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Sidney Rittenberg went to China as an American G.I. at the end of World War II and fell in love with the country. He was discharged as a Chinese translator for the U.S. Army, but decided to stay there.

By the time Rittenberg came back to the United States, more than 30 years later, he had become the only American citizen to join the Chinese Communist Party. He translated English for Chairman Mao Zedong, told off Madame Mao during the Cultural Revolution, and endured 16 years of solitary confinement in Chinese prisons.

Enlarge Courtesy of Sidney Rittenberg

Sidney Rittenberg exhorts a crowd in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to defend Mao Zedong Thought — or Maoism — in December 1966.