Art's on the Menu:
A physician blends watercolors with a Chinese celebration
Special to the Jewish Exponent - April 29, 1999
by David C. Friedman

What is a prominent Jewish physician from Penn Valley, with a fluent command of the mamaloshen, doing with 40 of his friends, relatives and associates celebrating the Chinese Year of the Hare at a 10-course dinner that included Qu Jiang Duck Roll and something called Tai Bai Velvet Phoenix?

Dr. Gerald J. Marks has been bonding with the Chinese people ever since the early 1990’s.

A native of West Philadelphia, he is an internationally recognized expert in the field of colorectal surgery and has pioneered a multidisciplinary treatment of colorectal cancer and designed techniques to avoid permanent colostomy.

Great Wall of China Watercolor by Dr. Gerald J. Marks

In 1994, he and his son, Dr. John H. Marks, lectured in China. A true Renaissance man, Dr. Gerald J. Marks is an accomplished watercolorist. During the lecture tour, he made sketches of the Great Wall of China, which he used as the basis of a watercolor painting of The Wall.

After learning that five prominent Chinese chefs from the Xian Hotel in Xian had been invited to Philadelphia to prepare a 10-course banquet in honor of the Lunar New Year, Marks saw the event as an opportune time to further cement his relationship with the Chinese by presenting the chefs with prints of his painting.

“That idea of presenting them with my prints kept growing until we soon had a party planned,” he said prior to the banquet at the Chinese Cultural Center in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. “If you view the watercolor painting as a happy accident, then this party was a happy accident,” he said.

And a happy occasion it was. Among those in attendance were 6-ABC news anchor, Mark Howard and mayoral assistant Diane Dalto, who delivered greetings from Mayor Ed Rendell.

“I wanted to make this presentation to the chefs and we explored different ways to do it,” Marks said. “First, we were just going to come down and have dinner, and as we spoke to the people at the cultural center, the idea germinated that we could invite our friends and have a party,” he said.

“What resulted was this celebration of a Chinese cultural and scientific connection,” the physician said. “This is also a celebration of the Xian chefs; the Chinese Cultural Center, which brought them here; the Great Wall of China, which is the symbol and soul of their nation; and our connection with the Jiangsu Cancer Research Institute and Hospital, and the people involved.”

That connection began in 1992 when he met Dr. Jian-Nong Zhou, who is now president of the institute and hospital.

“He is my most famous protégé,” Marks said.

Zhou had been selected from a field of 10,000 Chinese surgeons to receive a fellowship to study with an American cancer physician. He chose Marks and studied with him for two years before returning to China. “He had been cited by the Chinese government for translating Western science to Chinese science as he applied what he learned from us to the treatment of Chinese rectal cancer patients,” he said.

Also a physician, John Marks established his own relationship with Zhou while he was in Philadelphia.

“It is through our collaboration with him and his hospital in China that we have been able to move rectal and colon cancer research forward,” he said.

“We have taken many of the rectal cancer approaches pioneered by my father and melded them with some of the recent advances,” he said.

Although Zhou was unable to be in attendance at the celebration, one of his protégés, Ping Gu, who is studying for a Ph.D. degree in molecular biology at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo, was there with his wife, Jenny Liu, an obstetrician.

“Another happy accident, “ Marks said, for Gu was in Philadelphia quite coincidentally attending a scientific convention.

“Dr. Marks is my grandmentor,” Gu said jokingly, referring to the fact that the doctor mentored his mentor.

Gu read greetings from Zhou and then presented Marks with a newly published book of watercolors and oil paintings from the US exhibit of Chinese artist Houxing Chang, with whom Marks has painted.

“I am a self-taught artist,” Marks said. “I started painting when I was 10 years old and painted until the age of 13. Then I gave it up and did not pick it up again until 40 years later. I had a great deal of trouble getting started again. Then, it finally began to click, and I find it a source of spiritual enrichment that is beyond description,” he said. “It is also a great medium for traveling.”

The Philadelphia physician, through the United States Surgical Corporation, has published two calendars containing prints of his watercolors from exotic locations throughout the world, titled “Images Along the Way – A Surgeon’s International Journey.”

“The only time I have to paint is while I am traveling,” he said. Reproductions of the paintings included in the calendar are being sold to raise funds for the Marks Colorectal Surgical Foundation, of which he is president.

The portion of the 1,400-mile long Great Wall of China that he painted from his sketches and photographs is in the Beijing region. “The wall is incredible,” he said. “If you stand in its presence and feel its strength, then you can understand why it is the symbol and soul of that nation.”

John Marks acknowledged that he did not have his father’s artistic penchant. “But I am a pretty good amateur photographer, and one of my photos of the wall was also used as the basis of dad’s painting,” he said.

Gerald Marks is on staff at four Philadelphia area hospitals and created an endowed chair in colorectal surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Named one of Good Housekeeping magazine’s “Top Cancer Doctors,” Marks has made an international name for himself as well.

Recently, he treated and operated on Rabbi Haskeal Levy, religious leader of one of the largest congregations in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There is an Orthodox Jewish agency which identifies experts in medicine and surgery,” he said. “I was privileged to be recognized as a physician who has expertise in low-lying rectal cancer.”

Marks treated the rabbi in Philadelphia and found him to be a wonderfully warm person.

In between the 10-course meal, Marks went from table to table, kibbitzing with his guests and reveling in the delight of the evening.

Following dinner, the five chefs stepped out of the kitchen to take a bow, sing a Chinese song and be presented with their prints of Marks’ Great Wall of China watercolor.

Somebody please pass the duck roll.