BEIJING – Next weekend, an 80-year-old Chinese American called Charlie Tsui will give the commencement address at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri.

The events which shaped Tsui's life took place well before any of the 270 students receiving their bachelor degrees were born, though his story of loyalty and friendship easily bridges the generational divide.

Tsui was born in a village just outside the Chinese coastal city of Qingdao, which is where he first met U.S. Marines, stationed there at the end of the World War II. He lived in a hut just beyond the barbed wire of the Marine compound. It was a time of immense turmoil in China, which was gripped by a civil war that would eventually lead to the Communists taking over in 1949.

Tsui would bring the Marines boiled eggs and warm peanuts from his village.

The Marines adopted him, gave Tsui food and clothes, taught him English and paid for him to go to the American school in the city. They also gave him a nickname: “Charlie Two Shoes,” since his original Chinese name, Tsui Chi Hsii, was tough to pronounce.

NBC News

Charlie Tsui, nicknamed "Charlie Two Shoes" as a child by the U.S. Marines who became like brothers to him in Qingdao, China after World War II.

"We were like brothers in the Marine Corps," he recalls. "We love each other, just like brother and sister."

But the Marines were not able to take Tsui with them when they left shortly before the Communists took control.

"Leaving him over there when I left in 1947, it was like leaving a wounded Marine behind," said Don Sexton, who was squad leader back then.

NBC News

Charlie Tsui as a child in Qingdao, China after World War II.

For years, the Marines heard nothing of Tsui, who was jailed and then kept under house arrest for seven years for refusing to denounce his Marine buddies.

In 1983, Tsui did manage to get a letter out, and NBC News was able to track him down. The timing was good, as China was opening up, and the Marines campaigned successfully to get him a visa for the US, his family joining him two years later. He was soon running a successful restaurant business in Chapel Hill, N.C., which of course was the scene over the years of many a Marine reunion.

But having gotten to the U.S., seemingly in the face of massive odds, he then faced a 17-year-battle with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He came close to deportation before gaining legal residency and ultimately citizenship under a 1992 law prompted by the Tiananmen Square massacre.

"He was one special person. Now he's like family," said Carl Frost, one of those Marines.

In 2002, Tsui was made an "honorary Marine" in an official ceremony at Camp Lejeune. 

Frost and Sexton were among the members of Tsui's Marine family who recently returned to Qingdao with Tsui for the first time since he left all those years ago. Also on the trip were students from the College of the Ozarks, which sponsored the visit. The college has a program that pairs students with American veterans, taking them back to their battlefields or military stations.

Today's Qingdao is a very different place, with modern glistening buildings and brash prosperity. NBC News also joined the trip as an at times bewildered Charlie Two Shoes sought out the landmarks of his childhood.

NBC News

Charlie Tsui and a group of his old Marine buddies return to Qingdao, China for the first time in 30 years.

"That was the cave where the Japanese stored their weapons," he said, pointing at the craggy rocks just beyond what is now a sports field, but had been a military parade ground, during the Japanese occupation of the city.

The old Marines barracks has long since been reclaimed by the city's university. "That's where I slept, up the end there," he said, pointing down a long corridor.

The old American School is now an elite kindergarten. Remarkably, Tsui's old family home still stands, though much expanded by the migration workers now living there. His village, Chukechuang, has become part of the city's sprawling suburbs. This is where he met an elder brother he'd thought was dead.

 "I was worried. He's alright. He's alright," he said, as the two stood gripping each other's hands.

When the Americans left, Tsui had moved into an orphanage run by nuns, which is where he developed a strong Christian faith, which he says kept him going through those hard times.

St. Michael's Cathedral, where he received his first communion, still stands - a city landmark. Tsui would walk 10 miles, there and back, to worship on Sundays until the Communists shut it down.

Tsui's return visit was during a big Chinese holiday. The beach and promenade at Qingdao was packed. For a moment Tsui was lost in thought, before recalling where the last of the American ships were loaded before leaving. Back then he thought he'd never see his Marine buddies again. But he never gave up hope.

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More NBC News reporting on China in Behind the Wall

This story was originally published on Thu May 2, 2013 4:40 PM EDT

Wang Zhao / AFP - Getty Images

A new strain of bird flu identified in China "is one of the most lethal influenza viruses we have seen so far," Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Assistant Director-General for Health Security, tells journalists at a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

BEIJING – A new type of bird flu that has killed 22 people in China since March is one of the most deadly strains of influenza known, international health experts said on Wednesday. 

"This is one of the most lethal influenza viruses we have seen so far," said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Assistant Director-General for Health Security. "We are at the beginning of our understanding of this virus."

The H7N9 strain appears to spread more easily to humans than SARS, a different virus that started killing people in Asia a decade ago, experts said. Severe acute respiratory syndrome killed around 800 people globally in 2003 before it was stopped.

"This is an unusually dangerous virus for humans," added Fukuda, who was speaking in Beijing alongside leading flu experts from around the world.  

The delegation from United States, Europe, Hong Kong and Australia, as well as China, have just concluded a week-long investigation that took them to affected areas in Shanghai and Beijing.

Little is known
The group of experts made an impressive display of international cooperation, but at the same time admitted just how little is known about the virus that has infected 108 people since March.

"We are at the very early stages of this investigation," said Dr. Nancy Cox, who heads Influenza Division at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "There's a lot to be learned.”

Most of the cases so far have been found in eastern China, around the Yangtze River delta, but in recent days there have been cases in central and northern China, including the capital. Most have been what Fukuda called "sporadic cases."  

He said a few family clusters have been found, which could be the result of exposure to the same source of virus, or limited person-to-person transmission.

But he said: "'Evidence so far is not sufficient to conclude there is person-to-person transmission. Moreover, no sustained person-to-person transmission has been found.”

The experts concluded that live poultry markets were the most likely source of infection.

The experts praised the swift action of Chinese authorities in closing live poultry markets, and said it was "encouraging" that there have been no new cases in Shanghai since its markets were shuttered.

And they called for continued international cooperation against a virus that doesn't recognize borders. 

"The risks of an outbreak situation are shared in a globalized world, where we are all interconnected," said Fukuda.

Legacy of distrust
All of those who spoke today went out of their way to praise the response and of the Chinese authorities and their openness and transparency. There is enormous sensitivity to any suggestion that their presence in China implies any criticism of local efforts.

China still lives in the shadow of the SARS pandemic, which began here a decade ago and killed hundreds worldwide, including in the U.S. It was made worse by an initial cover-up by the Chinese authorities.

"The response reflects earlier and strong investments in health and preparedness made by China," said Fukuda.

SARS also left a legacy of distrust, which was on display earlier in the week in Shanghai, when a press conference by the local government and WHO was gatecrashed by the daughter of a couple infected with H7N9. The 26-year-old demanded information about her quarantined father; her mother had died.

"The hospitals and medical staff appear friendly to members of the media like you but have responded in a lukewarm manner to inquiries from family members like me," she told the South China Morning Post. She was taken away by officials.

The experts said that in the absence of so much basic information about the extent of the public health risk it was critical to maintain a high level of awareness. They also noted that the weather is warming up in China, which might provide a bit of a respite and buy them some important time, since H7N9 -- in common with other influenza -- spreads less easily in the spring and summer.

Related:

• A new openness as new bird flu virus spreads in China
• Six more diagnosed with new bird flu in China
• Scientists ready to re-start bird flu experiments

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 24, 2013 6:19 AM EDT

BEIJING – Dr. Jiang Rongmeng had no sooner walked out of the hospital door when he was mobbed by journalists. Camera crews jostled for position and microphones jousted in front of his face as he was bombarded with demands for information about the latest case of bird flu.

In Hong Kong or Taiwan this wouldn't be an unusual sight, but in Beijing it's rarer to see such raw displays of journalistic pushiness.

Rongmeng is Dr. Bird Flu -- he is the chief physician at the Center for Infectious Diseases at Beijing's Ditan Hospital. Since the weekend, when the capital announced its first case of the deadly new H7N9 virus -- the victim is a 7-year-old girl -- he's been a man in demand.

On Monday a 4-year-old boy was found to be carrying the virus -- though without symptoms, a discovery that has further puzzled experts. In both cases the parents were live poultry traders.

The girl was well enough Tuesday to leave intensive care; the boy remains in quarantine.

When asked if he expected more cases, Ronmeng said: "It is possible. It's certainly possible."

As the figures have ballooned -- 63 cases now with 14 deaths since March -- and spread from the eastern provinces, the authorities seem to have concluded after initial hesitation that openness is the best strategy.

It appears they have learned from the deadly SARS pandemic that struck 10 years ago. It started in China before spreading worldwide, killing hundreds, and was made worse by a government cover-up.

The World Health Organization has even praised the authorities for their new openness.

To some extent, though, they are bowing to the inevitable: H7N9 is the first such outbreak in the era of social media. Information is tougher to control, and when it's restricted, rumor can run rife.

One local newspaper reported that 13 people have been arrested for spreading rumors about the disease on social media.

But not everybody is convinced. At the Ditan Hospital, Yang Shengli scoffed at the suggestion of government openness.

"It's hard to say if the government really is telling the truth," she said, as she brought in her feverish 16-year-old daughter for tests. Thankfully it wasn't bird flu.

In Beijing the response to the first case, the 7-year-old girl, seems to have been quick and efficient. Her parents had reportedly bought their chickens in the east, in Tianjin, and some of those chickens were sold to the neighbor of the 4-year-old boy hospitalized Tuesday.

Health authorities quickly followed the chicken trail, and when NBC arrived in the boy's village on the outskirts of Beijing Monday, loudspeakers were calling on anybody to come forward if they had bought chickens from the neighbor or the boy's parents.

Officials in white coats and masks were disinfecting the streets and roadblocks had been set up in and out of the village. Cars were searched, and even frozen poultry was confiscated.

So far there is no evidence that the H7N9 virus spreads from human to human, although there is one ambiguous case of a husband and wife in Shanghai that is causing concern.

One big challenge for the authorities is that chickens carrying the virus do not appear to show any signs of sickness. And the symptomless 4-year-old is also creating more uncertainty.

But there are no signs of panic -- only worry, with sales of chicken pretty much drying up and neighboring countries on alert.

"We absolutely should not be panicking," said Dr. Tristan Evely, medical director of the International SOS China, a Beijing clinic. "But high vigilance and monitoring of the situation is absolutely crucial at this point of time."

Related links: 

It started with a cough: Deadly China bird flu outbreak raises fears of pandemic

Deaths from new bird flu underscore grim fears, reports show

US rushes to make vaccine against new bird flu -- just in case

New H7N9 bird flu has officials worried about skimpy resources

This story was originally published on Tue Apr 16, 2013 11:05 AM EDT

AFP – Getty Images

Chinese authorities have closed some live bird markets in an attempt to stop the spread of a deadly strain of bird flu. A vendor, above, washed a chicken stall in a poultry market in Hefei, China, shortly before it was due to be closed Thursday.

BEIJING -- It began in late February when an 87-year-old man started coughing up phlegm. A high fever followed, he struggled to breathe and was dead just 13 days later.

His death in Shanghai, China, was one of 13 fatalities out of 41 known cases to date of a new form of bird flu that experts warn may pose a "serious human health risk."

On Saturday, China's center for disease control announced the first case in Beijing, and outside of eastern China. The seven-year-old girl, whose parents work in the live poultry trade, was stable in a hospital in the capital, media reports said.

Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic?

This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason.

In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010.

So far, the signs are that this is a localized outbreak. The number of cases is low and the virus -- an H7N9 strain -- does not appear to be capable of jumping from one person to another.

But each case represents a chance for the virus to mutate into one that is highly infectious in humans. And it is an unusual strain -- normally avian diseases make birds sick first, giving an early warning sign, but this one does not.

Scientists have established it is from an "avian reservoir" but still don't know the precise source. Chinese officials have dismissed suggestions of a connection with the large number of dead pigs and other animals found recently in rivers.

Many in China are understandably worried, with some deciding to avoid eating chicken, even though it poses no threat if properly cooked.

KFC’s parent company Yum reported on Wednesday that sales in its Chinese restaurants had dropped by 13 percent in March, saying “publicity associated with avian flu in China has had a significant, negative impact.”

Even Jiangsu Zoo, just north of Shanghai, reportedly stopped feeding chicken to animals such as lions and tigers and started giving them a traditional medicinal herb called ban lan gen.

Xie Li, an accountant in Shanghai, admitted she was “kind of nervous.”

“Now, we only eat vegetables," she said. "My daughter's school is measuring students' temperatures. We were told that we should eat less eggs or not touch eggs because they might have some excrement from chickens."

But others in the city of 23 million people were more sanguine.

Yan Zhanlin, a 40-year-old businessman, said he was “not scared, because there are not many cases, and the number of deaths is not high” and the virus had not yet spread between people.

“Today, I went to a train station, and I only saw few people wearing masks,” he said.

But even he said he had stopped eating “poultry, pork and other meat.”

Tang, a company manager in his late 20s, who declined to give his full name, was also relatively unconcerned.

“I do not fear [the virus] at all. It is just a kind of flu, and will pass quickly,” he said. Avoiding poultry was “not too bad, because it forces us to eat vegetables and fish, which are nutritious,” he added.

'Watching very carefully'
Perhaps in a sign of the country's nervousness, People's Liberation Army Colonel Dai Xu claimed the U.S. was behind the outbreak, saying the U.S. had used "bio-psychological weapons" to cause the deadly 2003 Sars outbreak and the current flu one, The South China Morning Post reported.

Such allegations aside, this apparently local problem is being treated seriously on a global scale.

Samples of the virus – or non-infectious nucleic acid from it — are being sent to scientists in up to 140 national influenza centers recognized by the World Health Organization, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Work has already started in the U.S. to make a vaccine against the new strain -- just in case.

Scientist John McCauley, of the U.K.’s National Institute for Medical Research, received his consignment on Thursday.

“We’re watching very carefully the events there [in China] because we are aware although there’s no human-to-human transmission, these are unusual infections people have been getting from an avian reservoir,” he said.

“China will need to identify the source and hopefully be able to control the cross-species transmission,” he said. “We’re watching very carefully to see how it does.”

“In the meantime, the national influenza centers around the world are developing their ability to detect this newly emerging virus” and also working on vaccines, McCauley said.

Experts needed to find out how vaccines would perform “in case this virus becomes pandemic,” he said.

Coincidentally, John Oxford, a professor of virology and an expert on the 1918 flu pandemic, was in Shanghai about eight weeks ago -- roughly the same time that the elderly man first fell ill – for a meeting about hygiene, important in the fight against viruses such as flu.

He said the situation in China was “getting a little more worrying.”

“I don’t like the sound of it. Every day I open up the reports and find out someone else has died,” he said. “I just don’t like to see the figures going up day after day.”

“So far there’s no human-to-human transmission. What’s tomorrow going to bring, what’s the next day going to bring? You don’t know and I don’t know,” he added.

But Oxford, of the U.K's Queen Mary, University of London, stressed there was “no need for anyone to start flapping at the moment.”

“I don’t think we should start thinking of 1918 scenarios, definitely not,” he said.

Bobby Yip/Reuters

Officials from the Center for Food Safety get a blood sample from a chicken imported from mainland China at a border checkpoint in Hong Kong on Thursday.

A group of Chinese scientists, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, also warned that the “pandemic potential of these novel avian-origin viruses should not be underestimated.”

“Severe avian influenza A (H7N9) infections, characterized by high fever and severe respiratory symptoms, may pose a serious human health risk,” it added. “We are concerned by the sudden emergence of these infections and the potential threat to the human population.”

However – mirroring the split on the streets of Shanghai – other experts were less worried.

Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a microbiology professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and principal investigator for the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis, said while it was “too early to be able to conclude anything …  the probabilities are very low” that a global pandemic is looming.

He was comforted by the lack of a surge in the numbers of people with the disease.

“It’s not that it’s increasing by ten times per week, I think right now the number of cases is what you would have expected from the original numbers,” he said.

“Right now there are no major indications to become highly alarmed.”

Ian Johnston reported from London.

Related:

Deaths from new bird flu underscore grim fears, reports show

US rushes to make vaccine against new bird flu -- just in case

New H7N9 bird flu has officials worried about skimpy resources

This story was originally published on Sun Apr 14, 2013 12:47 PM EDT

China Daily via Reuters

China's newly-elected Premier Li Keqiang (left) shakes hands with former Premier Wen Jiabao as China's President Xi Jinping, seated right, and other delegates applaud Friday. Li was once friends with democracy activists, but a dissident accused him of covering up an HIV scandal.

BEIJING -- China's legislature formally chose Li Keqiang as premier on Friday, installing an English-speaking bureaucrat as the man in charge of the world's second-largest economy.

The largely rubber-stamp National People's Congress chose Li, 57, to replace Wen Jiabao.

Nearly 3,000 delegates gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People to vote on Li's appointment, putting the final stamp of approval on a generational transition of power.

Li drew only three no votes and six abstentions from the carefully selected parliament.

He rose and shook hands with Xi Jinping, who was elected president by the legislature on Thursday, as legislators applauded.

While Xi is the country's top leader, Li heads China's State Council and is charged with executing government policy and overseeing the economy.

A reformer?
As premier, Li is faced with one of the world's widest gaps between rich and poor.

"I believe that in this class (of new leaders), his intent to reform is quite strong," said Chen Ziming, an independent political commentator in Beijing. "He has a close relationship with reform-minded economists."

More than any other Chinese party leader until now, Li was immersed in the intellectual and political ferment of the decade of reform under Deng Xiaoping, which ended in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that were crushed by troops.

As a student at Peking University, Li befriended ardent pro-democracy advocates, some of whom later became outright challengers to party control.

His friends included activists who went into exile after the June 1989 crackdown.

"He has a better understanding of how Westerners think," a source familiar with China's foreign policy told Reuters.

Li, who has a degree in law and a doctorate in economics, will take the reins of an economy whose growth slowed in 2012 to a 13-year low, albeit at a 7.8 percent rate that is the envy of other major economies.

Both Xi and Li will need to deliver a blueprint to stabilize the real estate market. They need to do this quickly to calm a market in which real estate prices have soared 10-fold in major cities during the last decade.

Dissident beaten up
Across China, people are resentful of the widening income inequality gap.

China has 2.7 million U.S. dollar millionaires and 251 billionaires, according to the Hurun Report.

However, 13 percent of its people live on less than $1.25 per day, according to United Nations data. The average annual urban disposable income is just $3,500.

During his time in central Henan province from 1998 to 2004, Li was criticized by activists for helping to cover up the extent of an HIV/AIDS crisis there, when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers became infected through botched blood-selling schemes.

Leading dissidents, Hu Jia told Reuters he was detained in Henan, while Li was governor, for four days in 2002, when Hu was advocating for rural victims of AIDS.

"When the AIDS epidemic exploded, everything that Li Keqiang did was with the aim of covering it up," Hu said. "He didn't allow the ordinary people to go to Beijing to petition, meet the media, and didn't allow Aizhixing, the institute I was working at, [to] enter Henan to examine and report on the reality of the AIDS situation."

Hu said two state security officers beat and kicked him on Thursday till his head bled. He was summoned by police on a charge of "provoking quarrels and making trouble." The Dongcang police station, where Hu was held, could not be reached for comment. 

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This story was originally published on Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:19 AM EDT