Remembering a remarkable woman

Ed asked Helen to fetch from a studio a developed photo of Mao Zedong. [Photo/China Daily]

Letter from Yan'an

When Edgar was still in Yan'an in August 1936, he wrote a letter to Helen in Peking, which kindled his wife's passion to visit the place.

That year, the Japanese army was speeding up its invasion in China, but the Kuomintang was still concentrating its efforts on exterminating the "Red Bandits".

The Snows, having seen the misery the Chinese had suffered due to the invasion, sympathized with the country and were worried about its future.

Reading what her husband had seen and heard in Yan'an in his coded letter in September 1936, Helen, a passionate and adventurous woman, then immediately decided to go to meet Edgar there.

But it was harder for her to get into Yan'an than Ed did in 1936.

Helen arrived in Xi'an in late September. It was two months before the "Xi'an Incident", and the Generallissimo Chiang Kai-shek was preparing to launch another military offensive against "Red Bandits" in Northern Shaanxi.

Although she was unable to go to Yan'an, Helen got a chance to interview Zhang Xueliang, Chiang Kai-shek's deputy commander-in-chief, publishing the scoop in the Daily Herald in London that foretold the "Xi'an Incident" 70 days later, in which Zhang and General Yang Hucheng, pacification commissioner of Shaanxi province, captured Chiang Kai-shek in Xi'an to force him to stop the war against the CPC and unite the Chinese to fight the Japanese aggression.

In late October 1936, Edgar completed more than three months of interviews in Yan'an and returned to Peking.

Helen then started helping him to sort out the material, type out the notes of the interviews and print the photos that Edgar had shot in Northern Shaanxi.

At her suggestion, Edgar did not rewrite the portrait of Mao Zedong in his own words. Instead, he kept Mao's first-person account, making it a classic.

In early April 1937, when Edgar was still working on Red Star Over China, Helen learned that the CPC would hold a representative conference in Yan'an, and communist members from around China would gather there, which she regarded a great opportunity to go to the Red area.

In late April, she arrived in Xi'an again, seeking a chance to enter Northern Shaanxi. By that time, her husband was world-famous thanks to his exclusive reports on Yan'an.

Helen was closely watched by the Kuomintang police. She tried several ways to get away but failed.

In the end, she jumped out the window of her hotel room at midnight and joined her American friend Fitch.

Helen then made her way to Yan'an, and interviewed many CPC officials that her husband had not had a chance to meet, including Zhu De, who led the Second and Fourth fronts of the Red Army on the Long March and had arrived in Yan'an later.

She took photos and collected material not only for her own books like Inside Red China, but to provide supplements to Edgar's Red Star Over China, such as the section about Zhu De.