EDGAR Snow had been a ‘prophet without honour’ in his own country, the United States. His book, Red Star over China had either not been read or fully comprehended. He had disclosed, in breath-taking prose, that Chinese Communists were neither bandits or dacoits, nor were they agrarian reformers. The Chinese Communists represented a revolutionary grass-roots movement. As I had discovered when I was a student at the University of Southern California, the Americans tended to see writers of serious books as irrelevant eggheads and were even viewed with some hostility. Nor was geography their strong point. When the North Koreans had crossed the 38th Parallel and Harry Truman had taken his country into war, even college students were hard-pressed to locate Korea on an atlas. It was vaguely ‘an Oriental country’. “Edgar Snow had written another book, The Other Side of the River, and in it, I learned of Dr Hatem, a Lebanese-American who was now known as Dr Ma. He had been credited with wiping out venereal disease in China. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ statistics were staggering. The ‘before’ staggeringly high and ‘after,’ staggeringly low. Dr Ma had done an incredible job, if not performed a miracle.
I asked to meet Dr Ma and like all requests, this would get “serious attention.” A few days later, I was told that not only was Dr Ma prepared to meet me, but had invited me to lunch. I was delighted. Apart from the obvious reason that I wanted to know about his work, Dr Ma came out as the sort of folk-hero in Edgar Snow’s book. I looked forward to talking to someone who was essentially an outsider, a convert to the faith, rather than born to it. He was from a different culture, a Caucasian, and I could speak with him without an interpreter. An interpreter makes conversation awkward and stilted, words being put through a filter and the making of an off-guard comment, which to a reporter may be the story, all but impossible.
Dr Ma lived in a modest, bungalow-type house in a suburb of Beijing. The lunch was frugal, actually fried eggs and chips and for all I know, he may cooked them himself for I saw no sign of domestic help. No Jeeves for Bertie Wooster.
I spent the entire afternoon with him, asking a wide range of questions and getting, frank, candid answers. He was not a grave man, as I imagined he would be. He was cheerful and exuberant, with an earthy sense of humour and he was not self-righteous. He was, what the Spanish would say, “easy in his skin.” He spoke accented but fluent English, races of Lebanon and America in his deep voice. He reminded me of one of my professors at USC kind, a profusion of silver threads among the block of his thinning hair. He was short on autobiographical information, simply that he had arrived in China on a ship and had decided not to go back. He had not been sick-of-his-country nor was he home-sick now. He spoke of China as his own country.
I asked him how he had gone about wiping out VD. “Mainly through propaganda,” he said. Apart from conventional information and publicity in the rural areas, he had put on plays. “It was a simple message,” he said. He had stressed on prevention. “Any strong-arm tactics?” I asked. He shook his head. “People needed to be educated. That was the best form of persuasion. We must believe in the good sense of the people and you have to win their trust. You don’t do that by coercion,” he was sounding more and more like my college professor.
One of the points that I had raised with him was about Chairman Mao. I said that when he appeared in public (whenever he did), there were no external signs of security or bodyguards. I told him that I had attended a rally in Tien An Mien and Chairman Mao was there and had appeared on the balcony. There must have been hundreds of thousands of people in the square. Any other leader would have been surrounded by gun-toting guards and heavies. Dr Ma said, somewhat romantically, “The people love him. They are his security.” This was an answer that was founded on faith and did not take into consideration the ‘lone gunman’ as Harvey Lee Oswald was purported to be, nor the ‘dirty tricks’ of some official mafia like the CIA, who had been trying to assassinate Castro or the KGB with the craft to make people disappear. I didn’t tell Dr Ma this.
I spoke warmly about Pakistan’s friendship with China and said that no matter what regime was in power, this friendship was a constant and non-negotiable. He said, “China makes good friends.” To lighten the conversation somewhat, I added, “And bad enemies.” He smiled and said, “No, my friend, good enemies.”
I told him that I had taken a lot of his time and thanked him. “It’s been a wonderful afternoon,” I told him. “I hope we meet again,” by way of a formality. I doubted that we would. There is, about ships that pass at night, a moment of intimacy. But it is only a moment and it vanishes in the dark expanse of the ocean. I wondered about Dr Ma. He seemed happy enough, but did he ever get lonely? He must have had memories of Lebanon and America. Had these been stored away in some vault? Had he thrown away the keys to that vault?
I told Rene of my meeting and he seemed miffed that I hadn’t taken him with me. “I could have got some great pictures,” he said.
Meanwhile, there was good news about Yenan. Permission had come through. We would fly to Sian and after an overnight stay, we would leave for Yenan. It was now winter and I was told that it would be cold and I should prepare myself. I had brought woollen clothing, long-johns, sweaters, gloves and had a Burberry raincoat with sheep-wool lining. It seemed enough. Rene suggested that I should get a fur hat with ear-flaps. I told him that I would look ridiculous in it, but he said the purpose was not to make a fashion-statement but to keep out the cold. “I am Swiss, remember. I know something about the cold,” he said. So I went and bought a fur hat. I looked a proper ‘Charlie’ in it, but it was like nourishment, enough for sustenance and not for joy.
I had been to Sian in 1956. Sian had once been the capital of China and it was in that city that Chiang Kai Shek had been kidnapped and held for ransom. There had been many museums to see, including the one with terra-cotta figures to which visitors were always taken. We did some sight-seeing and Rene took pictures and we kept ourselves busy.
A small aircraft took us to Yenan. Rene and I were the only passengers, plus an interpreter who seemed even more excited than us. It, too, was his first trip to Yenan and for him, it was like going for a secular pilgrimage. A man of few words normally, he was positively garrulous. “I will tell my family about this,” he gushed.
It was a short flight and we gazed out of the window, down at the countryside, which looked like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, a good omen. There wasn’t much of an airport either. Just a small terminal building and a control tower. No hustle bustle. Not even too many people about. But it was a brilliant sunny morning and the sky was a light, powder-blue. It would have been a perfect day had it not been bitterly cold. Luckily, there was no breeze and it was actually bracing, so long as we stayed outdoors, in the sun.
Immediately on arrival, we were taken to the Memorial Library. After a few minutes, I told my hosts that I was so cold that there seemed to be no feelings in my legs and was walking, as if on air, or sometimes in a bad dream. They were immediately concerned and we left for the hotel. Our room was heated. My hosts left and came back with a quilted jacket and some other items of clothing. Yeats may have warmed his hands before the fire of life, but I warmed mine around a jug of hot tea. I put on the quilted jacket and Rene Burri took a picture of me. He said that I looked like an advertisement for Michelin Tyres. “Comfort before dignity,” I told him. I assured my hosts that I would live and was ready for action and it was back to square-one, to the Memorial Library. We would start our tour all over again.
EDGAR Snow had been a ‘prophet without honour’ in his own country, the United States. His book, Red Star over China had either not been read or fully comprehended. He had disclosed, in breath-taking prose, that Chinese Communists were neither bandits or dacoits, nor were they agrarian reformers. The Chinese Communists represented a revolutionary grass-roots movement. As I had discovered when I was a student at the University of Southern California, the Americans tended to see writers of serious books as irrelevant eggheads and were even viewed with some hostility. Nor was geography their strong point. When the North Koreans had crossed the 38th Parallel and Harry Truman had taken his country into war, even college students were hard-pressed to locate Korea on an atlas. It was vaguely ‘an Oriental country’. “Edgar Snow had written another book, The Other Side of the River, and in it, I learned of Dr Hatem, a Lebanese-American who was now known as Dr Ma. He had been credited with wiping out venereal disease in China. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ statistics were staggering. The ‘before’ staggeringly high and ‘after,’ staggeringly low. Dr Ma had done an incredible job, if not performed a miracle.
