Edgar Snow exemplary in journalism
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-07-22 09:16

"We often went to his home to discuss how to save China. Snow supported our views and tried to protect us from arrest and persecution," the 93-year-old Huang Hua recalled at the conference.

In 1936, the CPC invited some progressive foreign journalists to visit Yan'an to report on its efforts to defend the country against the aggressive Japanese invaders, who were positioned in the suburbs of Peiping and Tianjin.

Through the introduction of Madam Soong Ching Ling (18931981), wife of the founder of the Republic of China Dr Sun Yat-sen (18661925), Snow accepted the invitation. He pretended to go to Inner Mongolia for an interview but in fact went to Xi'an, from where he was escorted by plainclothes Red Army soldiers to the blockaded areas governed by the CPC.

Snow met Zhou Enlai (18981976) and interviewed Mao Zedong (18931976) in Bao'an, near Yan'an. In a small cave-house, Mao related his life story and his account of the revolution. To help Snow finish his interviews and objectively and accurately describe the Red Army and its people, Zhou drafted a 96-day interview itinerary for Snow.

Under Zhou's suggestions, Snow spent one month on the Red Army frontline, living together with Red Army soldiers.

Snow wrote a range of news stories and features for Western newspapers and agencies during his four-month stay in Yan'an. But what made him famous was his book "Red Star over China," published in London in 1937.

The book was the first Western book to give an accurate first-hand account of how the CPC, the Red Army and the people under the CPC's governance were struggling to defend their country against the Japanese invasion and improve people's welfare.

The book was so popular in the West that it sold out rapidly. "Some people even denied that there was such a thing as a Red Army. There were only thousands of hungry brigands," according to one of Snow's accounts of the period written in 1958.

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