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Rosy Fantasies: Edgar Snow, John Service, Joseph Stilwell, and their China
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Edgar Snow, John S. Service, and Joseph W. Stilwell had overlapping and intertwined China experiences. They played unexpectedly pivotal roles in the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Edgar Snow (1905-72) was a foreign correspondent in China from 1928 to 1941 and returned to the country in 1960, 1964-65, and 1970. He promulgated what was to later become prevailing imagery of the Chinese Communists as agrarian reformers. Born to an American missionary family in Chengdu, John S. Service (1909-99) served as a diplomat to China from 1933 to 1945 and revisited the country in 1971. Taking part in the Dixie Mission to Yan’an, Service emerged as Washington’s major source of information on the CCP. Old China Hand General Joseph W. Stilwell (1883-1946) was stationed in China in 1920-23, 1935-39 and 1942-44. He played a crucial role in changing American perceptions of the Chinese Communists and Chinese Nationalists. Snow, Service, and Stilwell all claimed to sincerely love the Chinese people. But what did they really think of China? This study will zoom in on their perceptions of China as expressed in their own words and deeds and explore how their perceptions impacted the course of history. READ MORE...
Global Medicine in Chinese East Asia, 1937-1970
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By examining two case studies on how the Chinese diaspora came to shape biomedicine in China and Taiwan from 1937 to 1970, my new book makes the case of the concept of "global medicine." "Global medicine" highlights the multivalent and multidirectional flows of medical practices and ideas circulating the world that shaped Chinese East Asia in the 20th century. The first case study examines how Chinese American women medical personnel established the first Chinese blood in New York and Kunming, China. Second, this talk reveals how Singapore-born and Edinburgh-educated Dr. Robert Lim successfully relocated the National Defense Medical Center from China to Taiwan in 1948 despite the Chinese Civil War's longstanding challenges. This presentation highlights the critical intersections of scientific expertise, political freedoms, and diasporic power in shaping global medicine in China and Taiwan through a critical examination of these two medical encounters between the diaspora and the local Chinese and Taiwanese. READ MORE...