Garden bloom helps highlight work of T.A. Bisson, who interviewed Mao and other CPC leaders in Yan'an in the 1930s
The untold story of renowned scholar T.A. Bisson may have been forgotten forever were it not for a brightly blooming tree in a college campus.
It was spring 2017 when Yan Li, a professor and coordinator of Chinese language and culture studies at Renison University College in Waterloo, Canada, noticed an American bud in the garden.
Underneath, etched into a plate, was a dedication to US scholar Thomas Arthur Bisson, who taught at the college in the 1970s.
Li recalled she'd seen the name before, on a small book given to her by Renison's librarian years earlier called June 1937 in Yenan: Talks with Communist Leaders.
"Luckily, I found it from my bookshelf," Li told China Daily after giving a talk, entitled Canadian Friends and the Chinese Revolution, organized by the Hong Maple Foundation.
"I was shocked when I opened the book," she said. "The author, T.A. Bisson, not only was a colleague I had never met but also a long--ignored important scholar who deserved recognition in modern Chinese history."
Li said Bisson and several other North American scholars paid a covert visit to Yan'an in the 1930s and interviewed leaders of the Communist Party of China including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De.
The 70-page book contains details about the group's arduous journey to the poverty-stricken mountain area, and observations and conversations with Party leaders after the Long March (1934-36), a military retreat by the Red Army that played an important role in China's history.
Li was intrigued and decided to delve deeper into Bisson's life. Over the next year, she visited his son, a Harvard University professor, and talked with his friends and neighbors to learn more, such as about his youth, his work with the US government, and how as a reputable scholar he played a leading role in the development of East Asian studies.
A missionary
Bisson first arrived in China as a missionary in 1924, teaching English in Anhui province and then at Yenching University in Beijing. He returned to the United States in 1928 to enroll at Columbia University to pursue a PhD. However, he left before finishing the doctoral program to work for the Foreign Policy Association, an organization founded in 1918 to inform the US public on world affairs.
After serving for the US government for several years, he returned to China in 1937. With the help of Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China, Bisson, together with sinologist Owen Lattimore and two other US scholars, quietly went to Yan'an on what turned out to be the eve of the Lugouqiao Incident, which marked the start of Japan's all-out invasion of China in July 1937.
This lightning visit led to invaluable firsthand accounts for studying the arduous process of Chinese revolution. During the hardships along the way, Bisson witnessed the turbulent reality of Chinese society with his own eyes, and he interviewed Mao and other Red Army leaders.
"This first glimpse of Yan'an was unexpected and somehow caught us unprepared," Bisson wrote. "An extraordinary lightness, a gaiety almost, had marked the whole affair. The impression left was elusive; as an experience it could only be sensed."
He wrote his observations and interviews in pencil in two notebooks, faithfully recording the original intentions, ideals and struggles of the Chinese communists at that time.
"More comprehensively descriptive was the phenomenon of an entire group of people imbued with a high moral enthusiasm," Bisson wrote. "Selfish individual aims, so far as one could see, had been surrendered to a deeper loyalty. In the common cause all stood on a footing of equality. Each shared in the work to be done, and each shared in the spirit that filled it. These were halcyon days at Yenan. One can understand why Mao Tse-tung has fought to retrain that spirit and to extend it to all of China."
Lattimore, who had approached Bisson with the suggestion to visit Yan'an, said: "Our questions were being answered patiently, courteously, and in very specific detail by the top men of the Chinese Communist Party. Anybody looking back now at Bisson's record of these conversations can see that the answers provided an astonishingly complete intelligence report on the program and intentions of the communists, which they revealed fearlessly because they were confident that they already stood at a historical conjuncture from which they could clearly see the way forward."
Spiritual charm
In addition to the written records, Bisson and his colleagues also took many photographs, including of the scenery along the way from Xi'an to Yan'an and of daily life in Yan'an.
Because of these experiences, and at the same time impressed by the spiritual charm and firm belief of the Red Army and the communists, Bisson changed from a missionary who believed in God to a staunch Marxist, according to Li.
Unfortunately, Bisson was persecuted in the US in the 1950s as a victim of the Cold War mentality due to his sympathy for the Chinese communists. He lost his position at the University of California, Berkley, and eventually ended up at Renison.
In his book Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America, David A. Hollinger, emeritus professor of history at UC Berkeley, explored the untold story of how missionaries like Bisson were sent to live throughout the East.
"They expected to change the people they encountered, but those foreign people ended up transforming the missionaries," he wrote. "Their experience abroad made many of these missionaries and their children critical of racism, imperialism, and religious orthodoxy. When they returned home, they brought new liberal values back to their own society."
In 1973, after then US president Richard Nixon's visit to China had warmed relations between the two countries, Bisson had the opportunity to publish the two notebooks he had hidden for more than 30 years.
Touched by Bisson's story and his book, Li wrote a 32,000-character essay, "The American Bud on Campus", and submitted it to Contemporary, a prestigious Chinese literary magazine.
The essay attracted great interest from editors of The People's Literature Publishing House in China. At their request, Li translated June 1937 in Yenan: Talks with Communist Leaders into Chinese. The book was released in June last year and went on to win several awards. It was honored as "a newly discovered Red Star Over China" for providing valuable historical records otherwise buried forever.
"What is especially rare is to capture the style of many CPC leaders in their prime," said Li. "The precious notes and photos in the book show the appearance, spiritual belief and ideals of the early Chinese communists, and from the perspectives of a Western scholar, the book presented the original mission of the CPC objectively and candidly."
Original goals
These historical records could help people understand why the CPC was able to eventually become the Party leading China, Li said.
"Just as Bisson and his friends had felt in Yan'an, readers today could also see clearly from those historical records the ideals and the original goals pursued by the early CPC leaders and the military they led. It self-explains why the Party, from the people and for the people, would eventually win the whole of China," Li said.
Bisson taught at UC Berkeley until the end of the 1953-54 academic year, when his appointment was not renewed, possibly due to political attacks. He later moved to Renison, which is affiliated with the University of Waterloo, where he taught from 1970 to 1973. He passed away in 1979.
Bisson's son, Thomas N. Bisson, the emeritus Henry Charles Lea professor of medieval history at Harvard, told Li that his father had never regretted his decisions in life, even after experiencing so much hardship.
"My father believed that his views were correct all his life," he said."Despite the persecution he went through, and despite the controversy around him, he never gave up his faith in Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai."
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