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BEIJING, August 21 (Xinhuanet) -- This year, China is marking the 70th anniversary of the end of its War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. During the war, many foreigners came to China to help. Canadian doctor Norman Bethune was one of them. He gave his life for the cause of the Chinese people’s liberation. He has been remembered as a friend and a hero in China ever since.
Cui Guijing, 95, is visiting Bethune's grave, helped by her two granddaughters. She has visited every year for 75 years.
“He helped the Chinese people a lot. He saved many lives, including many soldiers; some were thought to be incurable,” Cui said.
In 1938, Cui was a nurse in her twenties working with Norman Bethune. He was a chest surgeon leading an 18-person international medical team.
They arrived at the frontline, in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border area, in June 1938. The area, to the south of Beijing, was inside the Japanese occupied area. Communist guerrillas had been fighting the Japanese there since the war broke out in 1937.
In the next four weeks, the medical team treated more than 147 soldiers who fully recovered and returned to the fight. Documents show Bethune performed 115 surgeries without a break for 69 hours during a battle.
“He worked more than 16 hours a day, and was directly involved in 11 battles. He performed more than 1,200 surgeries and treated more than 10,000 people in Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border area then,” said Wang Jinzhao of Bethune International Peace Hospital in Shijiazhuang.
To further help Chinese troops, Bethune started a wartime medical school, later named after him, and wrote medical textbooks for guerrilla warfare.
On November 12, 1939, Bethune died from an infection after he cut himself during surgery. He was 49 years old.
On his gravestone, there is an epitaph written by Mao Zedong:
"What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinese people's liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism, from which every Chinese Communist must learn".
These words have been passed down from one generation to another; they are still in textbooks, for every Chinese student to ponder.
The medical school he founded was later named after him. It is now the Bethune International Peace Hospital.
“His spirit is a mirror for us to review our mission, so we can do our jobs better and serve the people,” said Song Jinghui, vice dean of Bethune International Peace Hospital.
Every year, memorial events commemorate Bethune. His international humanitarian spirit has inspired Chinese doctors from generation to generation.
(Source: CNTV.cn)
