Chinese clothes and speaking fluent Chinese. “There are few doctors and little medicine here, and my patients need me. It is duty that asks me to stay,” he reportedly wrote to one of his friends. According to Chinese media reports, another reason he wanted to stay was that he had a lot of confidence in the CPC, as he had close relationships with many of its members. Because Bussiere stayed in China, he met the Chinese woman who would become his wife, Wu Sidan. She was 52 years his junior. Despite this huge age gap, the couple cared for each other and married in 1952. Everything seemed right for Bussiere in Beijing – he and his best friend d’Hormon even bought a tomb in the city’s western mountains. He didn’t want to leave China, even in death. Their dream, however, was broken by the Korean War (19501953), during which the Chinese army joined North Korea to fight against the US. Meanwhile, in the First Indochina War (1946-1954), the new Chinese government stood against France to support the communist Viet Minh. In this political climate, an anti-imperialism campaign was sweeping through China, with all Westerners placed under tight supervision. After finding out that several foreign agents had contacted Bussiere, the Chinese government revoked Bussiere’s medical license in July 1954 and ordered him to either take Chinese citizenship or leave the country – without his wife. Bussiere chose the latter. “I regard China as my second mother country and the Chinese people as my people… I believe I deserve to be China’s guest. My entire fortune and all of my friendships are in China… and I did what a Chinese patriot would do [during my stay in China]. Apart from that, I just did what a doctor should do… Could you allow a man as old and diseased as I am to live in Beijing if I promise not to work and pose a burden [on the government]?” Bussiere wrote in a letter to Premier Zhou Enlai. “If the law does not permit [this], could you please keep my wife’s Chinese citizenship and allow her to go with me?” In October 1954, Bussiere and Wu Sidan left Beijing for the region of Auvergne in central France, bringing with them only US$30 and Bussiere’s scripts, letters, photos, certificates and pet bird. Their five crates of antiques were confiscated by Chinese customs and were stored in the French embassy. With almost no money, Bussiere and his wife had to start from scratch. Given that Bussiere was already 82 years old, Wu Sidan, who was born into a wealthy Chinese family, did the housework and labored on a farm by herself. Bussiere died in 1958, leaving his wife to raise their two-year-old son alone. She never remarried. “After the Cultural Revolution [1966-1976] broke out in China, it got harder and harder for my mother to contact her family in Beijing,”
NEWSCHINA I October 2015
Courtesy of Interviewee
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Wedding portrait of Bussiere and his wife, Wu Sidan
recalled Bussiere’s son. “She often stared at the mountains around our home in a daze, saying that they were very similar to the western mountains in Beijing [where Bussiere’s garden villa was located]. Once, when she watched a Chinese film, she burst into tears at the images of China.” According to Bussiere’s son, Wu returned to Bussiere’s Chinese villa twice before her death in 2013 – once in 1983 and again in 1992 – but she saw nothing but an abandoned building covered with dust and weeds. In 2013, the Beijing government defined Bussiere’s garden villa as a cultural relic deserving of protection and restored the building. Before that, few Chinese people knew what the wasteland was, and only a few of the old villagers living in the area could remember Bussiere, or what he looked like. “I found a note written by my father in 1953 when collecting his effects,” Bussiere’s son said. “It reads: ‘I would not like to organize my materials, since I have been accustomed to their haphazard fashion. I closed my drawer and perhaps will not open it again… But someday, my children or grandchildren might see this note, being told that their father/grandfather earned some small honors in China.’”
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