Hello and communist leader Ma'autse Tung and back in 2013 I spoke to an American who worked

with Ma'o to build his revolution.

When I first met him it happened to be Saturday and they had a dance in the party meeting hall.

I stood there in the doorway and I saw in the middle of the floor there was Mao this

great halting figure dancing with a little girl that was just above waist-high to

him a kind of old-fashioned fox trot.

Sydney Rittenberg is now in his 90s living in his native United States,

but for four decades China was his home and Mao was his friend, although at times he also became his

jailer. It was a complex relationship that would define Sydney's life.

He loved dancing.

He generally danced every dance.

Actually all his life he loved dancing as long as he could stand up.

As a young soldier, Sydney was stationed in China towards the end of the Second World War.

He spoke the language fluently.

He was also a committed socialist.

He saw me in the doorway and he sort of froze, he stopped dancing and he said we welcome

an American comrade to come join in our work.

Horrified by the poverty and suffering he encountered under the nationalist leadership of

Chang Kaisheck, Sydney was inspired to join Mao after the war at his revolutionary

headquarters in the ruined city of Yannan.

You could walk right down that valley and never know that anyone lived there because there were no houses.

It had been totally bombed out by the Japanese.

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