10 | August 21-22, 2021 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 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 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 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 , 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 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 () 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. But a particularly meaning- ate on a possible visit by Nixon; on sentative to the United Nations. errors of the tragic policy of previous consolation two years later with the was at the conference, later wrote. ful moment came when Dimond July 15 Nixon shocked the world by Huang, a student revolutionary and years which had scarred the careers establishment of the Edgar Snow “In Dublin, Edgar Snow and Dr. observed his Chinese counterparts announcing on live television that close friend of Edgar Snow in Bei- and spirits of honest men, such as Memorial Foundation, the first of its Dimond shared adjoining rooms with performing surgery under acupunc- he would visit the People’s Republic jing in the 1930s, caught up with Snow,” wrote Dimond in a chapter of kind anywhere. a bathroom — proof of a very special ture anesthesia. of China the following year, which Snow in Bao’an in 1936 and accom- his 1975 book titled Journey To The “It’s a project that got almost unan- kind of friendship,” said Nancy Hill, “Dr. Dimond first became inter- he did from February 21 to 28, 1972. panied him further west at the end Beginning, a nod to Snow’s autobiog- imous support from people who Dimond’s personal assistant for the ested in acupuncture in Vietnam in Amid all the excitement sur- of his five-month stay there, acting raphy of the same name. knew Edgar Snow, including Huang last decade of his life. The two men the 1960s, when he was sent there rounding the rapprochement, very as his interpreter. “The final White House response Hua, who came to be a close collabo- really hit it off, with Snow introduc- during the height of the Vietnam few in the US were aware of the fact “The three red bandits” was how to me, by telephone, was to thank me rator to the Dimonds on their work,” ing Dimond to the term Third World War,” Hill said. “The preparation he that Snow, whom Life said “proba- Snow referred to Hatem, Huang and for my concern and to advise me that Hill said. bly has more firsthand information himself, Dimond said. This was even the president could not make special Yet their work began even before than any American … on what the though Snow had, in his own words, exceptions. … After all, there were that. In November 1972, nine Chinese leaders think about the US “never been a member of the Com- many Americans living overseas.” months after the Nixon visit, today”, died of pancreatic cancer on munist Party”. While Snow’s memorial was held Dimond helped bring to the US the Feb 15, 1972, at the age of 67. “This book () in Geneva on Feb 19, 1972, Nixon first delegation of Chinese physi- Dimond was among those who predicted that the communists was en route to China, almost every- cians since 1949. were first informed when Snow was would win victory. It was, however, one within his entourage carrying a On Jan 31, 1979, the Dimonds diagnosed with cancer in late 1971, not a book of advocacy. It was a book copy of Red Star Over China. were at the Chinese Liaison Office in barely three months after the doctor of reporting,” wrote Snow in the 50s, “It’s hard to see justice in such tim- Washington being received by the returned from his own China trip. when letters to him from China ing,” a deeply saddened Dimond said. then Chinese vice-premier Deng “I called Dr. Ma Hai-the (Ma were delivered having been opened, “The journalist who has tried to tell Xiaoping during his state visit to the Haide) in Peking,” wrote Dimond in presumably by the FBI, and he felt his country its Asian policy was US following the official establish- his 1975 book. more than ever before the need to wrong, and who had brought person- ment of Sino-US diplomatic rela- Ma Haide is the of defend himself. ally from Mao Tse-tung the clear sig- tions earlier that year. George Hatem, a Lebanese-American One person who was trying to cor- nal that Mr. Nixon would be welcome “We remembered Grenville Clark, doctor who joined Snow on his adven- rect the wrongs was Dimond, who in Peking, left the scene just as Ameri- Paul White, and Edgar Snow, and ture to seek out and speak to the wrote to Nixon when Snow’s cancer can Asian policy made the giant turn wished they were with us on this “Reds” in 1936. Hatem stayed on in was first found, seeking medical help. away from the issues that had made evening,” Dimond later wrote. China and became a Chinese citizen. “I elaborated in telephone calls to enemies of the two nations.” Wu Tong (right) with the Dimonds. PHOTO PROVIDED BY WU TONG It did not take long before Hatem, the White House, here was a remarka- The doctor and his wife, who also See Yet, page 11 August 21-22, 2021 | 11 LIFE

personal communication can help to China, where “the Snow legacy feels bridge the gap of intercultural per- so much more real and present”. ceptions and keep the conversation Sun returned to visit Dimond in moving forward in a positive direc- May 2013, six months before the old tion,” said James McKusick, the foun- man’s passing in November. Upon out of the snow dation’s former president, referring Dimond’s request, Sun arranged for to the current poor state of the rela- a reprinting in Beijing of 200 copies tionship between China and the US. of his Inside China Today, a book he and his famous contemporary Edgar Snow led to a friendship that long outlasted One person who is behind this dedicated “to Edgar Snow, George year’s event is Sun Hua, director of Hatem, Huang Hua and to their a country Snow had sought to understand and to explain. Peking University’s China Center for adventure of 1936”. Edgar Snow Studies. “The center “The very nature of journalism was established in 1993 at the initia- has changed in the West (since tion of Huang Hua, who served as its Snow’s time) … With a terrible honorary director before his own dearth of independent Western passing in 2010,” Sun said. “Why reporters working in places like Chi- Peking University? Because this is na, the inevitable outcome is that where Snow is buried, in China.” news from those parts of the world In a note that Snow wrote, and will be reported at second or third which his wife Lois Wheeler (1920- hand, with a lot of unconscious bias 2018) discovered in the days after he or even intentional ‘slant’ injected died, he said: “Someone please scat- into the story,” McKusick said. ter some of my ashes over the city of “The world needs more fearless Peking, and say that I loved China. I independent foreign correspond- should like part of me to stay there ents like Edgar Snow who are will- after death as it always did during ing to go the extra mile to find the life.” (Snow married Wheeler in 1949, truth and report the real story.” after his divorce from Helen Foster, On the morning of Nov 3, 2013, whom he had married in 1932.) Dimond talked on the phone with The wish was fulfilled on October Wu Tong, who was made the execu- 19, 1973, as Wheeler, escorted by tor of his estate even though he had Hatem, arrived on the campus of three biological daughters in the US. Peking University for the burial of In the evening that same day, the half of Snow’s ashes, in a ceremony 94-year-old cardiologist who loved attended by premier Zhou. It was on woodcarving died peacefully at his that campus that Snow taught jour- home, a place he named Diastole. nalism in the 1930s, with Huang “Diastole is a word with a bit of among his students. music and poetry in it,” Dimond Snow’s note also said: “America fos- wrote in his book Distant Milepost. tered and nourished me. I should like “Diastole: when the heart rests.” part of the same residue scattered Sun said from Peking University: over the Hudson River, to join other “He proved with the latter half of his debris which touches our shores.” life how a venerated doctor can use Dimond took part in carrying out his or her professional and social that part of the wish with the Snow stature to break ideological barriers family at Sneden’s Landing in upstate and do cultural cross-pollination. In New York, near the Hudson River. that sense he set a precedent that Edgar Snow at the Communist base in Bao’an in 1936. Wheeler later gave a large collec- hasn’t gone unnoticed.” tion of Snow’s papers, pictures, film Hill, referring to Dimond’s atti- footage and memorabilia to the Uni- tudes toward both acupuncture and actively involved in it. versity of Missouri-Kansas City, with Chinese socialism said it was about While the Alley in Snow’s 1958 auto- which the Edgar Snow Foundation is “respecting alternative systems”. biography Journey to the Beginning affiliated. “Be modest in was a “red-haired, broad-chested, In the summer your conclusion,” driving man with legs like tree trunks”, of 2012 Sun visited he wrote toward the Alley Dimond came to know in the Dimond at this the end of Inside 70s and 80s was “pink-haired, mellow, Kansas City home China Today. moves with unshakable calm and for the first time. “Leave room for speaks in slow, careful cadence”. There, in a red- change. Above all, “(Hatem and Alley) walking arm in wood building on weigh what you arm, very slowly, heads together, chat- the university are seeing against ting away like two upright bears” was campus he discov- the past — against one soothing picture Dimond paint- ered what Dimond the future — and ed. Between them, Hatem and Alley must have discov- against the suc- filled for Dimond more than a few ered at Hatem’s liv- cess and flaws of narrative gaps in Snow’s life journey, ing room in our own society.” while having their own remarkable Beijing: “Pure USA It is a heartfelt journeys witnessed by a man infinite- with a Chinese humbleness ly inspired by their long-gone friend. heart”, as Dimond Dimond inherited Both Hatem and Alley died in the put it. With memo- from Snow, who, late 1980s, deeply mourned by rabilia from all his on arriving in Dimond. But more devastating was China trips artfully in 1928, This book the sudden loss of his wife five years on display, the decided to stay earlier. On June 8, 1983, after organiz- space had been there and “save (Red Star Over China) ing and hosting the first edition of the turned into a the rest of the predicted that the Edgar Snow Symposium, Mary scholars’ center, world”, because communists would Dimond, president of the Edgar Snow dedicated to “China was a Memorial Foundation, died in her things in which world in itself”. win victory. sleep from a heart attack, at the age of “we both, Mary From top: George Hatem in In 1946, after It was, however, 67. The couple had planned to divide and Grey, have a China in the 1930s; Rewi Alley. World War II, a their time between their home in faith” — “human 28-year-old not a book of Kansas City and a ranch in California. dialogue, social Dimond was sent advocacy. It was a The grieving, done by Dimond in intercourse, the amenities of scholarly to Tokyo to treat Americans who private, was not lost on Wu Tong, communication.” were former Japanese prisoners of book of reporting.” daughter of Dr. Wu Weiran, who was Walking around the 3-acre oasis war. There he met J.B. Powell, who, Edgar Snow, among the first to meet Dimond with Asian-garden inspired grounds, by virtue of being a Missouri School American journalist when he arrived in China in 1971 and Sun saw beautiful little gravestones of Journalism graduate and an editor who headed the Chinese physicians’ with Chinese characters on them. “It of the China Weekly Review in delegation to the US in 1972. Coming turned out that Dimond had given Shanghai in the 1930s, was a close to the US in 1980 to study at the Uni- his pet dogs highly entertaining Chi- associate of Snow, who regularly con- From top: Edgar Snow, Mao Zedong (right) and Mao’s English inter- name Ma could also mean horse.) versity of Missouri-Kansas City School nese names, “Ma ma hu hu, meaning tributed to the English periodical. preter Ji Chaozhu on top the Tian’anmen Rostrum on Oct 1, 1970; The sentimental journey took of Medicine, which Dimond founded, so-so, for example,” Sun said. “Dr. Dimond at the time had Sun Hua (left) director of Peking University’s China Center for him to his hometown in Buffalo, Wu Tong became the couple’s adopted By the time of Sun’s visit, Dimond already heard about Snow,” said Edgar Snow studies, and Nancy Hill, who worked closely with E. New York, where, when asked if he daughter and stayed with them at had stopped traveling to China Hill, today the honorary president Grey Dimond for the last decade of his life, posed together at the thought China was the best of all their home for more than two years. because of the infirmities of age. But of the Edgar Snow Memorial Foun- Diastole Scholars’ Center, beside a bust sculpture of Edgar Snow. worlds, he replied, “China is the best “In my first year in the States, before that he had passed on his dation. “And J.B. Powell undoubted- PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY for China.” He later delivered a every night after dinner, Mary passion for China to many around ly filled him with more details of the speech before the United States- would spend an hour practicing him, including Hill. man. But it wasn’t until he met China People’s Friendship Associa- English with me,” recalled Wu Tong, Following in the footsteps of Snow Snow in 1965 that he realized why tion in San Francisco. an eye doctor in her 60s. and Dimond, Hill found herself in he was such a successful journalist. From page 10 trained doctor, I was delighted,” “It was a mellow time, a time for “Together they had been to many the cave dwellings once inhabited by “Snow was smart, engaging, gen- recalled Hatem, who came to China as reflection, comparison, mending ties, places in China, had lived in tents in the “Red Bandits”, “storied, magical” ial and warm. He was a guy who was Yet the memory of Snow came a medical student intent on studying a time needed to complete one’s life areas where there was no running places where “time seems to have in the moment, who cared so deeply most powerfully to Dimond through tropical diseases, many years later. cycle,” Dimond wrote in his 1983 book water. They never complained – in slowed down”, she said. about who he was talking to and the doctor’s association with his From Shanghai Hatem embarked Inside China Today, one filled with fact, they savored every moment of “Dr. Dimond always said that what they were talking about. When friends, people with whom Snow on his own separate journey toward his long conversations with Hatem. it,” said Wu. “I remember stealing a there’s this natural harmony between the two were conversing, the rest of had been brought together during the “Red Zone”, one that intersected Some of those conversations were glimpse of Dr. Dimond in his study, Americans and Chinese — both are the world just went away.” his stay in China between 1928 and with Snow’s when the two arrived at joined by Alley, whose Beijing home not long after Mary’s passing. He was secular, fun-loving people endowed Asked about Snow’s most impor- 1941, by both destiny and a shared Zhengzhou in Central China, a major Dimond had tried unsuccessfully to just sitting there, in a trance, which is with the same sense of humor,” said tant advice to Dimond, Hill replied: desire for truth and the betterment railroad junction. They completed locate during his first trip there, very untypical of him.” Hill, who joined the foundation’s “You have to be in China to under- of human conditions. the rest of their journey together, with a hand-drawn map from Snow. “I let my life sleep for a while, board in 2012, after her first trip to stand it.” Two people on this list were George winning each other’s trust as they In 1939, two years after Red Star mulled, thought, weighed,” Dimond Hatem and the New Zealander Rewi tried successfully to slip through the Over China was published, Snow wrote. “I decided to stay put at 25th Alley. Not unlike Snow, both had an military blockade of the Nationalists, returned to Shaanxi to report on a and Holmes (the couple’s Kansas City intrepid heart that led them to Shang- at risk to their own lives. burgeoning form of mobile, small- home address) and wave the flag hai in the late 1920s and early 1930s. As Snow left at the end of his five- scale production units known as more vigorously, permanently.” Both became disillusioned and dis- month stay to work on his “scoop of the Gung Ho, or industrial cooperatives. Dimond later took on the presi- gusted by what they saw in the hedon- century”, Hatem stayed, became a Red Set up everywhere, including in cave dency of the foundation and contin- istic “Pearl of the Orient”: the Army doctor and married a Chinese dwellings, they had the unique advan- ued the biennial symposium, which, seemingly endless dying of the poor woman. By the time Dimond met him tage of escaping Japanese bombing, with the participation of Huang and and the execution by the ruling for the first time in 1971, equipped with while providing desperately needed his successors, has been taking Nationalist government of those who a letter of introduction from Snow, wartime materials for frontline sol- place alternatively in Kansas City were “trying to agitate against this sort Hatem had become known as the man diers and jobs for the millions of refu- and in China. of thing”, to use Hatem’s words. Both responsible for ridding China of vene- gees who had trekked west. Because of the pandemic the reached out to the leftist thinkers and real diseases, or simply the most The idea was mainly that of Alley, 19th Edgar Snow Symposium in writers around them, both Chinese famous American living in China. who oversaw its implementation Beijing next month will be held as and non-Chinese, and soon developed In April 1978, at the arrangement and is known today as “the father of an online event. a strong curiosity and sympathy of Dimond, the “Dr. Horse of China” Gung Ho”. “When the official channels of toward the Chinese Communists. as Dimond called Hatem, made his Dubbing it “guerrilla industry”, diplomacy become obstructed by “When word came from Rewi Alley first visit in 50 years to his native Snow not only contributed to the clamor and conflict, the work of Snow’s grave on the campus of Peking University. that the Red Army needed a Western- United States. (Hatem’s Chinese sur- very idea of Gung Ho, but was also international friendship and inter- PHOTO PROVIDED BY SUN HUA