Sidney Rittenberg is a man who is impossible to pigeon hole. As a Los Angeles Times book reviewer put it in 1979, instead of being called The Man Who Stayed Behind, his autobiography should have been titled 'The Man Who Was Very Smart And Very Dumb At The Same Time' or 'The Foreigner Who Did Not See He Was Foreign' or even 'The Idealist Who Applied Communist Principles To Capitalism And Became A Rich Man'.
Another 24 action-filled years have lapsed since then. Now, the octogenarian American who denounced capitalism, embraced communism, was falsely imprisoned twice by the same communists, and lived in China for 35 years, has turned successful entrepreneur. Together with his wife of 47 years, Yulin, he is now exploiting his unique experience of China.
Since their move to Seattle from China in 1980, the spry 82-year-old native of Charleston, South Carolina and Yulin have acted as advisers to US government agencies, public figures and businesses involved in China. Evangelist Billy Graham is a 'treasured client' whose three China visits they arranged, accompanying him and translating on the trips. Their clients include Intel, McCaw Cellular Communications, Nintendo of America, Levi Strauss, Hughes Aircraft and Polaroid. Last year they made six business trips to China.
Rittenberg's life reads like several lived simultaneously. Born in 1921, he was a student communist in America's deep south and became a fluent Putonghua speaker, thanks to specialist army language training. Having secured his discharge he joined the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in Shanghai in 1946. From there he was co-opted to be an interpreter for the truce teams set up by US special envoy General George Marshall to conciliate all three sides - US Army, nationalists and communists - in the Chinese civil war.
In that capacity, he met Chinese Communist Party leader Zhou Enlai, who invited him to the communist 'capital-in-the-caves' at Yanan and introduced him to Mao Zedong. Determined to join the revolutionary struggle, Zhou's protege was soon translating party propaganda into English for what became Radio Beijing. He continued this work, when not in jail, during his 35-odd years in China.
Rittenberg joined the Communist Party, but four years later his personal links with the leaders failed to save him from jail on false charges of being a US spy. Even after six years in solitary confinement, his faith in the party never faltered.
