As soon as the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, following divorce the same year, Helen felt liberated from most of the old problems and responsibilities. She wrote: “An immense burden seemed to roll off my back in 1949 when the Communists took power in China, as was rapidly happening all year. I had been feeling responsible for American policy and worrying about it since my first year in China, and now the situation was resolved, at least for the time. Ed and I were both raised very high in the respect of the China experts- we had been almost alone for years on analyzing the China situation and the World War II picture. This was because we had to think for ourselves entirely- we knew there were no experts we could rely on.”
For the first time since she had been married in 1932, Helen felt her mind was free to do her literary work, which she always wanted to do from her grade school days. Now she had become desperate to get at her “own work” for the first time. She typed up and mimeographed six volumes of her notes on various subjects in China, classified all the materials she collected, put together all the documents, papers and correspondence relating to various projects they undertook in China- thus a huge Nym Wales Collection was prepared and sent to Hoover Institution in Stanford. She did a lot of original research on the history of the local towns in Connecticut where she lived. She spent quite a few years doing research and preparation before writing her important literary book The Root and the Branch, a historical novel about Cromwell Revolution in England. Since 1949, Helen Snow has published eight Commercial books in English, but she has written about 50 books, which are all copyrighted and remain unpublished.
She was twice nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, got various awards in the United States and her name and great contribution appeared in a dozen of Who Is Who in the world. She has become ever more famed in China since 1970’s. Her classic Inside Red China was reprinted in Chinese, and her new books have been translated and published one after another, such as An American Experience in China, My China Years, My Yan’an Notebooks, Return to China, Mao Country, and Song of Arirang plus China Builds for Democracy which will be published soon. In 1987 a fabulous exhibition Helen Snow In China was held in Xi’an, which was on show for two years, and in September the same year, grand celebrations were held to mark her 80th birthday and the 50 anniversary of her historical trip to Yan’an. In the eve of her 84th birthday, the Chinese Writers Association awarded her the first International Literary Prize for Understanding and Friendship in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. On a white Christmas Day in 1991, a Helen & Edgar Snow Studies Center was officially established in Xi’an, a niveous land as she always calls. This was the first society of its kind, which would focus its study on the life and work of Helen and Edgar Snow. She was awarded in 1996 with People’s Friendship Ambassador, the highest honor the Chinese authority gives to foreigners. After her death in 1997, memorial service was held for her in the Great of the People in Beijing while in Xi’an, her “Snow Country”, a book was published, a film was made and a permanent exhibit on her life was set up in a Chinese museum to honor her. All the above activities and others in recent years were covered in the Chinese press and by the national and local TV networks.
Edgar Snow was surprised, and very angry and bitter to be attacked by the McCarthyists in early 1950’s. He could not travel to the East and publish any of his writing. He decided to move to Switzerland. Beginning from 1960, Edgar Snow returned to China three times and published The Other Side of the River, The Long Revolution and others, providing new and important information about the great progress of New China. Just as he did in the 1930’s, Ed Snow was contributing the only important understanding of the revolution in China to the rest of the world, and also to the Chinese.
During his last trip to China, Edgar had long talks with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and it was he who brought back Mao Zedong’s message to the U.S. President Richard Nixon. Being a bridge builder all his life, Edgar Snow made his important historical contribution to the normalization of the U.S.-China relations.
At his death in 1972, Edgar Snow had published eleven books, the last unfinished briefly. According to his will, part of him remained in China. In his hometown Kansas City, Missouri, the Edgar Snow Memorial Fund was established along with an Edgar Snow Library. The name Snow has now become a household word and a synonym of Friendship in China. He is, and will always be well remembered by the Chinese people.
Being the other half of the Snow model marriage and a “pure and noble” man with honest mind, Edgar Snow still had connections with Helen in 1950’s and 60’s.
Long after the divorce, Edgar wrote and published his memoir Journey to the Beginning in which he wrote about Helen as “a Greek goddess…with a trim, healthy body and dancing blue eyes.” She was a “very unusual woman who was to be my frequently tormenting, often stimulating, and always energetically creative and faithful co-worker, consort and critic”. Edgar sent a copy of this book to her and inscribed it, “For Auld Lang Syne.” Obviously, the ties were still strong.
Helen got a phone call from Edgar one day in 1950, saying that he had quit cigarettes and was no longer bothered by sinus at all- he was very proud of himself. In 1958, he phoned Helen about his decision to move to Switzerland. He told her that he did not feel like writing and that he was to live there because he preferred it- it was the best kind of life. After his first return trip to China in 1960, Edgar wrote to Helen on January 17, 1961, “all the Chinese whom we know spoke of you with concern and affection… I am sure you will be welcome if you want to go there.”
If we say that the Snow marriage helped build up both Edgar and Helen in their early career in China, the divorce after 17 years of marriage helped accomplish what each one of them wanted but unable to do so after they had established themselves.