Philip Fugh did not live to see the wish fulfilled. It was his son, John Fugh, who made it happen. The younger Fugh, 74, was the first Chinese-American to become a U.S. Army general and is Chairman of the Committee of 100, an advocacy group consisting of distinguished Chinese-Americans like Yoyo Ma and Ieoh Ming Pei.

General Fugh told Beijing Review the long and winding story of his family's effort to return Stuart's ashes to China. They repeatedly raised the issue with Chinese and U.S. officials as well as semi-official organizations, but were disappointed to hear "the time was not ripe" at the end of the 20th century. During a visit to Hangzhou in November 2007, they were relieved to learn the Zhejiang Government had approved the return of Stuart's ashes to his place of birth and had selected a suitable interment site at a local cemetery.

Hangzhou was once considered a second-choice burial site after Yenching University, where Peking University is now located. Previous efforts to bury Stuart's ashes on the Peking University campus failed. But General Fugh said Hangzhou was an appropriate site. "His parents and younger brother were buried in Hangzhou," he told Beijing Review. "It is natural and humane for his ashes to come back to this place."

In 1949, Stuart was granted honorary Hangzhou citizenship by the Kuomintang government and awarded a symbolic gold key. The key now lies in his former house in Hangzhou, which was renovated by the local government and has been open to the public since 2005.

"This is a promise that has been fulfilled," General Fugh said. "It is a testament to the enduring faith and cooperation between peoples and countries that, after half a century, the last wish of an American who dearly loved China and the Chinese people was finally fulfilled."

Stuart considered himself "more Chinese than American." At his funeral in Washington in 1962, the music included the traditional Chinese masterpiece Yangguan Sandie, a parting tune with a thrice-repeated refrain.

During the decades he lived in China, Stuart cultivated a profound friendship with this land. Many people who had worked with him had fond memories of him. Stuart was the chief witness at the wedding ceremony of Xie Wanying, a heavyweight writer better known by her pen name Bing Xin. Bing Xin was a Yenching University graduate and lecturer.

"When you have your first baby, have a disease, celebrate a birthday or lose a beloved person, he is the one who sends the first message, first bunch of flowers, first greeting smile and first comforting words," she wrote in an article in 1936. "He is never absent when those thousands of people around him [at Yenching University] experience major changes in life."

Once a highly political icon, Stuart turned out to be a multifaceted person. "We may have different perspectives toward history, but as human beings, we share the same things," General Fugh said. General Fugh believes that Stuart's return is a milestone in modern China-U.S. relations.

"This is a very significant gesture and symbol in the context of American-East Asian relations," said Philip West, Professor of Asian Affairs at the University of Montana.

West is the author of Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916-1952. He undertook the Yenching study 40 years ago during the "most negative and discouraging years" in the history of China-U.S. ties. He told Beijing Review, "China's gracious invitation to fulfill Stuart's wish and bury his ashes in Hangzhou is inspiring indeed.

"It grows out of the practical nature of Chinese politics and the true spirit of friendship in China today at all levels of society. It also grows out of both China and America burying into the past the stridence of ideological differences and realizing instead how much we have to gain by working together, even though our political persuasions and religious faith are not the same. The ripple effects [of the return] may not appear to be large right away, but I can assure you they are far-reaching," he told Beijing Review.

Attending Stuart's burial in Hangzhou, Ambassador Randt observed that the year 2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the normalization of China-U.S. diplomatic relations. The timing was therefore of special significance for bilateral relations, he said.

A multifaceted identity

Randt and Fugh also stressed Stuart's achievements as an educator. Stuart's main contribution to China was in the field of education, and the fact that his ashes came back to Hangzhou could be considered recognition of this, General Fugh said.

Many observers agree that Stuart's contributions to Chinese education dwarfed the controversy of his political role as U.S. ambassador. At the same time, however, subtle changes did take place in China regarding the historical evaluation of Stuart. In the Selected Works of Mao Zedong published in 1956, one note about Stuart read, "He has always been a loyal agent of U.S. cultural aggression in China." But in the 1991 edition, the note did not appear.

Stuart witnessed the drastic changes in China during the first half of the last century. "No American was involved in China's politics, culture and education as long and as deeply as Stuart was during the 20th century," said Lin Mengxi, a well-known historian and a Yenching University graduate. "His influence is hard to calculate."

Some observers believe that Stuart could have achieved more and exerted an even bigger influence on China-U.S. ties if he had had the chance.

The Truth Behind John Leighton Stuart's Departure From China, written by former Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua in 1995, revealed a piece of history unknown to most people. In the late 1940s, Huang, a Yenching University graduate and then foreign affairs official of the Communist Party of China (CPC), met with Stuart twice to discuss a possible meeting with top CPC officials just before the People's Republic of China was founded. In the weeks before he finally left China, Stuart was in constant contact with Washington about the possibility.

Other books also mention Stuart's efforts to contact the CPC and discuss China-U.S. ties under the new circumstances when the Kuomintang was defeated. However, the West regarded communism as taboo and President Harry Truman ordered Stuart to leave China. "I am not a policy-maker," he often told the Fugh family.

"He had to take to the road, his briefcase under his arm," Mao mocked Stuart in his essay. "In light of his continuing ties with Huang Hua and others, through the work of Philip Fugh, it must have been very painful for him to be attacked and so utterly dismissed by Mao Zedong," West told Beijing Review.

It was not Stuart that Mao criticized in the essay, but Washington's China policy, General Fugh once said.

Historians have generally supported Stuart's effort to avert a diplomatic breakdown between China and the United States at that historic juncture. After he failed, relations between China and the United States froze for a quarter century until President Richard Nixon broke the ice in the early 1970s.