Remembering a remarkable woman

Ed and Helen Snow were married in Tokyo, 1932. [Photo/China Daily]

Off to China

So in July 1931, she left Seattle for Shanghai taking the American Mail Line ship, President Lincoln.

Then, when she was working the Consulate General of the United States in Shanghai as a secretary, Helen asked about the American correspondent Edgar Snow, whom she admired greatly through reading a lot of his reports about China.

They soon met and fell in love, and Edgar then showed Helen around China.

In Shanghai, they witnessed the "worst typhoon in years", the refugees rushing to Shanghai after that, and epidemics followed suite, aggravated by famine and Japanese invasion.

They took photos and wrote news reports for Western media to present the truth of China.

At that time, many news reports were about the easy life that most Western people enjoyed in the concessions, regardless of the misery of the Chinese people.

After getting married at Christmas in 1932, the couple moved to Peking as Edgar got a job there. In Peking, as it was then known, with their love for China and their humanitarian streak, they helped students who, despite the Kuomintang's suppression, sought the right to fight against Japanese aggression, during the December 9th Movement in 1935.

Helen wrote stories about these movements and published a series of reports in Millard's Review for about six months.

She also wrote articles for the Daily Herald about these students' movements.

Then, in 1936, Edgar learned that he might be able to enter Northern Shaanxi to see the Red China.

Encouraged by Helen, he went there, and obtained first-hand material about a different China that had not yet been revealed to the world.

As Helen put it, she was a truth seeker, trying to find the truth of history, and the adventure in Northwest China was the turning point of her life.