I came to know Jack through work as Jack had been active in fostering understanding of China as a culture, a nation and a people, in the United States. Jack was a quiet man. Maybe he knew too much. Yet I felt, and can still feel the gravity in him as a man.
Jack was aging. I don't remember when I started to send Christmas cards to him and his wife. This year I sent him a card but didn't get one back. My guess was that Jack had become too weak to write. On February 4, 1999, it became Breaking News on Yahoo that John Stewart Service had passed away due to heart disease in his retirement home in Oakland, California. When one reads about Jack, one also delves into some important lessons of the modern history of Sino-US relations.
Just a year ago, Jack sent a Xerox copy of a typewriter-produced announcement that Caroline, his wife of more than fifty years, had passed away shortly before Christmas. I was saddened because I had the privilege to have met Caroline a few times and she was a very kind person. Jack was a strong man in every sense of the word; still on that occasion we decided to invite him to have Chinese brunch at a restaurant in Berkeley. The restaurant served some authentic Chinese items, such as soybean milk and Chinese oil stick as they called it here in America, wanton in red chilly sauce, steamed buns, onion cakes, et al. At least they looked authentic. Jack was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, child of a missionary family at the beginning of last century. It always brought him great pleasure to have those favorite dishes of his childhood. However, as years passed, Jack's health also eroded. He had lost most of his vision from both eyes and a lot of weight and thus looked like a bird with sunglasses.
It pained him a little to ask others to give him a ride back and forth; only this time he had no choice. Up to last year when I saw him for the final time his mind was still sharp, his intellect intact. Like always, he asked about everyone and everything in our life.
When we spotted Professor S.S. Chern (Chen Xingshen) and his family in the same restaurant, Jack got up, cancer and all, and all 88 years of him, and went to Professor and Mrs. Chern to say hello in his clear and quiet way. They knew each other from their days working as faculty and staff at the University of California at Berkeley. They bragged, in whispering giggles, about how many parts of their bodies had gone rotten as if broken organs were medals of honor. It was humorously somber for me as a youngster.
Although there was more than 50 years between us, I didn't remember even once that Jack ever turned down an invitation from us. He was generous with his time and warmth, something that was appreciated by all around him. It never crossed Jack's mind that he was a celebrity, even though his life amounted to a thousand times bigger or deeper than any of the shallow figures coming down to us from all walks of life in this incredibly self-making and self-promoting culture. My blessing had been that I am not a star-gazer thus never looked up at him up as a celebrity type. Only with the eyes of the ordinary and for the ordinary I could felt the height of that man. Jack simply treated everyone equally with respect and affection and talked ordinarily like we were his friends or children. I always treasured the equality he radiated across time and cultures. He made instant connections with you when you didn't pretend to be someone else.
About five years ago in the same restaurant, we invited Jack and Caroline to have Sunday brunch with us. It was their 50th Anniversary. They told us about how Jack who was stationed in Kunming at the time had to travel to Haiphong (Vietnam) by train to get married with Caroline because she had trouble getting her travel papers straight to China and Jack had diplomatic privilege thus could get in and out of China freely. Haiphong was the closest point they could meet and get married. It must have been a hectic time but the way the story was told did not reflected any of the tumult. Fifty years later it was all serenity with a few giggles.
Jack loved Sichuan pickled noodles. We ordered a bowl just for him. Still he thought that everyone should have some; in his mind the entire world must have been craving for the soupy noodles ever since he was a child. We smiled at him and let him have the whole bowl all by himself. So, there he was, slurping his way to the last drop of the soup. It made his face glow. He was a neat person, except when facing down to a bowl of his favorite noodles. I made the mistake of cleaning up after him. He hissed at me for meddling with his joy. But Caroline straightened him up by pointing out that he should be polite in front of children. It was all good fun on a sunny Sunday morning in Northern California.
Those who knew Jack have stories about how he became a different person once he landed in China, where he had returned many times in the 30s and 40s and again in the 70s and 80s. "He seemed to draw energy from the land beneath." People would say hello to him in the streets of Beijing. "Xie Weisi, ninhao!" China was his homeland. So much so that he could lead many of us on a tour of Beijing streets and tell us which street was called the Water Street and still bears the bullet holes from the days of the Boxer Rebellion. Jack was walking history and yet he never bragged about anything he knew.
Shortly after I met Jack through work, I presented part of my humble writing about my childhood and asked Jack to read and critique. He was also an excellent editor at the University of California Press. It was thoughtless of me to throw some insignificant work at Jack but he didn't seem to mind at all. He patiently read through my clumsy writing and invited me to lunch. The lunch was quite a show in the retirement center. When Jack and Caroline led me through the buffet tables, other folks shouted across the dining hall at them. "Jack, Caroline, having a young man for lunch, eh?" It was a big deal for them to have visitors, especially young people. Jack was happy to show off this way as he smiled his secret smile without looking at the envious crowd. Ah, about my writing: "it's too tearful." That was all he said. It sounded so much like Jack.
At his funeral, I learned from his children (who are now in their fifties or even sixties) that "being a man" was what Jack taught them to become through the years. A man shouldn't be too tearful, obviously, no matter how tough the going was in life.
"Too tearful." I shall never forget that. Those words came from a man who had endured so much in his life. It was a phrase worth passing down to many generations when we or our children feel that we could no longer carry the weight thrown on our shoulders, be it glory or misery.
Jack spoke impeccable Mandarin and Sichuanese and could hold a fast and musical conversation with villagers in the heartland of Sichuan. It was always a grave mistake if a taxi driver tried to circle the city in order to charge extra. Jack could tell him which Hutong to zigzag in Beijing or Chongqing and Chengdu and put the cabbie in deep shame.
Jack's incredible knowledge came from non-stop learning as he had this "incredible thirst for knowledge." One day he presented this Chinese newspaper and asked me what those three Chinese characters meant in the name of the City of Melbourne. The translation system in Mainland China has become confusing through the years. Of course he made fun of those Chinese Americans of Cantonese descent who tried to show off their Mandarin in front of him. Jack made fun of them only because they wouldn't let Jack be the interpreter, which was what he was there for that day. So he said out loud in perfect Mandarin, "Ain't afraid of Heaven, Ain't afraid of earth, but scared to death to listen to Cantonese trying to speak Mandarin." He at age of 80 was of course joking, acting as an old fool in a Chinese way only he knew. I laughed my wits out, it was plain hilarious.
Some people might complain that Jack was salty in his talks. Rather, let's put it this way, some people expected him to be bitter because he was a direct victim of the infamous McCarthyism. He was jailed and his career was destroyed in front of national audience. But Jack as I saw him was a person way above any petty bitterness or victimhood. He might sound a bit impatient with shallowness and pretentiousness, simply because he was a man who soaked into the wisdom of two worlds and got the best of his opportunities in terms of learning and self-enrichment. Jack solicited no sympathy or pity from any one simply because not many in the entire world was stronger than he was. Jack kept his eye on "the true facts as he saw them." He reported that way on his job and lived that way in his life. He might have praised Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Zhou Enlai and others in Yan'an some 60 years ago when Communists were uniformly condemned in the West. Jack based his recommendation on the distinction that Chiang Kai-shek and his gang were highly corrupted while Mao and his Red Army were clean and aspired to "save China" thus China would the Mao's and the US would be better off to foster a relationship with Mao. Jack was right, in spite of huge ideological differences. Jack was wrong because he was prosecuted for speaking for the Communists. Jack spoke his mind because his mind was sharper and more penetrating than mean-spirited ideologues. Decades later he was deeply bothered by the bloodshed in Tiananmen Square.
Jack thought for himself, and he wouldn't form alliance with anyone or any ideology in life for personal gain. His connection with the ordinary folks and everyday life was too strong to inflate himself. He took a stance that was hard for any individual in any society. He paid a price but there was nothing to regret. He would not stoop himself for a trend. Jack didn't want to join a club for a bowl of noodles. Damn any ideology. As a result, he became a higher celebrity and merited more celebration than any short-lived glamour in the minds of those who truly appreciated him. Jack was a star while others could be only comets at their best.
Now, Jack has passed away. All I can remember about him was "he was a decent man." All his life, he had been searching for and defending human decency. He was disappointed many times but he was never too tearful.
李敦白（1921年8月14日－），英文名Sidney Rittenberg，美国学者，1944年—1979年期间曾长居在中国，是第一个加入中国共产党的美国人。曾在延安工作，得以近距离观察中共领导人。解放后，因先后牵涉苏联间谍案和“白求恩-延安造反团”而两次入狱。1993年出版了The Man Who Stayed Behind一书。
哈哈哈哈 O(∩_∩)O哈哈~ 好久不来了，不小心看了一眼自己主页，发现自动关联了自己以往发过的帖，点进这个看了一眼，笑个半死。。。敢情我当初还发过这么搞笑的东西啊，我自己完全不记得了 
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发表于 2012-2-29 22:11:50
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发表于 2012-3-1 02:29:37
