Sidney Rittenberg, a former
American advisor to Mao Tse-tung who spent long spells in
prison as he fell in and out of favor with China's communist leaders, has died in the state of
Arizona, the
New York Times reported.
The rebellious son of a prominent family from Charleston, South Carolina, Rittenberg arrived in
China as a US army linguist at the end of World War II, and was soon swept up in the country's epochal civil war and communist revolution.
Hiking 46 days to reach Mao's mountain redoubt, he served as an interpreter and traveled with the red army.