{"id":392,"date":"2026-04-12T21:20:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T21:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/?post_type=exhibit&#038;p=392"},"modified":"2026-05-09T15:37:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T15:37:23","slug":"john-roderick-1936","status":"publish","type":"exhibit","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/exhibits\/john-roderick-1936\/","title":{"rendered":"John Roderick &#8216;1936"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A vivid exhibition on the life and stories of <strong>John Roderick<\/strong>, Colby Class of 1936.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>One of America&#8217;s most prominent China watchers, Roderick travelled from Waterville to Yanan, the wartime stronghold of the Chinese Communists, as a reporter for the Associated Press.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>John Roderick was one of the most consequential American journalists of the twentieth century, whose career arc traced the entire arc of modern China&#8217;s transformation. Born in Waterville, Maine in 1914, he spent over four decades reporting for the Associated Press across Asia \u2014 from the caves of Yan&#8217;an where he interviewed Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and the founders of Communist China, to the historic reopening of Sino-American relations under Nixon. He was present at nearly every turning point: the Chinese Civil War, the Marshall mediation mission, the Communist victory of 1949, and ultimately the moment when Zhou Enlai personally credited him with having helped open the door between China and the West. A self-described accidental journalist who stumbled into China through a combination of wartime chance and stubborn curiosity, Roderick became the rare Western observer who earned genuine access to the men who remade one of the world&#8217;s great civilizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>by Herbert Deng &#8216;2028<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A vivid exhibition on the life and stories of John Roderick, Colby Class of 1936. One of America&#8217;s most prominent China watchers, Roderick travelled from Waterville to Yanan, the wartime stronghold of the Chinese Communists, as a reporter for the Associated Press. John Roderick was one of the most consequential American journalists of the twentieth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3181,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","institution":[7],"place":[27,17,26],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit\/392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibit"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit\/392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3182,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit\/392\/revisions\/3182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"place","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/place?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}