Sidney Rittenberg, former American advisor to Mao, dies at age 98
Sidney Rittenberg, a former American advisor to Mao Tse-tung who spent long spells in prison as he fell in and out of favor with China's communist leaders, has died in the state of Arizona, the New York Times reported. He was 98.
The rebellious son of a prominent family from Charleston, South Carolina, Rittenberg arrived in China as a US army linguist at the end of World War II, and was soon swept up in the country's epochal civil war and communist revolution.
Fluent in Mandarin, he became a member of the Chinese communist party in 1946 after being discharged from the US Army.
Hiking 46 days to reach Mao's mountain redoubt, he served as an interpreter and traveled with the red army.
https://news.yahoo.com/sidney-rittenberg-former-american-advisor-mao-dies-age-164027655.html
