One of the few doctors bridging successfully the wide gap between Western and Eastern medicine throughout his long life of 94 years, Qiu Fazu was the first Asian to receive the highest German honour, the Federal Cross of Merit, in 1985. He is remembered in China and Germany as much for his personal courage as his medical achievements. And he is one of few people to have endured and resisted two terror regimes: Nazi Germany and the Cultural Revolution in China.

Qiu Fazu was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, in December 1914. He decided to study medicine because his mother had died after maltreatment of appendicitis. After his finals at the German School of Medicine in Shanghai, he went to Munich with the help of a Humboldt scholarship, graduating from the medical faculty and receiving a German MD …