New China's gratitute to Dr. Norman Bethune

When I visited the Guangzhou Book-Selling Center during my recent trip, I found many new books about a Canadian medical doctor and member of the Communist Party of Canada, Norman Bethune (1890-1939) who went to China as a international volunteer in the 1930s to provide medical service to the Red Army resisting Japanese invasion.

The Chinese translation of American journalist Edgar Snow's masterpiece Red Star Over China has also been issued anew by the PLA Publishing House to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Long March recently. Friends in need are friends indeed and the Chinese nation and people are forever grateful to all those who lent their helping hands when they were once down and out.

The legends of Dr.Bethune and Snow are certainly and admittedly not new to me as I had read about them in children editions of many underground publications in the 1970s in Ipoh. However, I am glad that there are still even younger generations in China who are touched and moved by the great stories of those truly selfless and altruistic internationalists from the Western world.

Sixty-seven years on, Canadian idealist moves China again

China holds grand ceremony to mark 70th anniversary of Long March