Matt Schiavenza

For much of the Maoist era China was closed off to the outside world, and foreigners comprised only the minutest fraction of the country’s several hundred million strong population. Two of the best known foreigners present during the Mao era are Sidney Shapiro and Sidney Rittenberg, both Jewish-Americans who arrived in China even before the Communists prevailed in the 1946-49 Civil War.

Both men are still alive and still make themselves available to the media. Shapiro is 93, Rittenberg 86. Interestingly, each man strongly dislikes the other despite their uniquely dovetailed personal histories. This article goes into a bit more detail about the two, and provides an interesting glimpse into what laowai life was like at a very different time in China’s history.