While this is my first visit to Mainland China, I have visited Hong Kong and Taiwan many times over the last 30 years, drawn to this nation and its people by their important place in world politics and human history.
Much of what I know about China I learned from Walter H. Judd, who was a medical missionary in China in the 1920s and the 1930s. Dr. Judd is relevant to our discussion because he was a major influence on the American conservative movement from the 1950s through the 1980s. Indeed, what he said about China was very nearly the gospel for many conservatives.
After a year's study at the University of Nanking, Dr. Judd was posted to the Shaowu mission in the town of Shaowu, Fukien Province, so far into the interior that it could only be reached by a 10day boat trip up the Min River. He spent the next five years in Shaowu, caring for the sick and the dying, facing death at the hands of bandits, criticizing the Nationalists, debating with Communists, including Gen. Lin Piao, going for months without seeing another white face, and falling deeply in love with China until, his life threatened by persistent bouts of malaria, he reluctantly came home to the United States.
Dr. Judd had many Communists as his patients in Shaowu, and he was always impressed by their discipline. They first came through his town in 1926 when they were part of Chiang Kaishek's united front against the warlords. "They were the first military outfit I ever saw," said Dr. Judd, "that never had a case of venereal disease."
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