Before coming to China, both Edgar Snow and Helen Foster had exactly the same idea: not to be married until the age of 25; not until they had traveled abroad and not until they had written a book, even if not published.
This idea was not uncommon in those years among A-students in college English class. The 1920’s was the high point for Young America, especially in the literary field. A tidal wave of aspiring writers was on the way to Europe which had been opened up to them. They both also had in common the pioneer idea of wanting to be first. Paris was over-populated already with “writers” mostly starving in attics, as the painters were. Helen herself did not identify with Paris at all. They both had the idea of doing travel books and non-fiction at first because they had to have the contrast provided by a different environment and form of civilization, so as to get a perspective on themselves, their own country and history. However all aspiring writers had in the back of their minds was doing the Great American Novel.
After college, one of Helen’s home side jobs was to clip the New York Herald Tribune for anything about silver, gold, currency, mining futures, etc. On her own, she had clipped articles by Edgar Snow from the Herald-Tribune Magazine, a weekly. “Why can’t I write that sort of thing?” was her thought because her personal concern was not with silver at all. From the age of 8 when she was spellbound by reading The Wizard of Oz, she had intended to become a Great Author.
As soon as she arrived in Shanghai in August 1931, Helen looked up for Edgar Snow, taking her folder of his articles along. Edgar said that she was the first person who ever asked to interview him. During their first meeting at the Chocolate Shop, Helen, who thought he was “handsome and attractive”, told Edgar that she had read just about everything he’d ever published. Edgar said: “I’d have written better if I’d had a photograph of you doing all that industrious clipping.”
Being captivated by Helen, Edgar was stumbling over chair legs, looking steadily at her face as he walked toward her. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I left Kansas City in 1927. You remind me of the girl next door. I’d forgotten what girls like you even look like.” Edgar fell in love with Helen at the first glance.
Helen was meeting Edgar at a crossroad in his career, the low point of his life so far. He was permanently affected by his Yunnan-Indochina-Burma-India experience, not only depressed by recurring physical illness but by the hopelessness, fanaticism, and poverty everywhere. Having arrived in Shanghai, he learnt that his dear mother had passed away. What was worse was that he found a solid hostile front of Americans, irate because of his satirical article about them in The American Mercury- even Millard and Powell, owner and editors of China Weekly Review, were angry with him. Also the British police had paid a White Russian informer to write a fictional dossier on him as a radical, and he was put in the Japanese black list in 1931. Depressed and unhappy, Edgar said to Helen: “I really don’t know why I came back to Shanghai.”
A few weeks later after Helen’s 25th birthday in 1932, Edgar gave Helen his photograph signed “To Peg, from your stooge Ed”. He offered: “You remind me of my mother.” Then they decided to make a trip to Japan and marry there. Recalling this decision of marriage, Helen said: “He kept that resolution strictly, but I made the mistake of not writing my book first.”
The Snows had their wedding on December 25, 1932 in Tokyo at the American Embassy. Then they took a small Japanese steamer that called on the greatest number of small ports that they could find. From traveling in Japan, they sailed to Taiwan, and on to North Borneo, the Celebes, Java, Bali and other parts of call. When they returned to China, the newlywed couple went to Beijing in March 1933 and settled down there until 1937.
Facts proved that their marriage helped build up both of them and accomplish their life achievements in the East, especially in China. Years later Edgar summed up: “Except for you, I would have left China in 1932. You gave me a whole new lease on life in China - nine years or more.”