Mr. John T. Ma, the Society's permanent advisor, died in the presence of his family in San Francisco, California on 9 April 2021, at the age of 101.

Mr. Ma was born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China, into a family with a long scholarly and artistic tradition. His father, Ma Gongyu, was a renowned calligrapher and educator and his mother gained early recognition as a trailblazer herself having graduated at the top of the first school for girls in Wenzhou.

Mr. Ma was an excellent student and passed every school entrance exam that he took: from kindergarten to university. After graduating from Wenzhou Junior High School, he travelled to Shanghai with 2 classmates to take part in the entrance exam of the best high school there: the Shanghai Provincial High School. He was the only student from Wenzhou to be accepted that year.

In 1937, as dictated by the government at the time, Mr. Ma and fellow high school classmates travelled to Zhenjiang, in Jiangsu Province, to receive 3 months of military training under Lieutenant Colonel Xie Jinyuan. Thereafter he returned to Shanghai to continue his studies, only to find that the Japanese had already invaded the city.

In 1938, still just a sophomore in high school, Mr. Ma decided to join the war efforts to defend his country and embarked on the long journey to inland China via Hong Kong to join the First Army War Area Service Corps led by General Hu Zongnan. The following year, he received training in the Fourth Wartime Political Officers Training Corps and served until the autumn of 1939. He then travelled to Chongqing to participate in the entrance exams of the National Central University and Fudan University. He was accepted at both universities and chose to enter the Department of Foreign Languages of the National Central University.

In 1941, Mr. Ma again volunteered to serve his country. This time to work as an interpreter at the headquarters of the American Volunteers Group (AVG) of General Chennault in Kunming. After serving for a year, he returned to Chongqing to finish his degree the National Central University and further his studies at the Chungking Post-Graduate School of Journalism (CPGSJ), a joint venture between the Department of International Information in the Ministry of Information of Kuomintang and Columbia’s School of Journalism.

After the surrender of Japan, Mr. Ma joined the Department of International Information in the Ministry of Information of Kuomintang and worked in Beijing. In 1947, he went to the US to pursue a higher education at the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism and Columbia University Department of Political Science and Library Sciences. He served as Associate Director of the New York Library of Evangelical Studies, Head of the Chinese Department of the Cornell University Library, Director of the East Asia Library of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University where he was responsible for the procurement of a number of valuable wartime archives such as those of Gen. Claire Chennault and Stanley Hornbeck. He left Hoover to become Head of the Chinese Library of Leiden University in the Netherlands followed by a 5-year role as Consultant to the Far East Collection of the New York Public Library.

After his retirement in New York, Mr. Ma founded the non-profit Books-for-China Project in order to fill a gap of knowledge and materials at Chinese universities. He worked tirelessly to collect books donated by overseas scholars, and with the help of volunteers sent hundreds of thousands of books to universities in China for the benefit of future students and the wider scholarly community.

He is the author of of a number of publications, including My Autobiography (in Chinese and English, translated by Zhao Shiren, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2017). It is challenging to write a brief memorial for someone who has had such a long life filled with rich experiences, and someone who has touched the lives of so many. Mr. Ma was an admirable librarian and scholar who used his skills to help enhance the knowledge of others. He engaged with people from all walks of life, was always curious to learn more, and fondly shared stories from his own experience. Many will recall how he loved to tell jokes and humorous stories. He and Professor T. K. Tang, the founder of our Society, were schoolmates at both the National Central University and at Columbia University, and lifetime friends. Mr. Ma had always been an enthusiastic supporter and advisor to the Society in its efforts to find and preserve war-time materials. We are deeply saddened by his passing and express our heartfelt condolences to his family.