Ma Haide was already a legend in his lifetime. Born in 1910 at Buffalo, N.Y., as George Hatem in a Maronite Catholic family of Lebenese origin, he studied medicine. He came to Shanghai in 1933 for a year or two's practice. But he lived in China for fifty five years until his death in 1988. He got attracted to the revolution, participated in the last phase of the historic Long March, was given a house at Yen'an where the Communist HQ were located, married a Chinese girl, and was the first foreigner to become a Chinese citizen after the revolution.
He was also an unofficial but trusted spokesperson for the new China to the outside world. In his later years Dr.Ma concentrated on the control of venereal diseases and, then, leprosy. Edgar A.Porter's The People's Doctor:George Hatem and China's Revolution(1997)is Dr.Ma's full biography based on minute and painstaking research. It was translated into Japanese this year to commemorate Dr.Ma's birth centenary.
The author writes, "Ma spent much of 1985 laying the groundwork for operations at the center.", i.e.the China Leprosy Control and Research Center at Guangzhou. When Dr.Ma came to Japan in the midst of this work, I had an opportunity to travel with him and his wife Su Fei to Kyoto. Dr.Ma was in good condition, relaxed, very charming and talked a lot. Among others he said that China would never be a capitalistic country again. How I wish I would like to know what he would say today!
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