Epstein: Living Witness

JI KAIYU/China Daily, 04/29/2003

"The big tides of history push people forward, it's hard for you to make the choice of which position and which side you want to take."

After moving from the wheelchair, which allows him to easily get around his spacious apartment, into a comfortable armchair, 88-year-old Israel Epstein set the tone of the interview that followed.

A witness to the cataclysmic events that fill the annals of China over the past 80 years, Epstein certainly knows more personally and directly than most about the power of history and of how it "pushes people forward."

Given all he has witnessed, surprisingly there is little trace of the negative in his attitude.

Throughout his life, Epstein has made choices that would be tough for many others to follow. And he has witnessed the right and sometimes disastrously wrong choices of others down the years.

He could easily have led a life of relative ease in China, but instead he chose to fight alongside both his Chinese and international comrades for the emancipation of a people, who were not his own. And when most of his overseas friends left China for good after the revolution, he later chose to return from the United States to take part in its long-term socialist construction.

An idealist, Epstein has not lost the ardent dreams of his youth, although the twists and turns of history compel him to muse deep into the past in search of understanding.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of when he began work in China and his 88th birthday on April 20, Epstein reflected long on the life of an individual and history.

Influences

Behind each critical decision Epstein made in his life, were those influences he encountered along the way. It just so happened that those stages coincided with the development of modern China.

"The earliest influence on me came from my socialist parents," explained Epstein.

Born into a Polish-Jewish family in 1915, Epstein was brought to China by his parents when he was two-years-old. His parents' political activities had cost them dear - as a result of his involvement in the Jewish labour uprising, his father had been imprisoned by the ruling Czarists, while his mother was once exiled to Siberia.

Following the outbreak of the First World War, Epstein's father was sent to Japan by the firm he then worked for to develop business in the Pacific area. As the German army approached Warsaw, his mother, with the baby Israel in her arms, fled the city, travelling east across Siberia by train to be reunited with her husband in Japan. But continually threatened by anti-Jewish sentiment in the several places they moved to, the family eventually sought refuge in the city of Tianjin in North China in 1920, where, according to Epstein's recollection, "Jews were never treated with prejudice."

As a child, Epstein witnessed, first hand, the miserable existence of the mass of ordinary Chinese people, exploitated and oppressed by the Japanese invaders and various western colonial powers and the corrupt Chinese warlord governments that held sway following the overthrow of the imperial power. The compassion felt by his father towards the desperately underprivileged Chinese he saw around him, prompted him to do what he could to alleviate their suffering.

The young Epstein inherited not only his father's heart for the poor and disposed, but also an egalitarian political view.

"We Jews are discriminated against, we should not discriminate against any other people again," Epstein quoted his father as saying.

Another important formative influence in Epstein's life was the well-known American journalist Edgar Snow.

As a young man, Epstein chose to pursue a career in journalism. In late 1933, the Tianjin-based Peking and Tientsin Times he was working for assigned him to write a review for a newly published book entitled "Far Eastern Front."

Fired by the book Epstein set out to meet the author, travelling by train to Beijing where he had his first meeting with Snow, who at that time was lecturing on journalism at Yenching University.

"I just went to the house where he lived and rang the door bell," Epstein recalls with a smile.

Following that first encounter, the 18-year-old Epstein paid more visits to Snow's home., And despite the 10 year age gap the two became friends.

Three years after that first encounter, Snow made a secret trip to Northwest China where he visited Yan'an, the base of Red Army's revolution, with the help of Sun Yat Sen's widow, Soong Ching Ling. During that trip, which lasted several weeks, Snow met many of those who had taken part in the historic Long March (1934-35), including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, the famous military strategist, among others. At that time a bloody conflict was raging across China between the nationalist forces led by Kuomintang leader, Chiang Kai Shek, greatly supported by many western powers, while at the same time the Japanese were taking more and more territory following their invasion of China.

Snow was the first foreign journalist to make contact with the elusive Red Army and Communists who had been forced to make a tactical retreat north and westwards, the now famous Long March, and the reports he subsequently filed were the first to tell the, as yet untold, other side of the story.

Snow's tales of his remarkable journey, a journalistic scoop, were a main topic of conversation between him and Epstein in the months to come. Snow showed Epstein many photographs he took during his time with the Red Army and the first draft of his book, "Red Star over China," a landmark account of that period. From Snow's enthusiastic descriptions, Epstein saw the hope of China and a fountain of strength in the heroism of the Chinese Communists and the patriotic youth who, against overwhelming odds, were carrying on the struggle for national independence and social emancipation. Of all the people Snow introduced in his talks, the legendary leader of Communists and Red Army Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung) left the deepest and most lasting impression on him, said Epstein. Snow had spent many days talking with Mao in Yan'an, observing and researching his background, details of which are unsentimentally recalled in "Red Star of China."

Several years later, Epstein read Mao's work "On Protracted War."

In the foreword of the 1991 version of his own book, "The People's War," Epstein wrote: "The charm of 'On Protracted War' is yielded by a young heart. It vibrantly and vividly analyzes the events and trends which were so crucial to China and the whole world at that time." The book inspired the young Epstein to pursue a cause to which he was to be involved all his life.

Defining moments

Throughout his life, Epstein has tried his best to work as an honest journalist.

With unaffected sympathy, sharp insight, and the professional spirit of a realist, he has faithfully reported the defining moments of China's mid to late 20th century history, events which have also composed the important chapters of his life.

At the age of 20, he was an active supporter of the "December 9" Chinese student movement which, in 1935, helped spark the nation to rise against the Japanese invaders.

From 1937 on, he covered the whole course of the Chinese people's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. He reported many decisive military actions and battles, sometimes risking his life to get to the front .

It was whilst working in Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong Province, that he first met Soong Ching Ling, to whom he was to remain a lifelong and trusted friend and also later her biographer.

In 1945, as a correspondent for the New York Times, Time, and United Labour Press, Epstein joined a delegation comprising both Chinese and foreign journalists, which succeeded in getting through the many blockades deployed by the Kuomintang to reach Yan'an.

In the base of China's Red power, he, as Snow had done several years earlier, met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and many other top figures from the Chinese Communist Party and famous military leaders, as well as the many intellectuals, soldiers and peasants, then living and fighting together as one.

Snow, also, had been particularly struck at the contrast between the leaders, their subordinates and the people in the Nationalist areas under Chiang Kai Shek and the Communists. In the Communist held areas there were no privileges, they ate, lived and shared equally, whereas in the Nationalist areas clear hierarchical divisions existed, Snow observed.

During his time in Yan'an Epstein broached many constructive proposals with the Party leaders on promulgating the Communist Party's cause to the outside world.

He edited the first ever piece of English news reported by Xinhua News Agency, which was transmitted to the outside world via an electric wave from a hand-powered generator inside one of the cave dwellings of Yan'an.

His tireless observations during the war resulted in a series of penetrating reports, and two books, "The People's War," and "The Unfinished Revolution." These writings not only impacted abroad, but inspired many young Chinese to join the revolution and resist Japanese occupation.

In 1951, Epstein, who had gone to live in the US, returned to China. At the invitation of Soong Ching Ling, he took on the role of executive editor at the newly founded magazine China Reconstructs, later renamed China Today. He served as editor-in-chief until his retirement at the age of 70, thereafter as editor-in-chief emeritus.

However, during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), Epstein had suffered from political persecution for five years. But he has never lost his faith in China.

Epstein has just finished his memoirs, a retrospective overview of that part of Chinese history to which he has been an eyewitness .

When asked how he feels about his expansive new home, provided by the State Administration of Foreign Experts, to mark his great contribution to the development of China, he shrugs good-humouredly, but nonchalantly: "I don't need this comfortableness actually," he said, gesturing to the 200 square-metre apartment, which he moved into a year ago.

"I'm more accustomed to a tough life," he said. "But I'm glad that now I can access my books easily." Instead of being packed in a cramped room, these books are now ranged neatly on two long rows of bookshelves.

Adopted nation

Epstein was given Chinese citizenship in 1957.

"There are Asian-Americans, so why not a non-Asian Chinese?" He used to explain to those Westerners puzzled by his decision of make China his permanent home and his taking of Chinese nationality.

"I grew up in China," he repeated several times, the emphasis a clear indicator of the strong affection he holds for his adopted nation.

He is respected and loved by the Chinese people, for whom he perhaps embodies a longed for international fraternity, said Epstein.

Over the years he has come to know and exchanged ideas with four generations of top Chinese officials.

On April 20, the newly appointed Premier Wen Jiabao visited Epstein at his home to personally congratulate him on his 88th birthday.

Despite having spent only a decade or so off Chinese soil during his lifetime, there are still many traits in him, apart, of course, from the obvious physical ones, that remind a first-time acquaintance of his Western roots , particularly his sense of humour, his preference for using English to Chinese, his easy American manner, coupled with an inner self-possession.

It is obvious that Epstein is himself quite comfortable with his multi-faceted identity. European Jew, American, or Chinese, it is unnecessary to ask him to choose which befits him most.