Would you, a 23-year-old American doctor with a degree from Geneva, choose to go to the toughest corner of China to heal the sick?

That is the question at the heart of Dr. George Hatem's life. Few foreigners have been so thoroughly woven into the fabric of China's revolution. Fewer still have looked back from their last breath and smiled, convinced they made the right choice.

In a quiet Beijing courtyard, Zhou Youma, Dr. Hatem's son, recounts his father's story. "He summarized his entire life with one word – splendid," Zhou noted. "And at the very end, he smiled. He was at peace."

That smile, Zhou believes, was earned through three hard choices.

'I'm not leaving'

Dr. Hatem arrived in China in 1933 with two friends, eager to see the world. He could have lived comfortably in Shanghai's International Settlement. Instead, after witnessing the suffering of ordinary Chinese, he chose to make a difference.

Madam Soong Ching Ling, wife of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and a forerunner of China's democratic revolution, told him the Red Army, which had just completed the Long March and reached northern Shaanxi, desperately needed a doctor. The land was parched, caves were homes and clinics lacked even iodine. Yet Dr. Hatem made Shaanxi, China's poorest, most barren region, his anchor. When his companion, US journalist Edgar Snow, returned as scheduled, Dr. Hatem stayed.

"My father believed the Communist Party of China (CPC), which led the Red Army, could help change China," Zhou said. "And there wasn't even a doctor. If they captured medical supplies, no one knew how to use them. So my father said, 'I'm not leaving. I'm joining your Red Army.'"

Dr. Hatem, who later renamed himself Ma Haide to help comrades remember him, became the Red Army's first Western-trained physician, treating typhus, dysentery and battle wounds with almost no supplies.

Joining the CPC, becoming Chinese

"All my father's patients were CPC members," Zhou explained. "Sharing their identity fostered deeper trust, which helped him treat them more effectively. So he went to Chairman Mao and said, 'I want to join the CPC.'"

Chairman Mao was delighted, declaring Dr. Ma Haide should join directly, without probation, like those who had survived the Long March.

Dr. Ma Haide formally joined the CPC in 1937. In Yan'an, he became Chairman Mao's personal physician. In 1940, he married Zhou Sufei, an actress who had fled an arranged marriage to join the revolution.

"Looking back, my father said, 'The ten years I spent in Yan'an were the happiest, most meaningful and most extraordinary years of my life. When I'm gone, please scatter some of my ashes back into the Yanhe River there,'" Zhou recalled.

After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, Dr. Ma Haide applied for Chinese citizenship and became the first foreigner ever to receive it. It was no casual passport change – it meant committing his skills, his future and his family's future to a war-torn, impoverished country.

"My father said, 'I didn't come to observe China. I came to be part of it,'" Zhou said.

Fighting leprosy, a lasting legacy

After 1949, Dr. Ma Haide could have chosen a comfortable post as a health advisor. Instead, he led China's battle against leprosy.

For decades, leprosy was a hidden horror: patients exiled, families shattered and even some doctors refusing to admit them.

Dr. Ma Haide not only touched them – he examined their lesions, held their hands and feet and taught them that leprosy was curable. He led medical teams that drove thousands of miles across China, visiting the most isolated villages. He believed that the ultimate test of a revolution is how it treats its most vulnerable people.

He succeeded. By the late 1980s, leprosy in China was near elimination.

In 1986, Dr. Ma Haide received the Albert Lasker Public Service Award – "America's Nobel Prize" – the first Chinese citizen ever to do so. In 1988, Dr. Ma Haide passed away. A year later, his wife used the cash prize to establish the Ma Haide Foundation. Each year, it honors medical workers fighting leprosy, inspiring new generations to carry on the work.

The legacy continues. Ma Mingde, Ma Haide's great-grandson, has volunteered at a leprosy rehabilitation center every year since primary school. The family album holds two photos: Ma Mingde in first grade beside an elderly patient and as a college freshman beside the same patient, now smiling and healthy.

"Edgar Snow told my father shortly before he passed away in Switzerland, 'What you chose was right. If there were another life, I'd choose the same,'" Zhou said.

So back to the opening question: Would you, a young American doctor with a bright future, choose the hardest road in China?

Dr. Ma Haide did. And his answer still lives on – in the foundation that bears his name, in the awards that honor those who follow his path and in a smile that no grave can erase.