at 2009-7-28 19:26
It's a pity that Norman Bethune is virtually unknown to his compatriots.
Author: melody1981 Time: 2009-9-3 04:31 PM
we should remember them forever, all this respected freinds!
www.tailiglassesparts.com
Author: liuyedao Time: 2010-3-14 11:57 AM
http://chinatibet.people.com.cn/6858803.html
Blind German woman devoted to helping blind Tibetan kids
14:19, January 04, 2010
Though blind, Sabriye Tenberken from Germany has beautiful eyes. There is strength in her vision that can move people. It is her who has invented the Tibetan Braille and has a school built for the blind children in Tibet.
Without her efforts, those kids would not have been able to study at the school on the Jiangsu Road in Lhasa City.
Born in 1970, Tenberken was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at the age of two and lost her eyesight at 12. With incredible willpower and perseverance, she was recruited by the University of Bonn, where she majored in English, computer science and the Tibetan language.
She later learned that that was no Braille for blind Tibetans. So, she had been wondering what life the blind Tibetans could lead without reading.
With the help of computer science and referring to Braille, Tenberken created a program for the Tibetan language similar to the Braille. In 1997, she traveled to Tibet for the first time, where she met architect Paul from the Netherlands.
Moved by what Tenberken had done, Paul decided to quit his job at home and to stay in Lhasa to be with Tenberken. Later on they got married and began their journey to establish a school for the blind children in Tibet.
Tenberken said that she still has other senses which can also help her do various things in the world.
Tenberken's idea to build the school garnered support of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government. Following several rounds of discussions, she obtained financial assistance from the German Government, so that her school was set up at last.
However, when the school opened, there were six students only as in Tibet, many families do not want others to know that their kids are blind. Tenberken then visited those families and tried to persuade the parents to send their kids to her school.
Later on the school had more students, who ranged widely in age -- from five or six to 17 or 18.
Therefore, Tenberken designed different courses for them. The younger kids started with learning basic life skills and the older were taught useful skills such as massage and craftsmanship.
What all of them must learn are the Tibetan, Han and English languages. They also learn how to use a typewriter that was designed especially for the Tibetan blind.
She also wants to see that the blind can achieve something that the ordinary people can not.
So far, 155 blind kids have studied at the school, which currently has eight teachers and offers arts lessons, music lessons and physical exercise classes.
Some of the graduates from her school have opened their own massage clinics; others have become interpreters and still others have become singers. They learned not only how to read Tibetan Braille from Tenberken, but courage and how to overcome difficulties and get rid of grief.
Among the 2.4 million residents in Tibet, about 10,000 have eyesight problems. In the past decade those blind who can read Braille are students of Tenberken's school.
Though the kids will never know what Tenberken looks like, they are aware of her love and kindness.
For Tenberken, what her students need most are confidence and self acknowledgement. They need to understand that it is not a big problem to be blind, she said, adding that what they need most is acceptance by the society.
"We are blind and we probably cannot ride a bike or drive a car, but we can think and make the world better," she said.
Source: CCTV.com/xinhuanet
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Author: bajin888 Time: 2010-4-10 04:34 AM
Koxinga?
Author: bajin888 Time: 2010-4-10 04:43 AM
Churchill? Stalin? Roosevelt?
If it were not for their determination to fight European Nazism and Japanese Fascism, surely the Japanese would still be ruling China and most Chinese would now be speaking Japanese?
Of course we should not ignore the role of Generalissimo Chiang kai Shek (known as General Cash My Check in Britain at the time) and the bravery of the CCP. But, without the brave struggle of so many British, American, Russian, Indian, Australian and other Allied troops during World War 2, then both Europe and Asia would sytill be under the jackboot of Nazism and the sword of imperial Japan. Good to remember the struggle of our ancestors to create a better world and fight the monstrous ignorance of racism, fascism and nationalism.
Thank God, we won!
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Author: bajin888 Time: 2010-4-10 04:44 AM
Churchill?
Stalin?
Roosevelt?
If it were not for their determination to fight European Nazism and Japanese Fascism, surely the Japanese would still be ruling China and most Chinese would now be speaking Japanese?
Of course we should not ignore the role of Generalissimo Chiang kai Shek (known as General Cash My Check in Britain at the time) and the bravery of the CCP. But, without the brave struggle of so many British, American, Russian, Indian, Australian and other Allied troops during World War 2, then both Europe and Asia would sytill be under the jackboot of Nazism and the sword of imperial Japan.
Good to remember the struggle of our ancestors to create a better world and fight the monstrous ignorance of racism, fascism and nationalism.
Thank God, we won!
Author: packapaca Time: 2010-4-10 06:17 AM Subject: Jewish doctor turned 'Buddha savior' under Mao
.
(I believe I should submit this message also on this thread)
Israel was the first state of the Middle East to recognize the Government of the People's Republic of China.
Israel was the first friendly nation to introduce modern irrigation techniques in China.
I would like to bring to the readers a few words about a Jewish doctor, Jakob Rosenfeld.
Jewish doctor turned 'Buddha savior' under Mao
Odyssey of young Jewish doctor who became a general under Mao Zedong after fleeing Nazis is focus of new exhibition in Vienna
AFP Published: 11.22.06, 13:42 / Israel Culture
Jakob Rosenfeld, a Viennese physician turned hero of the Chinese revolution, is less well-known than Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor whose services during the Sino-Japanese war inspired Mao to write an essay that he later made compulsory reading for his People's Republic.
But the Jewish doctor - or General Luo as he was known in China - was the only one of a handful of foreign volunteers to make it into the upper echelons of the revolutionary army.
"He was even named health minister in the Communist army's provisional government in 1947," Gerd Kaminski, an Austrian expert on Chinese history and the organizer of this new exhibit at Vienna's Jewish Museum, told AFP.
The show is part of a series of events hosted by Austria marking the 35th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1971.
Buddha Savior
Nothing in the background of the young, renowned Viennese gynecologist presaged his future as the "Buddha savior" of the Red Army, as he was nicknamed.
Unlike Bethune, a militant communist who joined Mao as early as 1938, Rosenfeld "aspired only to a comfortable life shuttling between his practice and evenings at the opera," said Kaminski, who has written a book on the Jewish doctor.
Born in 1902 in Lemberg - now Lvov, in western Ukraine, but then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire - Rosenfeld, the son of a non-commissioned officer in the imperial army, narrowly escaped the fate of many Jews in Nazi Germany.
Deported to the concentration camps at Dachau and then Buchenwald, he was released in 1939 on condition that he will leave the Reich within two weeks.
"The only possibility at the time was to board a ship for Shanghai where no visa was necessary to enter the international concession," Kaminski said.
Soon known as "Little Vienna", Shanghai's Jewish neighborhood provided a refuge to some 25,000 European Jews and Rosenfeld quickly opened a practice there.
But following an encounter with a propaganda agent for Comintern, the Soviet-based international communist organization to promote the spread of the proletarian revolution, and after seeing the Chinese persecuted by the Japanese army of occupation, the Austrian decided to join Mao's New Fourth Army in 1941.
Jewish-Chinese legend
The rest is the stuff of legend - endless stories of the young doctor on the frontlines, operating tirelessly on war wounded with only the light from a flashlight. He also waged his own war to improve hygiene and trained dozens of Chinese doctors in the methods of modern medicine.
"He was a great hero and a humanist, admired by the army and the population, who saved thousands of lives and whose role was comparable to that of Bethune," China's ambassador to Austria, Lu Yonghua, told AFP.
Elevated to the rank of general, Rosenfeld tended to the elite in the Communist Party's Central Committee and forged close ties with Liu Shaoqi and Chen Yi, who would later go on to become respectively president and foreign minister of China.
"But (Rosenfeld) was never close to Mao himself," Kaminski added.
The Austrian "General Luo" chose to remain in China after the fall of the Nazi regime and participated in the Red Army's march on Beijing before returning to Vienna in 1949, the year the People's Republic of China was founded.
Back in Austria, he found a city devastated by war and still rife with anti-Semitism where he could "no longer adapt" following the extermination of his family, he wrote in his diary.
The Jewish doctor tried to return to China in 1950, but without a visa, and had to settle in
Israel where he died two years later following heart failure.
Heroe again
"With the new power in place and the beginning of the Korean War, foreigners were not necessarily welcome in China anymore," Kaminski said.
Forgotten after Liu and Chen fell out of favor during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, Rosenfeld was only gradually rehabilitated after Mao's death in 1976. In recent years, however, his "hero" status was restored, thanks in part to Kaminski's efforts.
"Today, he has a statue, a hospital and Beijing's National Museum of China set up an 800-square-metre (8,600 square feet) exhibit in his honor inaugurated by President
Hu Jintao," Kaminski noted.
The exhibit on Jakob Rosenfeld at Vienna's Jewish Museum will run until January 14.
.
Author: nebula1 Time: 2010-4-10 08:33 AM Subject: Reply #79 bajin888's post
Don't be silly. WW2 was a massive clash between powerful nations competing for colonies. Churchill's and Roosevelt's determination was to keep the Germans and the Japanese away from their colonies.
Patton wanted to attack the USSR immediately after WW2. MacArthur was itching to drop atomic bombs on China. Stop dreaming about these people being on your side!
And Japanese and English are both colonial languages.
Author: liuyedao Time: 2010-8-24 10:47 AM
http://china.globaltimes.cn/diplomacy/2010-08/565993.html
Chinese embassy commemorates legendary British journalist George Hogg
* Source: Xinhua
* [13:31 August 22 2010]
* Comments
The Chinese Embassy in Britain held a commemorative reception Saturday for George Hogg, a British journalist who revealed China's huge sufferings during its war against Japanese military aggression.
George Hogg came to China in 1937 as a reporter and wrote numerous articles about the sufferings of the Chinese people under the brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Hogg helped establish a school for war orphans in China's Shaanxi province in 1942, which was later relocated to Shandan, Gansu province. Hogg died from tetanus at the age of 30 in July 1945.
"Thanks to the sacrifice and solidarity of hundreds of thousands of people like Hogg, the extremely cruel aggression in human history ended in fiasco, and justice eventually conquered evil," Chen Xiaodong, charge d'affaires of the Chinese embassy, said at the reception.
Hogg had devoted himself to his Chinese students, his four adopted Chinese orphans and the Chinese people's fight against fascist Japan, Chen said.
Norman Hoare, headmaster of St. George School in Harpenden of Britain, where Hogg had studied, also attended the reception. He said St. George School will treasure its historic links with China and conduct more exchanges with the country.
Two of Hogg's adopted children came to the reception together with Hogg's relatives, who had flown in from Finland and the United States.
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