Bethune’s legacy resonates deeply in China, Canada

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and the World Anti-Fascist War. This series of special reports by China Daily presents how and why China cherishes and keeps revisiting the wartime friendship with its foreign friends.

The risk of infection from battlefield wounds was so perilous that Norman Bethune, the legendary Canadian surgeon who saved many lives during the Chinese people’s fight against Japanese invaders, made the prevention of such infections a top priority.

The danger was so high, in fact, that Bethune himself died of sepsis in 1939 after he cut his finger while operating on a wounded soldier and the cut became infected.

So visitors to the site of the Bethune Model Ward, a wartime hospital in Wutai county of northern China’s Shanxi province, gain even greater respect for Bethune when they realize how, despite a highly challenging situation and heavy workload, the Canadian doctor was able to minimize infections among the wounded while also making strides in medical staff training and the building of medical facilities.

In 1938, Bethune, who was also a member of the Communist Party of Canada, lived and worked in Wutai county, where he led efforts to convert a local temple into the ward for treating soldiers of the Eighth Route Army and cultivating medical staff.

Due to a daunting lack of medical and sterilization supplies, “making do with everything available” became a necessary strategy, said Bai Xue, a gallery guide at a memorial exhibition hall dedicated to Bethune in Wutai county.

Many visitors to the hall were intrigued by a steel food box displayed in the sterilization room at the ward.

“They put tools including scissors in such a steel container after an operation, put the lid on, and then placed it into a steamer to sterilize,” she said.

Through details regarding his stay of around three months in the neighboring county of Lingqiu, in what today is the city of Datong, Shanxi province, people can gain an appreciation of Bethune’s great workload and the achievements he made regarding medical facilities and surgical staff training.

During his stay in Lingqiu, Bethune performed more than 700 surgeries and treated over 1,000 individuals, said Ren Dong, head of the Datong Red Culture Museum.

“He also trained dozens of surgical staff members for the front lines and led efforts in founding a series of operating rooms and first aid rooms,” Ren added.

After Bethune’s passing, Comrade Mao Zedong wrote an essay titled “In Memory of Norman Bethune”, which was dated Dec 21, 1939. The article became more popular after its inclusion in many Chinese textbooks.

“We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him,” Mao wrote of Bethune.

In 2013, while meeting with David Johnston, then Canada’s governor general, President Xi Jinping said the Chinese people have profound, friendly feelings toward the Canadian people, and Norman Bethune is a household name in China because of his deeds in supporting the Chinese people’s fight against fascism.

At a ceremony held in September 2015 in Beijing, Xi presented a medal to Bethune’s grandson Mark William Bethune to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. The grandson was present as the representative of Dr Bethune’s descendants.

Diana Tan, counsellor for public diplomacy at the Canadian embassy in China, said the spirit of Bethune “remains strong today”, and he was “a figure of historical importance to both Chinese and Canadian people”.

Starting well over a hundred years ago, many Canadians came to China before Bethune, and they founded schools and spread Western medical and health knowledge, Tan told a symposium about Bethune held in Beijing in November.

“They also remind us of the lasting impacts of people-to-people connections for both of our countries,” she said.

Stephen Chappell, an executive member of the Canada-China Friendship Society in Ottawa, became interested in Bethune after he came to China for the first time 20 years ago to teach English courses in Anqing, Anhui province. There, he recalled, a local old man “passionately recounted the story of Dr Norman Bethune” after learning that Chappell was from Canada.

Chappell traced the footsteps of Bethune in China, visiting many relevant sites, including the Bethune Model Ward.

He found that there are a number of memorial facilities built in memory of Bethune in the country, and many hospitals have been named after Bethune or have installed statues of him.

“The legacy of Dr Bethune fills me, as a Canadian, with pride,” he wrote last year in an article that was cited by many news outlets worldwide.

Consistent dedication

Tang Jinhui, Party secretary of Shanxi Bethune Hospital in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, said that he and his fellow staff members are proud of the name of their hospital. Tang and his colleagues believe that the facility’s name reminds people that Bethune stayed in China for nearly two years, with a significant portion of that time spent working and living in Shanxi.

Having long been inspired by Bethune’s spirit, the hospital continues to provide medical support to China’s remote areas and has joined the nation’s medical assistance missions to countries including the African nation of Togo.

Tang summed up the many aspects of Bethune’s contributions and legacy: He treated wounded soldiers under extremely harsh conditions, trained a number of Chinese medical personnel, invented a mobile battlefield surgery tool kit suited to local conditions, and helped to significantly reduce the mortality rate among the wounded.

“Such achievements illustrate the profound blend of Bethune’s dedication to his profession and his devotion to medical science innovation,” he added.

The love and respect for Bethune’s consistent dedication to internationalism and his profession have lasted for decades, not only among ordinary people, but also among medical professionals from many countries outside China, including his motherland of Canada.

The Norman Bethune Symposium, organized by the Centre for Blood Research of The University of British Columbia in Canada, called Bethune “a Canadian physician who in the 1930s spearheaded the implementation of the first practical mobile blood collection and distribution system”.

“His approaches were novel and entirely without precedent, and shaped blood transfusion practices throughout the world,” according to the symposium’s website.

Andrew Beckett, a professor at the University of Toronto and lieutenant colonel of the Royal Canadian Medical Service, noted that Bethune served in the Canadian military in World War I, and “that profoundly affected him”.

When addressing the 13th Annual Norman Bethune Symposium in Vancouver in April, Beckett quoted Bethune as saying, “I see little of war’s glory and most of war’s waste.”

Beckett, who calls himself “a big Bethune amateur historian”, has lived in Montreal, where Bethune worked at the research center of Royal Victoria Hospital, and has visited many sites in Canada where Bethune had stayed.

“He experienced the horror and the suffering of war,” Beckett said.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

Tang, Party secretary of Shanxi Bethune Hospital, said, “We revisit the influence of Bethune’s spirit on China’s medical sector because its value is not just about saving lives during wartime — it has deeply shaped the direction of modern medicine’s evolution in China.”

Douglas Prescott, superintendent of the Canadian International School of Beijing, praised doctors and educators like Bethune who dedicated themselves to keeping the world safe and making it a better place.

“We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for people like them,” he said. “Dr Bethune’s legacy left a lasting impression, not a last impression…. So we remember him today for a lasting impression of compassion, of kindness, of humility.”