Red Star Over China
In the summer of 1936, Ma travelled to the Communist headquarters at Bao'an (present-day Zhidan), temporary capital of the Communist-controlled Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. He was accompanied by the pioneering American journalist Edgar Snow. At Hatem's request, he was not explicitly mentioned in the first edition of Snow's famous book, "Red Star Over China". He is there anonymously as a western-trained doctor who had examined Mao and determined he was not dying of some mysterious disease, which was the rumour at the time.