Ma Haide | |
|---|---|
| Chinese:馬海德 | |
.jpg) Ma in 1944 | |
| Born | Shafick George Hatem (1910-09-26)September 26, 1910 Buffalo, New York, U.S. |
| Died | October 3, 1988(1988-10-03) (aged 78) Beijing, China |
| Resting place | Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery,Beijing, China |
| Occupation | Doctor |
| Political party | Chinese Communist Party |
Ma Haide (simplified Chinese:马海德;traditional Chinese:馬海德;pinyin:Mǎ Hǎidé; September 26, 1910 – October 3, 1988), bornShafick George Hatem (Arabic:جورج شفيق حاتم), was an American-born Chinese doctor who practiced medicine in China.
Ma Haide was born Shafick George Hatem on September 26, 1910 into aLebanese-American family inBuffalo, New York.[1]
His father Nahoum Salaama Hatem moved to the United States from the village ofHammana in theMetn mountains ofLebanon in 1902, to take a job at a textile mill inLawrence, Massachusetts. In 1909, on a trip to Lebanon, Nahoum married Thamam Joseph, a woman two years younger from the village of Bahannes.[1] Soon after being married, the Hatem family moved toBuffalo, New York, where Nahoum took a job at a steel mill. It was in Buffalo where their first child, George, was born on September 26, 1910.[1]
George Hatem's parents were ofMaronite background.[1] Some older sources claim that the family was ofSyrian Jewish extraction,[2] but according to modern biographers, that was a misconception, although quite common even during Hatem's life.[3]
In 1923 Hatem's father sent him to live inGreenville, North Carolina, and the rest of the family joined him a few years later and opened a dry goods store.[4] He graduated as valedictorian of the 1927 class of Greenville High School.[5] Hatem focused on pre-med classes at theUniversity of North Carolina, where he was a member ofThe Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. He then studied medicine at theAmerican University in Beirut and theUniversity of Geneva.
While in Geneva, "Shag", as he was then nicknamed, became acquainted with students fromEast Asia, and learned much about China. With financial help from the parents of one of his friends, he and several others set off toShanghai to establish a medical practice to concentrate onvenereal diseases and on basic health care for the needy.[citation needed]
On August 3, 1933, Hatem and two colleagues, Lazar Katz and Robert Levinson, boarded a ship inTrieste that took him to several ports in Asia includingSingapore andHong Kong. On September 5, the three young American doctors landed inShanghai.[6]
Hatem set up practice inShanghai and changed his name to Ma Hai-te (Ma Haide). As he came to know Shanghai and its inequalities, he also came to know three people who shaped the ideas he used to interpret what he saw: the well known journalistAgnes Smedley, the New Zealand activistRewi Alley, and the presiding figure among left-wing sympathizers,Soong Ching-ling, the widow ofSun Yat-sen. Rewi Alley was to be his friend and mentor for the next five decades, Mme. Soong was to provide key introductions, and Smedley, who heard of Hatem by reading one of his pamphlets on public health, introduced him to Liu Ding.[7] Liu, a liaison for theChinese Communist Party (CCP), was described as a "young Red engineer" who awakened Hatem's heart.[8]
By 1936, disgusted by the corruption of Shanghai and alarmed by the world drift towardsfascism, he decided that he would either go to Spain to support theRepublican government or join the communist movement inNortheast China. He closed his practice and, with the help of the earlier established CCP contacts, was smuggled acrossKuomintang lines to provide medical service toMao Zedong's troops.[9]
In the summer of 1936, Ma travelled to the CCP headquarters atBao'an (present-day Zhidan), temporary capital of the CCP-controlledShaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. He was accompanied by the pioneering American journalistEdgar Snow. At Hatem's request, he was not explicitly 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 rumor at the time.[citation needed]
As thewar with Japan started in earnest in 1937, Ma Haide sent requests to Soong Ching-ling, Agnes Smedley, and other notables to organize recruitment of foreign medical personnel for the communists' troops fighting the Japanese armies in northern China. He was among those meetingNorman Bethune when Bethune arrived toYan'an in late March 1938, and was instrumental in helping Bethune get started at his task of organizing medical services for the front and the region.[10]
He was present at Yan'an when theDixie 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. Known commonly to the group as "Doc Ma," Ma periodically assisted Major Melvin Casberg in studies of the state of medical treatment in the CCP-controlled territories.[citation needed]
Ma remained a doctor with the CCP until their victory in 1949, afterwards becoming a public health official. He was the first foreigner granted citizenship in thePeople's Republic of China. He is credited with helping to eliminateleprosy and manyvenereal diseases in post-war China, for which he received theLasker Award for public service in 1986.[11] He was one of the few persons who were not born in China 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" (last name, commonly used byChinese Muslims) and "Virtue From the Sea" (first name).[citation needed]
In the 1950s, Ma was secretly granted Chinese citizenship, but he retained his American passport until the 1960s. Despite his reputation as the most loved American in China, he was denounced during theCultural Revolution as a "bourgeois lackey."[12]
There is an extensive interview with him in theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation's groundbreaking 90 min documentary byPatrick Watson,The Seven Hundred Million (1964).[citation needed]
During his lifetime, he was honored in his father's hometown ofHammana inLebanon, where the main square of the city is named after him.[citation needed]
In 1986, Ma received theAlbert Lasker Public Service Award for his contributions to the control and eradication ofvenereal diseases andleprosy in China.[13]
Ma's wife was Chou Sufei (aka Zhou Sufei 周苏菲), an actress. They had a son Chou Youma (aka Zhou Youma 周幼马) (b. 1943) and a daughter Liang Bi.[12][14][15]
On October 3, 1988, Ma died inBeijing at the age of 78. He is buried at theBabaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery inBeijing, China.[12][16]
