Before I came to Beijing for the present symposium, I had a phone conversation with Helen Foster Snow, the first wife of Edgar Snow, which lasted for about 20 minutes. She said that she was not in good health and could not come to China. She asked me to extend her best regards to all the representatives and her sincere thanks to those who help sponsor this symposium. Helen Snow also asked me, if opportunity permits, to clarify the following two points on her behalf.
First, the 1936 trip to the Northwest was Edgar Snow’s own idea, not that of anybody else. Ed had already had the idea to visit the Soviet area long before June1936. He first contacted David Yu and Liu Shaoqi who was then in Tianjin. Not long after that he went to Shanghai to ask Song Qingling to recommend. Ed left Peking for the Northwest in early June.
Second, not a few people wrote in their articles saying that “Edgar Snow visited Yan’an in the summer of 1936”. This is a mistake that had to be corrected. As a matter of fact, Yan’an was still under the Guomindang in 1936. Edgar Snow only passed Yan’an on his way to Bao’an, the Red Capital of China. It was from Bao’an that Edgar Snow traveled further west to the places of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia base. Only after the Xi’an Incident of December 12, 1936, the Guomindang side agreed to hand Yan’an over to the Communists. In January 1937, Mao Zedong and his troops moved from Bao’an to Yan’an. Four months later Helen Foster Snow, having experienced untold difficulties and hardships, got to Yan’an where she stayed for four months. In Helen’s words, Bao’an was the area of Ed and Yan’an was hers.
The above is Helen Snow’s message, and I have fulfilled my mission to relay.
The paper I present to the symposium can be read afterward if you have time. Here I don’t want to repeat what I wrote in my paper. However I’d like to take this opportunity to make a few remarks which can be considered as a footnote to the paper.
My paper is aimed at revealing the special role Helen Snow played in the writing of Red Star over China and her important contribution to this book. This role and contribution of hers was not like that “one half comes to me and the other half goes to you” described in a popular Chinese song The Moon on the Fifteenth Day. Her contribution is HER contribution. It is not symbolic. It is direct and concrete.
For example, the source material of some chapters in Red Star over China was collected by Helen during her trip to Yan’an in 1937; among those valuable photos, in “Red Star”, a dozen of them were taken by Helen herself. Zhu De was written in Red Star, but Edgar Snow did not meet Zhu De until 1970. Therefore “Red Star over China” was the fruit of not only one but two trips by the Snows.
Another example, Edgar was planning to rewrite Mao Zedong’s autobiography in his own words. Helen completely disagreed with him. She asked him to write as it was told by Mao Zedong. It has turned out that Helen was right. When the readers come to the part of Mao’s autobiography, they feel “as if they are listening to George Washington telling the story of revolution in Valley Forge”.
But for a long time her credit has not been known to many people; for a long time she has not got the recognition which she deserves.
Between 1985 and 1986, I had the opportunity to work as a visiting scholar for a year in Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. During weekends and holidays, I helped Helen in her work and talked with her. I had a golden chance to have access to all her books, manuscripts and many letters. I also collected some of the artifacts which Edgar Snow left behind. I have not only collected a good bunch of valuable old materials, but also saved some living information which has not been written into books. I taped her talks, and took many pictures and slides.
My one year stay with her helped me understand this outstanding woman even better. It helped me love and respect her even more than ever before. During their 17 years of marriage, particularly those eight years in China, how did she work with Edgar Snow? What was the mystique of Snow’s success? Why did they divorce? What were her opinions about Edgar Snow’s work, life and family after 1949? What did the divorce mean to her? And so on. These questions, which puzzled me for a long time, have found their initial answers.
One year experience of my working with her helped me have a much better understanding of her present living conditions, her sorrows, her difficulties, her work, her arrangement after her death, and her desire in her remaining years.
I am very pleased that many representatives mentioned Helen Snow in their papers. Mr. Yu Jianting, who was the interpreter for Helen in 1937, even wrote a reminiscence of Mao Zedong meeting Helen Snow in Yan’an on various occasions. Scholars who study Helen Snow in China are no longer two or three people, but quite a group of them.
One cannot study Edgar Snow without his 13 years’ experience in China. To study his 13 years in China, one can not close his eye on that 8-year period when Edgar and Helen worked and lived together. We study Helen Snow not because she was the first wife of Edgar Snow. Helen has her own history. She was an independent journalist, writer and social activist. She made her own contributions to the Chinese student movement and the left-wing art and literature, the Gung Ho movement and the Chinese revolution. Like Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong and Agnes Smedley, Helen is a faithful friend of the Chinese people. With the time moving on, her importance and the value of her ideas will be realized by more and more people.
(This is an impromptu talk at the Snow Symposium, June 17, 1988, Peking University)