The Snow marriage was a rare combination of two gifted young Americans with great ambition, bright ideas, dauntless courage and unshakeable persistence in seeking truth from facts. Having formed a two-person team, they cooperated closely and worked out wonders which would later shake the world. It was and still is a model marriage which was very productive and successful.
Chinese Literature and Art While working on translation of Lu Xun, the literary giant in modern China, especially The True Story of Ah Q, Edgar Snow always said that this was the first time he had ever been able to understand the Chinese mind. However it was impossible to make much sense of Lu Xun in translation- he was extremely “Chinese” and subtle. When Yao Xinnong, Lu Xun’s friend and well known scholar and writer, was staying with them briefly at their house to talk about the translations of Lu Xun, Edgar decided not to do it, but to do the first comprehensive book of translations of Chinese writers, with advice from Lu Xun, to whom he wrote.
The Snows paid the teachers and students to do the first translation. Then they re-wrote and polished the stories. Helen edited the sections of Yang Gang and Xiao Qian, as each of them did verbal translation for her, also she did other sections. Three years later, Living China, a collection of modern Chinese short stories, was published in the United States. It introduced the Chinese writers to the world for the first time, who would later become famous in the West, like Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Ding Ling and Ba Jin.
With the help of Yang Gang at Yanjing University in 1934-35, Helen wrote an essay titled The Modern Chinese Literary Movement which appeared in the book. This essay as well as her article in Life and Letters Today was the first serious literary analysis in English to attempt an understanding of what was happening in the Chinese literary world. Helen also edited other stories for Asia magazine, and a few poems, with different paid translators.
From 1933 to the time the left-wing artists had to escape from Beijing around the first days of 1935, Helen alone collected material on this subject and sent to Paris and Europe the first exhibition of Chinese left-wing art. In 1961 she copy-righted her book Notes On the Left-Wing Painters and Modern Art in China, which was said by a professor in Ottawa, Canada, to be the only book in English of the kind, until he carried on the subject.
Helen also anonymously sent her collection of woodcuts to New York around 1933-34 to be exhibited, reprinted and used by China Today or some such left-wing publication, only on condition that this precious collection was returned to her as soon as possible. However this collection was kept by the editors or someone else in New York, who refused to return. Agnes Smedley had sent it to them with the express proviso that it be returned and she was angry about it, as Helen was. These woodcuts were the best Helen could find, collected by Wang Junchu and the other left-wing artists, some of which Lu Xun, their friend, picked out.
The Student Movement of 1935-36 Helen, then 27 and Edgar 29, said: “I had always been a student leader from grade school.” And the Snows assumed that the youth movement was considered to be those under 30, more or less.
Thanks to the extraterritoriality, their home became a safe place for the student leaders to meet. They participated in discussing plans for student demonstrations, helped translate and keep documents, leaf-lets and slogans which would be used during the demonstration. They contacted a dozen of foreign correspondents in Beijing and Tianjin, and informed them the demonstration. They tried every means to protect and rescue the student demonstrators, sent out articles to different news agencies and papers in the West so as to win sympathy and support for the student movement.
Following the movement, Helen as a correspondent in Beijing, not using her own name usually, wrote a series of articles for the China Weekly Review which gave her as much space as she needed, covering the movement continuously as long as six months. She also publicized student views and provided assess to the press through her articles in Asia and the London Daily Herald. She was then the only foreign journalist who did such an inclusive and successive coverage of the movement to the English speaking world. Helen said that she felt this was not a local incident but part of the worldwide youth movement against Fascism and Japanese occupation.
Only because of American protection at Yanjing University was it possible or even imaginable that any public demonstration could be held anywhere in China, especially in Beijing. Nevertheless it was very dangerous for the Snows to be involved. Edgar could have lost his job with the Saturday Evening Post and also the London Daily Herald had it been known publicly that he was actively behind the movement.
Red Star Over China The book Red Star over China was a world-shaking classic written by Edgar Snow after his trip to the Northwest in the summer of 1936. One of the reasons for its success was that the author had a wealth of first-hand material, full and accurate, including many valuable pictures.
Edgar considered making a trip to the Red area in Jiangxi as early as in 1933. But there had not been such an opportunity. In March 1936, Edgar contacted David Yu, one of the leaders in the December 9th Student Movement, who was then in Tianjin. David agreed to his plan and thought that the Red Army authority “had no reason to refuse” his request, but nothing could be arranged then by David. At the same time, Edgar Snow confided his idea for a trip to his publisher Harrison Smith, owner of The Saturday Review of Literature and his own publishing house. Smith also encouraged him. Should he then make such a trip?
The Snows’ life was very sweet and their work very successful at that moment. They had no wish to risk all this for a totally unknown adventure. But no one, including the Chinese, had any idea of just what kind of people the Red armies represented. They thought that someone had to find out, and no one else could or would make such a trip.
One spring afternoon, at their usual teatime rendezvous in the big living room, Edgar and Helen Snow, with the latter’s urgent encouragement, made a momentous decision.
“It’s dead right. You’ll have to go at any cost.” Helen said to Edgar, “I would have gone with you if I could.” At this urgent moment of decision, Helen displayed her characteristic sensitivity and rare courage, and firmly supported Edgar to go to the Northwest without any hesitation. She shared her husband’s idea to search out truth, the facts and to publish this to counteract the lies which had been told year after year by the Nationalist side.
Having made up his mind, Edgar Snow decided to go to Shanghai immediately, asking Song Qingling for help. He could not try to go to the Red areas without some kind of clearance. On April 29, Helen wrote to Henriette Herz, their agent: “Ed has to go to the South for a business trip but will be back soon.” Edgar was back home from Shanghai by May 19, when a letter came from David. They tried to make sure of every detail about the trip on the one hand and prepare related materials, going shopping and packing on the other. Edgar took his injections against various diseases while Helen worked day and night on writing and typing the outline and questionnaire for his trip to the Northwest.
After his departure, nothing was heard from Edgar Snow for several months. Though Helen was worried to death, she had not expected to hear from him. She well knew how impossible communication was. On the contrary, she expected him to stay as long as possible to get a good story.
One September day, Wang Lin, a secret Red courier, brought her a letter from Edgar Snow: “I wish you were here to share my experience.” However when she reached Xi’an in early October, and was planning to meet her long departed husband in Northern Shaanxi to work together with him there, Liu Ding, the Communist representative in the Young Marshal Zhang Xueliang’s headquarters, advised her to leave Xi’an immediately, partly so as not to draw attention to Edgar Snow, who stood to lose his films and notebooks if discovered. Taking the situation as a whole into consideration, Helen went back to Beijing after she had got a journalistic scoop from the Young Marshal.
Edgar Snow was always casual about anything while Helen Snow was cautious and thoughtful. When Edgar returned home from Northern Shaanxi to Beijing with triumphant delight, he was having much fun teasing her. Helen suddenly recollected the importance of getting Edgar’s films processed before anyone knew what they were. Immediately she was in a rickshaw with the films on her way to the Hartung’s, a German photo studio. She also took, for reproduction, some rare old photographs that had been given to Edgar by Mao Zedong himself in Bao’an. In those old photographs the red star was visible on every tattered cap of the Reds. Helen lived in fear that the films might be “Lost” at the Hartung’s, and hoped that the people who processed them would not realize their significance.
As a matter of fact, these pictures had already almost been lost. On October 21, Edgar Snow was traveling to Xi’an from Northern Shaanxi in the secret Northeast Army truck. The bag containing all his films and notebooks had been tossed off by mistake at Xianyang, 20 miles from Xi’an. Fortunately the truck went back for them. And fortunately again, when Helen picked up the developed photographs later at the Hartung’s, they were all beautifully done, no questions asked.
Helen knew very well that it was important to keep Edgar’s trip a secret until his films and articles could be on their way to the United States. Beijing had been reading and confiscating mails since the student movement began though they had not dare to touch foreign mail. As soon as his trip became public knowledge, everything would be watched. She got some films off immediately to New York, where Life magazine bought 72 of them.
For six weeks after Edgar’s return, Helen spared no effort to write up what Edgar had brought back. She tried to know all the individuals by name and face against the photographs and wrote long biographical captions from his scattered notes. She took on all their work so he could start writing Red Star over China in his private building near the gatehouse at No.13 Kui Jia Chang. She took care of his mail, met visitors and handed out free of charge his northwest interviews and some of his photographs as well. She also sent some of the free materials to Randall Gould, editor of the American-owned Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury. Among these was an article on Zhou Enlai, for instance, and a copy of a talk Edgar Snow gave at the Beijing Union Church. Others Helen sent to J. B. Powell for China Weekly Review. It was this material published in China that had the biggest effect, not only on Chinese but also on foreigners. These articles helped pave the way for the United Front.
In those days before the Xi’an Incident, both Snows worked at top speed to rush those interviews out. Edgar Snow was very tired and also sick to some extent. Though he had to write and give lectures, most of all he had to work on his book. Helen thought that it was equally important and urgent to arouse the Chinese masses by communicating to them the message Edgar brought back from Northern Shaanxi. Helen was compiling a whole book from Edgar’s notes. He checked it over as soon as she had finished it, or rather as soon as part of it was ready. Wang Fushi and others took the book to be translated and published at their own expense before the English edition of Red Star over China. Wang Fushi named the book Impressions on the Northwest by a Foreign Journalist, with 300 pages, 32 photographs, 10 songs and a map of the Long March. It had Mao Zedong’s important interview not used in the English version of Red Star over China, and Wang took a copy of this book to Yan’an, when he volunteered to accompany Helen as an interpreter. It had a big influence on Mao Zedong, as well as on the Young Marshal and his army, among many others.
While Edgar was writing his Red Star in the midst of all the excitement, and democracy, a magazine Helen Snow started, was just born, Helen decided to follow her husband’s footsteps to make an independent trip. As a matter of fact, when Helen first read the materials Edgar had brought back, she realized she had to make a similar trip at any cost to get other biographical materials. In April Helen left Beijing for Yan’an to collect information on all the leaders Edgar had missed, including Zhu De’s army, the 2nd Front Army and the 4th Front Army. Helen spent four months in Yan’an where she made a lot of appointments and asked thousands of questions. She interviewed at least 65 persons, had long or short talks with various people and wrote 34 profiles. By using the information she collected during this trip, Helen wrote her Inside Red China, a companion volume of Red Star over China, and three other books.
Edgar made many valuable suggestions for Helen’s trip to Yan’an. He asked her to “collect all the materials” she could, “collect as much personal data in interviews on it as possible,” “get any photos you can”. He suggested that Helen “try to get Mao Zedong involved in a philosophic debate, record it, in dialogue form.”
Edgar Snow had to “re-write the last four chapters of the manuscript” to fit in with developments. Helen lost no time to send him the materials needed. On June 13, she sent him 14 boxes of films she took and asked him to “take care of them”, when Wang Fushi was leaving Yan’an for Beijing.
When readers of all countries read Red Star over China by Edgar Snow in the past 60 years, very few people, I’m afraid, knew that some chapters of this book were written by using the information supplied by Helen Snow and a dozen of photos used in it were taken by her. Therefore Red Star over China was the fruit of not only one but two trips by the Snows.
Helen was not only the strong supporter of her husband in making his trip to the northwest and a faithful co-worker in writing Red Star over China, but also a sharp yet fair critic. During the writing of Red Star over China, Helen and Edgar had a lot of argument over including the whole story.
Edgar asked Helen to cut down Mao Zedong’s story and digest it for his book. He said he was going to re-write some of it anyway, in his own words. She was horrified and protested: “But this is a classic. It’s priceless.” She held that Mao Zedong’s story would be the heart of the book, the backbone. It gave Mao’s whole background in perfect form. She further argued that Edgar shouldn’t touch it, but should use every word as Mao had told it to him. “Why, this is like having George Washington at Valley Forge tell the story of the Revolution.”
Edgar thought that he could not put a big indigestible lump like that in a book. It would kill any sale the book might have. When Helen was copying his notes, he ordered her to leave out all the lists of names and places and armies. Nevertheless, she sat down and copied every hand-written word exactly as told to him, lists of names and all. She thought that “this was the inner history of the Communist movement, boring it may be to some potential readers.” She knew “it would make the book of permanent value for years and years.”
Helen felt strongly about the writing of Red Star over China during her visit to Yan’an. On the one hand she was afraid that Edgar might cut the manuscript at will in her absence; on the other hand she raised many timely and constructive suggestions about the manuscript in view of the changed situation.
In the summer of 1937, the Communist Party and the Nationalists were having their tough negotiations on the 2nd cooperation, and the United Front against Japan might be officially established at any time. Helen passed on the request from Yan’an and helped Edgar revise his manuscript of Red Star over China. On May 21, she wrote in her letter to him: “Chen Keng wants to be very careful and not to publish anything unfavorable about CKS (Chiang Kai-shek).” Four weeks later, again she advised him: “Chen Keng wrote a special letter here yesterday again asking you to make the changes in his autobiography to leave out the incident of saving CKS and also of his interview in Nanking with CKS. He is now going to do special united front work and this may actually ruin it, he says. If the book is not publishing now, you can send these corrections in time or at least don’t make any comment on CKS at all in Chen Keng’s story.”
Red Star over China is praised as “a classic encyclopedia for the study of the Chinese revolution and construction. Brilliant in exposition and fascinating to readers, it has not only had great literary value, but also has a wealth of historical data. Today when we pick up this book again to read and study, we should also appreciate all the efforts by Helen Foster Snow, Edgar Snow’s wife at that time, his faithful co-worker and critic.
The Chinese Industrial Cooperative Movement Having inspected industrial areas devastated by the Japanese and witnessed the misery of Shanghai full of refugees and wounded soldiers in the winter of 1937, Helen initiated the idea to start some sort of producer’s co-ops, organize refugees to help themselves and support the national resistance against Japan by engaging in production. With the approval and enthusiastic support by her husband, Rewi Alley and others, this idea was soon put into practice and the Gung Ho co-ops were officially established in Wuhan in 1938.
Edgar made a special trip to Yan’an in 1939 to be sure Mao Zedong understood and supported the Indusco idea. Earlier Edgar Snow had sent a letter to Mao Zedong in 1938, asking if he wanted some of the new Gung Ho co-ops in his areas and Mao Zedong answered “yes”. This was one of the chief reasons why Mao Zedong respected and admired Edgar Snow. He thought Edgar had re-invented the Gung Ho type of producer industrial cooperative and admired him for this wonderful concept. Gung Ho spread all over China under Mao Zedong when he later had influence.
Leaving her writing aside, Helen helped raise funds for the Gung Ho project. At the same time Edgar went to Hong Kong, at the request of the Chinese in Manila, to start the International Committee to handle their funds. It the Philippines in 1939, Helen wrote China Builds for Democracy, the story of the Chinese Indusco, which was published in 1941.
Perhaps the peak of the Snow teamwork was the first two years when they returned to the United States. They were the honorable guests in the White House at that moment of truth in 1942 after Pearl Harbor. Edgar was made the first war correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, a precious asset for Roosevelt as his new friend, and he went first to India in 1942 with a message to Nehru from the President and copies of Helen’s book China Builds for Democracy, which was published there immediately, with an introduction by Nehru. This introduction ended: “Possibly the future will lead us to a cooperative commonwealth. Possibly the whole world, if it is to rise above the present brute level of periodic wars and human slaughter, will have to organize itself in some such way.” India did proceed along the cooperative road later with Helen Snow’s book as their textbook.
When Edgar returned home early in 1941, with three important books and a file of influential newspaper and magazine articles, the other Snow arrived with two manuscripts and her book in print still, Inside Red China, of 1939.
The two Snows provided, for the Pearl Harbor historical crises, six books in English, plus various articles, and Helen supplied also three books in Chinese translation, one of which was taken from Edgar’s notebooks on the Red areas. That means they had nine books out, which influenced history by the end of 1941.
Red Star over China and Inside Red China, the Snow’s life achievements, are always considered as two companion volumes about the Chinese revolution under the Communist Party. Remaining as classics for over 60 years, they have real communication in all ways, and had more real influence on the history of their time. These two books justified their years in China and their lifetime career in journalism.
This was, as Helen called, Gung Ho producerism and a powerhouse marriage in which the productivity was not doubled but multiplied many times as each partner divided the labor and worked at a synergetic project.
After the divorce, Edgar said that he had been undergoing “torture”, along with all the inspiration and excitement. He meant that Helen had constantly “prodded” him to keep going and always do his best possible writing and research.
Edgar said: “The only part of my home I run is the barn where I have a study… I lay down the law in general and then retire to my barn, and my wife runs the house according to her amendments to the general law. It all works out fine.” The general law from the first was simple- Edgar’s writing came first at all times. After their marriage in 1932, Edgar Snow actually had much more freedom than ever before. New options opened up. He had someone behind him to take full responsibility for everything but his own work, and at any cost Helen insisted that everything else should be subordinated to that. Their division of labor was that he should earn the income while she was responsible for everything else, including encouraging him in his travels and work. All during their marriage, Helen protected Edgar completely from distractions or interruptions until lunchtime. She was giving up little things for the big things, by an act of conscious will. She never whined and complained or felt any deprivation. She had a motto saying, “Enjoy what you have- if I do not have what I like, I like what I have.”