1.5 My MA supervisor – Dr. Noumoff

Dr. Noumoff retired in 2006 after he taught at McGill University for 39 years. As a world well-known scholar on the issues of China's Studies, Dr. Noumoff has built a wide deep friendship with both Chinese leaders and ordinary Chinese people. He has been to China many times and has done a lot of things which has benefited bilateral relations between Canada and China in the past decades. He has been regarded as a "people ambassador" of Canada-China friendship.

As soon as he received his Doctorate Degree in Political Science from New York University, he came to New Brunswick Canada and after one year there, together with Dr. Lin Da-Guang, a world famous Chinese Canadian scholar at McGill, co-created the Center for East Asian Studies of McGill University.

Dr. Noumoff served also as the director of the Center for Developing Areas Studies, the director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Political Science, senior senator of Senate of McGill University and a member of the Board of Governance of McGill University. He served on the faculty of both the Department of Political Science and the Department of East Asian Studies.

As a specialist among a very few scholars in western countries on the Studies of Communist Parties, he became the old friend of several developing countries such as North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and China.

He loves China. As a member of the first Canada-China Friendship Delegation, he visited China in the early 1970s including his first trip to Yan'an - the symbol of the Chinese Revolution. Later, he visited China almost each year and had a number of meetings with Chinese leaders. For example, he was invited as the guest to have a personal visit to the home of Fei Xiaotong, one Chinese national leader who was the President of the Democratic League and the father of modern Anthropology.

In the early 1980s, Dr. Noumoff invited a delegation of economic and trade officials of the Chinese government to Canada as a business visit after the delegation ended its official visit in the USA. He made a series of arrangements for the delegation to visit Canadian enterprises and hold meetings with Canadian entrepreneurs. This was a welcome opportunity for Chinese officials to learn something from western countries while China was at the early stage of the Economic Reform and Opening to the Outside World.

The leader of the delegation became the Prime Minister of China in the late 1990s and has been esteemed as China's leading economic reformer. Dr. Noumoff met the state leader several times later both in China and in Canada when the Prime Minister paid a national official visit to Canada.

Dr. Noumoff always brought to the attention the results of his research, to Chinese leaders when he had any chance to meet them as long as he thought the information could benefit China. He also took those opportunities to recommend his students or visiting scholars to Chinese leaders so that these Chinese students could have more opportunities in China after they finished their studies and returned home.

Besides being a friend of leaders, Dr. Noumoff is an excellent teacher and friend of ordinary Chinese people. Many Chinese students were benefited from his warm-hearted aid. I clearly remembered the day when I came to Montreal as an international student. It was a very cold snowy day in Montreal. My plane was delayed for hours and arrived at the airport late at night. Dr. Noumoff had been waiting for me for several hours. He picked me up like a friend while he was such a famous scholar. I was quite moved by his warm heart that he already found an apartment for me and took me thereby himself and arranged for his other students to help me handle some practical issues such as registration, campus visiting, international student affairs, medical cards, etc.

He always loved to help Chinese students. I accompanied him to the airport a couple of times to pick up other Chinese students in the later years. He and his wife always invited Chinese students to visit their home and have dinner with them. He encouraged his students to go back to China and serve their own country. For example, one visiting scholar became an official in the central government after he completed his study at McGill and went back to China. Through this student, Dr. Noumoff became the consultant of a few provincial and municipal governments, which these governments outsourced from Dr. Noumoff and imported foreign investments and commercial technologies.

He also did his best to provide helps for Chinese students who wanted to stay in Canada. For example, I received a job interview when I earned my library degree. I forwarded my preparations for a site interview to Dr. Noumoff and hoped he could give me some advices. I was surprised when I got his feedbacks so fast. In his email, he corrected all my spelling errors and added a lot tips for me. His encouragement increased my confidence. This help contributed to my success in finding a professional job as soon as I graduated.

Dr. Noumoff has always been full of righteousness and morality. He brought back the CDs from China and showed the students in his class about the historical facts of Chinese victims of Nanjing who were killed during the Second World War by Japanese soldiers when Japan invaded China. He also led the fight resulting in the University refusing a million dollar donation from a Japanese war criminal. He was happy with the achievements of Chinese economic reform, however, at the same time, he was caring about the living conditions of Chinese ordinary people, particularly workers and farmers.

At the early years of Chinese Reform and Opening to the Outside, he was the only foreigner who had the possibility to teach a class for party and government leaders in the four levels of central, provincial, and municipal and county party schools. At his office, Lu Xun's portrait hung on the wall. You can easily find all collections written both in English and in Chinese by Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping. He is a real knowledgeable great scholar in Chinese studies. There is no any exaggeration if we call him the "people ambassador".

Everyone might have some precious memories for something in his whole life. For me, I was lucky to have such a wonderful opportunity to complete my MA degree under the mentorship of such a knowledgeable great scholar at McGill University. It was the most important and wonderful period of my whole life.