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发扬无产阶级国际主义精神!缅怀伊莎白·柯鲁克革命的、战斗的一生
无套裤汉2023-08-29
https://blog.creaders.net/user_blog_diary.php?did=NDY5Mzky
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/world/asia/isabel-crook-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=2GUrGnNuLOJXgCyKuaN23EEneJ6vgzGDq1jC807J-iI530gU1WXJ_BmnUtydab8g05gzm-NBNSDt3VMUqOumv2mIp_9v32gRP1xP_g1x-ev3Zm2KX9ojauVMVQPkc1BoUJ9nUDcjlurkdfw9ZjHDHuaRq2TIW8csXozKVIuL88FJVQuj1OYROM7Kuh64o2EFO5GYQWU8LzoXOH49av4KMy9ScoxmnAp8KoQ8_Lm8Wlyyu3_fIIY15OL-mD4YSn8pbk_4SGa4zhy5OL_CsIDQiEuEtf3xsIZOhMbwCCrFXMzrkkLNChlnT0GwduwX1VOurfhqMCHarwVgjT5dV2U&smid=url-share
Isabel Crook, 107,Dies; Her Life in China Spanned a Century of Change
Anoted educator and anthropologist, she spent almost her entire life in China,where she was a committed friend of the Communist government.
IsabelCrook in 1940, when she was Isabel Brown. Her life in China spanned theJapanese invasion and World War II, as well as the subsequent Communistrevolution.Credit...via Crook family
By Clay Risen
Aug.25, 2023
IsabelCrook, a China-born daughter of Canadian missionaries who became one of heradopted country’s most celebrated foreign residents, beloved as an educator,anthropologist and articulate advocate for the Communist state, died on Sundayin Beijing. She was 107.
Herson Carl Crook said the cause of death, in a hospital, was pneumonia.
Mrs.Crook was among the last of a generation of Westerners born to missionaries inChina in the decades before the Japanese invasion, World War II and thesubsequent Communist revolution.
Theexperience defined them. Some, like Henry Luce, thepublisher of Time and Life, became ardent anti-Communists. But others,including Mrs. Crook, perceived the Communists as saviors who were lifting thecountry out of colonial squalor. (Still others, like the Americandiplomat John Paton Davies, madefamous as a target of McCarthy-era attacks, fell somewhere in between.)
As ananthropologist, Mrs. Crook saw herself as an observer of social change; as aCommunist, she saw herself as an agent of it.
Afterreturning to China from college in Toronto in 1939, she conducted field workamong the impoverished, isolated villages of western Sichuan Province,traveling through ravines and mountain passes by foot, mule-cart and even zipline.
Mrs.Crook with her husband, David, in about 1947, when they taught English invillages and towns controlled by the Communist Party during China’s civil war.Credit...viaCrook family
Shemet her future husband, David Crook, in China. A dedicated British Communist,he had fought against the fascists during the Spanish Civil War while alsoworking as a spy for the Soviet NKVD, a precursor to the KGB. When the fightingended, the NKVD sent him to perform similar work in China.
AfterWorld War II began, the couple moved to Britain, where David joined the RoyalAir Force. Isabel worked in a munitions factory and joined the Communist Party.They married in 1942.
TheCrooks returned to China in 1947 to teach English in the villages and townscontrolled by the Chinese Communist Party during the country’s civil war. Theywere among the few Westerners to accompany the columns of Communists duringtheir victorious entry into Beijing in 1949, marking the founding of the newstate.
TheCrooks became true believers in Chinese communism. They were on the foundingfaculty of what became the Beijing Foreign Studies University, where theyhelped train several generations of Chinese diplomats.
Theywrote two books together based on their years spent among Chinese villagers:“Revolution in a Chinese Village: Ten Mile Inn” (1959) and “The First Years ofYangyi Commune” (1966).
IsabelCrook in 1963 outside the tomb of the revolutionary statesman Sun Yat-sen inNanjing, China.Credit...via Crook family
Bothbooks have become classics in the field of Chinese ethnography, thanks to theiranalysis of how world-historical changes like the Communist revolution affectedeveryday rural life.
Unlikeother Westerners, the Crooks chose to live on campus, alongside their studentsand fellow faculty members. They wore simple sackcloth outfits, like theirneighbors. No one called Mrs. Crook “professor”; she was always “ComradeIsabel.”
Theirfaith remained unshaken even after David was charged with espionage andimprisoned between 1967 and 1973, at the height of the Cultural Revolution.Mrs. Crook insisted he was innocent, but her defense backfired, and she waskept under house arrest for several years.
Thetwo were released in 1973 and rehabilitated by Premier Zhou Enlai. They latersaid they forgave the Chinese government for its excesses.
Mrs.Crook’s most recent book, and her most significant, published in 2013, is “Prosperity’s Predicament: Identity,Reform, and Resistance in Rural Wartime China (1940-1941),” which is based onher prewar field notes and was written with Christina Gilmartin and Yu Xiji.
One ofits editors, Gail Hershatter, a history professor at the University ofCalifornia-Santa Cruz, said the book offers a unique look at a rural societythat even in China, with its rapid urbanization, seems to many like a foreigncountry.
Mrs.Crook with President Xi Jinping in 2019, when he awarded her the FriendshipMedal of China, the country’s highest honor bestowed on a foreigner.Credit...GregBaker/POOL, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“Shemaintained a lifelong interest in what’s happening outside the major cities,beyond the view of historians and the people that keep the written record,” Dr.Hershatter said in a phone interview. “She had a good instinct for what’sinteresting, and what about daily life is really worth writing down.”
IsabelJoy Brown was born on Dec. 15, 1915, in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. Herparents, Homer and Muriel (Hockey) Brown,were Methodist missionaries from Canada who worked in the country’s schools anduniversities.
Shegraduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in anthropology in 1939.While living in wartime Britain she pursued a doctorate in the same subject atthe London School of Economics but did not complete it.
Inaddition to her son Carl, she is survived by two other sons, Michael and Paul;her sister, Julia Baker; six grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. David Crook died in2000 at 90.
ThoughMrs. Crook remained committed to the vision of the Chinese Revolution, she didnot shrink from criticizing the government, especially after she retired fromteaching in 1981.
Sheand her husband were enthralled by the protests around Tiananmen Square in1989, and appalled by the government’s subsequent crackdown,killing hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
Buther occasional criticism did not keep the Chinese government, and the Chinesepeople, from bestowing her with accolades. In 2019, President Xi Jinpingawarded her the Friendship Medal of China, the country’s highest honoravailable to a foreigner.
Clay Risen is an obituaries reporter forThe Times. Previously, he was a senior editor on the Politics desk and a deputyop-ed editor on the Opinion desk. He is the author, most recently, of “AmericanRye: A Guide to the Nation’s Original Spirit.” More about Clay Risen
Aversion of this article appears in print on Aug. 27, 2023, Section A,Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: IsabelCrook, 107, Witness to a Century of Change in China, Dies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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伊莎白·柯鲁克(英语:Isabel Crook,1915年12月15日—2023年8月20日)是英属加籍社会人类学家、教授、教育家,也是中华人民共和国的国际友人,国际共产主义战士,以及新中国英语教学事业的拓荒者。 出生于成都,旧姓布朗,曾用中文名饶素梅。
现在,虽然革命社会主义的伟大事业处于暂时退潮时期,但是后代人必将取法他们先贤们的战斗表率,不屈不挠地战斗到底,直到无产阶级的人民民主革命专政取得最终胜利![Mark Wain2023-08-29]
(续下)
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