Remembering Li Wen, gentleman editor

Li Wen (third from left) with family and former China Daily colleagues and friends, on Feb 1, 2014 on his 90th birthday. Photos Provided to China Daily

Huo Zhongyi, another young Page Two staffer, recalled that after putting in a full day of work, Li would spend extra hours at night in the paste-up room, proofreading the page before it went to print.

"He spent hours checking and double-checking the page for many nights running until one night he passed out from exhaustion. Being a conscientious and responsible editor, he just could not let any mistakes go, no matter how small," Huo said.

"Finally, (managing editor) Feng Xiliang ordered him to go home to rest. To ensure that he did, Feng assigned two of us to keep an eye on him until he recuperated fully," he added.

Li's dedication extended even to holidays, according to Li Baokuan, a China Daily colleague who went on a holiday to Hangzhou with Li in 1984.

Every day, Li Wen would file a report, which Li Baokuan would type. They would then take the hard copy to the post office to send back to the paper by Telex.

"We didn't have smartphones or computers, so it wasn't so easy to file a story back then. We were on holiday for 10 days, and Li Wen wrote 10 reports," Li Baokuan recalled.

In 1989, Li retired from China Daily and moved to the United States to be with his family.

Li was equally devoted to a healthy lifestyle. He was well into his 80s when he wrote: "My present physical condition is worthy of singing a song: I have no heart trouble, nor does my blood pressure go beyond the near-perfect range.

"I can stand straight like a lamppost and can walk as fast as a whirlwind. I have no aches or pains anywhere on or in my body. What else do you want for your old age?"

Being a "weakling" in childhood and underweight his entire life, Li developed a lifelong exercise regimen, one he practiced daily. He ran rain or shine, holding an umbrella on the rainy days. When his solitary confinement during the "cultural revolution" precluded him from his daily run, he performed calisthenics twice daily.

In 2002, when a fall caused a hematoma in his brain, he underwent two brain surgeries and made a full recovery. after suffering a stroke in 2009, Li still exercised, doing standing pushups against his walker.

"Li Wen embodied the meaning of his name "wen". He was a refined, literary and courtly gentleman," recalled Dai Beihua, who worked on the copy desk in China Daily's early days.

"For those of us who were young and green starting out at China Daily, he was like a cool drink of water - calming, steady and uplifting," Dai said.

Editor-in-Chief Zhu Ling praised Li "as one of the first generation of China Daily forerunners who laid a solid foundation for the country's first English-language newspaper".

"China Daily has grown into a global newspaper in tandem with China's development. It owes what it is today to the high standards that Li Wen and his colleagues set early on," he said.

Li is survived by his children: son Li Gan and daughter Li Mei of Vancouver, Washington, son Li Yi of Vienna, Austria, daughter Li Wei of Los Gatos, California, and six grandchildren.

John B. Wood and Ho Manli worked as foreign editors at the founding of China Daily and have done so intermittently since then.