A Diamond Hewn
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10 | August 21-22, 2021 CHINA DAILY LIFE By Zhao Xu and its vast potential implications. [email protected] “Snow was saying: You guys thinking in your Western-versus- n Sept 15, 1971, E. Grey Soviet communist way leaves out Dimond, 53, found him- one fourth of the population on self crossing the border Earth. There’s this whole other pop- A diamond hewn between Hong Kong ulation that is neither Soviet nor Oand the Chinese mainland, from Western, who are suffering through what he called “neon China” to New the remnants of imperialism, who A chance meeting in New Hampshire between E. Grey Dimond, a cardiologist, China, half a year before US presi- want more freedom and revolution dent Richard Nixon stepped onto in some cases, and who don’t want the latter’s life, and a quest by the former to get close to the ground at the airport in Beijing to be told by you guys that they to begin what he called his “week should preserve what they have that changed the world”. through your legal traditions. The cardiologist, today remem- “This provided Dr. Dimond with bered as the founder of the School of his ‘light bulb’ moment.” Medicine at the University of Mis- Then came Dimond’s China trip in souri-Kansas City, had a special mis- 1971, during which he was joined by sion on that trip. He was to verify his wife Mary and three of his fellow some reports filed by his fellow Kan- doctors, including his 85-year-old sas City native Edgar Snow, based teacher Paul Dudley White (1886- on the man’s own previous travel to 1973), a cardiologist who had served China during which he was invited as president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s to ascend the rostrum in physician. No other American doc- Tian’anmen Square at a time when tor had visited China since 1949. the US and China were estranged. The trip was only possible “This chance to review patients, because of Snow, who wrote directly their records, their medication … to the then Chinese premier Zhou from this experience I realized that Enlai on behalf of the prospective Edgar Snow has been right (in notic- visitors. In 1936, upon Snow’s arrival ing the huge advances made in Chi- at the Communist base in Bao’an, nese medicine),” wrote Dimond in Shaanxi province, Zhou surprised his 1975 book More than Herbs and him by talking to him in English. In Acupuncture, countering the preva- his 1968 documentary The China lent view in the West. Story: One-Fourth of Humanity, “I enjoy the criticisms of contem- Snow narrated rare footage of his poraries who are so buried in their meeting with Zhou, atop a horse hostility toward that they could not with a “pre-Castro beard”, a style see the ‘return’ of China,” Dimond Snow himself soon took up during said. his stay there. (Dimond’s father-in- One of the best-known victims of law, to whom Snow dedicated his that hostility was Snow. 1968 edition, the final one, of Red Between June and October 1936, Star Over China, funded the film.) Snow, after having studied journal- Dimond died in 2013, having made ism at the University of Missouri about 40 trips to China and enabling and spent eight years in China, trav- two-way exchanges from academia to ersed hundreds of miles of inhospi- the arts, from culture to commerce. table territory to reach the Chinese Somewhere among those trips he E. Grey Dimond (left), wife Mary and George Hatem (second from right) on the Great Wall in Beijing in 1972 during the couple’s second visit to China. Red Army base in the country’s visited the caves carved out of the ver- PHOTOS PROVIDED BY THE DIASTOLE SCHOLARS’ CENTER northwest, where he listened, tical faces of the yellow-earth plateau observed and reported the Commu- in Bao’an. There Snow sat down for was given for his lecture in Hanoi nist revolutionaries’ own stories in days in 1936 with the young Mao was centered on what one should do their own words. Zedong who was if a bomb went off.” More than virtually What he probably had not imag- 100,000 copies of unknown in the ined then was that years later an the resulting West, before leav- effort by president Richard Nixon to book, Red Star ing to write the end that same war — an effort for Over China, sold world’s first which Nixon was seeking China’s in England alone detailed portrait help — contributed to a thaw of within its first of a man who later Sino-US relations, and to Snow’s few weeks of pub- became the return to the spotlight, after his vir- lication. founding chair- tual absence from public view in the It was instantly man of the Peo- US for nearly 20 years. considered a clas- ple’s Republic of During his last visit to China, sic and remained China. between August 1970 and February so, for “this book “By dedicating 1971, Snow had not only got glimps- has stood the test the rest of their es of China’s massive educational of time on both lives to the country program in family planning and these counts — as Snow had intro- birth control, but also climbed atop a historical duced to them, the the Tian’anmen rostrum to watch — record and as an Dimonds were side by side with Mao — the parade indication of a able to develop a that was taking place on October 1, trend”, to quote deeper connection China’s national day. I enjoy the criticisms the celebrated with the journalist Carried by newspapers world- China scholar long after his wide, “the picture of the two … told of contemporaries John K. Fairbank. From top: The Dimond couple death,” Hill said. the whole world and the Chinese who are so That “trend” and Huang Hua (right) In fact, en route people that we are friendly to the buried in their has since cap- during the first Edgar Snow to Hong Kong American people,” said Ji Chaozhu tured the fascina- Symposium at UMKC in 1983; during their 1971 (1929-2020), Mao’s English inter- hostility towards tion of the West. Dimond in Beijing in the 1970s. trip, the Dimonds preter and author of the memoir The communism that But it also led, stopped over to Man on Mao’s Right, in an interview during the era of see Snow at his in the 2000s. “And if the American they could not see McCarthyism, to Snow’s exile in home in Eysins, Switzerland, and to administration has a similar idea as the ‘return’ of China.” 1959 from the US to Switzerland, go through his multiday “intensive the American people … we are ready where he lived for the rest of his life. course on modern China”, accompa- to establish a good relationship, E. Grey Dimond, Yet Snow, who remained a US citi- nied on its last night by Moutai, a working relationship with them.” Cardiologist, Founder of the zen throughout, did return on rare Chinese drink “to be respected” Two months after the Tian’anmen Edgar Snow Memorial Founda- occasions, including in October, thanks to its high level of alcohol. parade, Snow sat down with Mao in tion in Kansas City, Missouri 1965, when he was in Dublin, New “I … said to Edgar that I did not his study for “a five-hour discourse”, Hampshire, for the Dublin Peace understand what he meant by Marx- to use Snow’s words, in which Mao Conference. It was organized by ist principles, and I didn’t under- said he would be happy to talk with with his team of Chinese doctors, A Chinese watercolor-on-silk painting (top) by artist Guo Yidan, Grenville Clark (1882-1967), an stand what he meant by Mao Tse- Nixon “either as a tourist or as presi- nurses, nutritionist and even a chef, depicting the meeting between Edgar Snow and the Dimond couple at influential lawyer of his time and tung (Mao Zedong) Thought,” dent”. The message was first flew in from Beijing to Geneva at the Snow’s home in Switzerland in 1971. Since there’s no extant photo- author of World Peace Through Dimond later wrote in his book. announced in the article Snow behest of Mao and Zhou. Taking up graph of Edgar Snow and E. Grey Dimond together during this meeting, World Law, who was nominated “Edgar laughed, raised his thimble of wrote and published in Life maga- residence at Snow’s place they tried the artist studied available historical photographs, including pictures four times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Moutai, and said, “Here’s to your Chi- zine on April 30, 1971. everything within their capacity to taken of Snow and Mary Dimond at the same meeting (above), before “The participants … were stimu- na education. Ganbei! (Bottoms up)” And it seemed to have set in enable Snow to “die gently”, as taking up the brush. lating, but the man who brought In Beijing in 1971 the Dimonds motion a chain of events: between Dimond put it. real excitement to the gathering was visited historical sites, ate Peking July 9 and 11 that year, Henry Kiss- Another old friend who went to the expatriate American author duck and struggled to develop fur- inger, Nixon’s security adviser, Snow’s bedside was Huang Hua, Edgar Snow,” Dimond, who married ther appreciation for the reputed secretly traveled to Beijing to negoti- then China’s first permanent repre- ble opportunity to show the world the attended the memorial, found their Clark’s daughter Mary Clark, and Moutai.