On July 2, 1992, the 5th seminar on Edgar Snow, a famous American reporter and author of Red Star over China, was held in Beijing. Photo shows the president of the American Edgar Snow Foundation presenting a gift to Huang Hua, president of China International Friend Research Society. (Xinhua File Photo)
On the third floor of the Miller Nichols Library of the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC), there is an around 30-square-meter Edgar Snow reading room that has shelved 614 books covering the household, schooling, trip, connections, biographies and old-age life of well-known American journalist Edgar Snow.
UMKC now collects 718 files, 173 sets of image information, 49 rolls of recording, and 1,200 feet of film footage on Edgar Snow, with contents covering his whole life.
Born in 1905 in Kansas City, Missouri, Edgar Snow was known for his books and articles on Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist revolution in the 1930s.
"Edgar Snow was a very adventurous and curious person," Robert Farnsworth, UMKC professor and author of "From Vagabond to Journalist", a biography on Edgar Snow, told Xinhua. "He wanted to find out more about the world." This adventurous nature and curiosity led Snow to China in 1928, a place where he fell in love with and stayed for 13 years.
Snow travelled lots of places in China and wrote articles about China for newspapers and magazines. China in the eyes of Snow at the time was falling apart, buried deep in internal troubles, and faced aggression from the outside, as against the background of prevailing corruption under the leadership of Kuomintang, and destitute Chinese people.
Then Snow discovered a new world in China through a friend, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, where the Chinese Red Army led by Mao Zedong had just finished the Long March and settled.
With the help of Soong Ching-ling, widow of Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, Snow paid a visit to the region on June-October 1936. During the stay there, he had long conversations with Red Army leaders including Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai, interviewed Red Army soldiers, and collected sources materials on the Long March.
Snow found that though life was hard and materials ran short, people, civilians, officers and soldiers there were united. They opened up wasteland, did ploughing work, wove clothes, and got ample food and clothing all on their own. Through the enthusiasm of the Red Army soldiers for revolution and the support of local residents for these revolutionaries, Snow saw China's hope
From 1928 when he first set his foot on the Chinese soil to 1941 when he left China, Snow had been to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region twice. He had witnessed China's revolutionary struggle and the War of Resistance against Japan, introduced them to the world by writing articles, and helped the Western world better understand China.
In 1937, Snow finished the book "Red Star over China", an account of the Long March led by the Chinese Communist Party (CPC). British Gollancz Co. published the book, and sales of the book exceeded 100,000 in Britain alone in the same year. The book has never been out of printing ever since.
Snow was interested in common people, and was particularly focused on poverty, disease, war, and social problems, UMKC professor Robert Gamer told Xinhua. "He (Snow) was the first western journalist who went to the (Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border) region and interviewed CPC leaders."
U.S. sinologist John King Fairbank referred to Edgar Snow as an important part in modern Chinese history.
Nancy Hill, executive director of Edgar Snow Memorial Foundation, got her knowledge of Snow through Grey Diamond, founder of the UMKC School of Medicine. Father of Mary Diamond, wife of Grey Diamond, is Snow's good friend. Mr. and Mrs. Diamonds established Edgar Snow Memorial Foundation after Snow died in 1972, and the foundation is affiliated to the UMKC.
