The Spirit Lives On

By Ma Miaomiao

Joan Hinton never could have imagined that China would become the destination of her lifetime. She came， saw， experienced， anticipating more progress and development to occur nationwide， and then just ended up living here her whole life.

In 1945， 23-year-old Hinton was one of the few female nuclear physicists involved in the Manhattan Project， the code name for the American project set up in 1942 to develop an atom bomb.

Even as she rejoiced in the endeavors success， she was deeply shocked when the U.S. dropped two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945 to force a Japanese surrender during World War II（WWII）. She then quit the project and left the U.S.

“I did not want to spend my life figuring out how to kill people，” she told U.S. broadcaster National Public Radio back in 2002. “I wanted to figure out how to let people have a better life， not a worse one.”

In 1948， she arrived in Shanghai and managed to travel to Yanan， a former seat of the Communist Party of China （CPC） Central Committee， where she married her longtime boyfriend Erwin Engst. The couple then settled down in China and spent the next decades working as dairy farmers， designing， building and running the countrys first mechanical farm. Their united energies greatly contributed to Chinas stockbreeding and mechanization， as well as talent training.

“Hinton was a participant and a pioneer in the great cause of socialism in China， as well as a practitioner of the lofty revolutionary spirit of China，” Lin Songtian， head of the Chinese Peoples Association for Friendship With Foreign Countries， said during an event in commemoration of the 100th birth anniversary of Hinton. “She always had a clear and definite goal of creating a better and prosperous life for all of humanity.”

China life

Hinton came from an intellectual background. Her mother Carmelita， the daughter of a Nebraska newspaper editor， was a campaigner for womens rights. In 1935， Carmelita set up Putney School， a private， co-ed boarding school committed to progressive educational methods. The school flourished and still exists today. Her brother William Hinton， a close observer of China， wrote many CPC-related books including Fanshen： A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village.

Her husband gathered his first impressions of China from the 1937 book Red Star Over China， written by Edgar Snow， an account of the CPC that was published when the Party was still obscure to Westerners. He came to China as a member of the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in 1946 and went on to serve as an expert on farm equipment in Yanan.