The China connection is told in Don Gibbs' photos of 'Enduring People'ESTES PARK, Colo., September 20, 2026Elisabeth Sherwin -- ensherwin@gmail dot com Columnist Some connections are just meant to be. My first connection to Donald Gibbs came in California many years ago when I was a reporter for the local newspaper and he was a professor at the University of California, Davis. I was impressed by his knowledge, enthusiasm and love of China and became a fan. In 1996 I was able to travel to China with Don and his Chinese wife, Loretta. A very big deal for a small-town reporter. Beijing was crowded, busy, full of traffic, people everywhere. But there were museums, restaurants and parks for quiet moments. It all worked. I came home with hundreds of photographs and a love of China. As the years went by, Don and Loretta retired and moved to San Francisco. I retired and moved to Allenspark. But we kept in touch. Don published his amazing memoirs and then a stunning coffee-table book of photographs taken on a trip to China in 1979. And recently that book of black and white photographs, "The Enduring People of China: Portraits of Strength," has been re-issued by a publisher in Loveland, Adam Phillips. Phillips got to know Don's cousin, Sandy Dolak, in La Veta, Colo., and published one of her cookbooks. Another connection. When Phillips saw Don's work he was immediately taken with the quality. "It is a very powerful collection," he said. "I think the photos are great." I drove down to Loveland and met Phillips. Another connection. Don and Phillips made the decision to reprint the collection in a smaller (8.5 x 11) format and make it a $22 paperback. The book is available on Lulu or Amazon. These black and white photos are unusual for several reasons. First of all, they capture a year in which China was pivoting from Maoism to capitalism. They were taken by Don who traveled freely within the country, spoke the language fluently, and could joke with people he met and take candid shots. On his many trips to China, in 1979 and later, Don was struck by how resilient the Chinese people are. Chairman Mao died in 1976 leaving behind a country recovering from disastrous policies such as class warfare and the so-called Proletarian Cultural Revolution that closed schools and universities to send the younger generation to the countryside to sweat as farmers so they could become good communists. "China stagnated, there was a famine that killed from 20 to 50 million people and yet the indoctrination was so extreme that the population worshipped Mao as a leader of divine birth. He proved that if a population is sealed it can be made to believe anything," Don told me in a series of emails. "After Mao's death, it took about two and a half years for a new, more pragmatic leadership to appear. Now China was able to start shaking free of radicalism and forge a new path. They called the new market economy 'socialism with capitalist characteristics' but it was capitalism and it got China out of poverty and into the ranks of the world’s most powerful countries. "Thus, my book portrayed what China was like as it moved from Maoism to capitalism," said Don. "Alas, the system that produced a tyrant like Mao has remained unchanged so in a short time a new dictator emerged. And that’s what we have today." Yet, Don has spent his life introducing American friends, students and scholars to China and vice-versa. Why? Because as a veteran of the Korean War, he saw what lack of communication and understanding could and did lead to. "Allow me to remind you that the Korean War, now all but forgotten, killed 36,000 Americans in two and a half years," he said. "After the war I vowed to do whatever I could to improve Americans’ understanding and affection for the Chinese people (allies of North Korea). Note I said people. It is vital to draw a line between the people and the Communist party that rules." Introducing Americans, particularly American students, to China was not an easy task. "UC Davis was hostile and dismissive of anything Chinese unlike the other UC campuses: no major, no mention in the catalog, kept invisibly buried inside the Anthropology Department that regarded Chinese and Japanese courses as a nuisance," he said. And yet, among the university community both on and off campus there was a curiosity about a country sealed against the outside world for so many years. Don said he traveled to China every summer for years, well before tourism in China took off. "I traveled outside the approved cities and took a lot of Kodachrome slides mainly for my classes. My retirement ended the slide shows so the photos sat in boxes unseen." Don eventually gave his photos to his niece's husband, a professional photographer in San Francisco, Ted Kurihara. Ted converted the slides to black and white and made prints. The first edition of the book was titled "The Year That Changed China." Don's favorite photo features a man returning home from his job in the city. Country folk sent their young people to work in city factories exporting things worldwide. The mother's delight at her son's return is shown on her face. The wife's delight is more inhibited for it would be unseemly for a spouse to be too obvious about it. This story would be instantly understood by readers in China for its a scene repeated endlessly all over the country daily, but it was just beginning in 1979. Loretta's favorite photo is a shot of a female dentist in a long white coat standing in her outdoor office next to a foot-operated manual drill. Her ungloved hands are in a patient's mouth. The patient sits on a stool. The sign on the wall behind them says: "World-class dentist." Don's captions explain the extraordinary behind the ordinary. For instance, one photo captures a line of 30 people waiting to buy something, a demonstration of market scarcity in action. Turns out they are waiting to buy small green tomatoes. Don sheds more light on it: "Once China began sending scholars abroad...the quality of produce spectacularly improved when seeds of better varieties were brought back from abroad." Don's collection of photos is an art book, a history book and an archive. It makes all the connections. "My book seeks to show the ordinary people of China at home and at work. It’s meant to be a humanistic book, people to people, unvarnished and without propaganda. Ultimately and ideally, I hope to engender affection for the people of China and a sense of what they have endured. They, like us, are a hard-working, earnest, playful people with strong family values who deserve understanding and affection." -- Reach Elisabeth Sherwin at ensherwin@gmail.com
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