Helen Foster Snow
Helen Foster Snow was an American journalist who reported from China in the 1930s under the name Nym Wales on the developing Chinese Civil War, the Korean independence movement and the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Snow's family moved often throughout her youth and she ended up living in Salt Lake City with her grandmother in her teenage years, until she decided to move to China in 1931. There, she married American journalist Edgar Snow and became a correspondent for several publications. While she and her husband were sympathetic to the revolutionaries in China, whom she compared favorably to the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek, she was never a card-carrying Communist.
While living in Beijing, the Snows befriended leftist leaders of the 1935 December 9th Movement, who arranged for first Edgar, then Helen to visit the communist wartime capital, Yan'an, in 1937, where she interviewed Chinese Communist leaders, including Mao Zedong. The Snows also conceptualized the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, known as the Gung-Ho movement, which provided jobs and stability. In 1940, Snow returned to the United States, where she and Edgar divorced. She continued to support the Cooperatives and write books based on her experiences in China. In the late 1940s, critics grouped her with the China Hands as one of those responsible for the "loss of China" who went beyond sympathy to active support of the New Democratic Revolution.
Early life
Helen Foster was born in Cedar City, Utah, and raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was born to John Moody Foster and Hannah Davis, who met working as teachers at Ricks Academy, a school affiliated with the LDS Church. Hannah graduated from Ricks Academy, and John was a graduate from Stanford University. Both of Helen's parents were descendants of Mormon pioneers who migrated to Utah in the mid-1800s.From the time Helen was young, the Foster family moved quite frequently. After Helen's birth in Cedar City, the Fosters moved to Chicago so John could attend law school. Several years later, the family once again moved to Idaho. The frequent moves helped to shape Helen's outgoing personality as she was constantly concerned about what her new peers would think of her. Being the oldest child and only daughter of the family, she took on a lot of responsibility as the family expanded. She often worked alongside her mother to care for her three younger brothers and complete chores, especially when financial circumstances were difficult for the Fosters.
Upon entering high school, Helen moved to Salt Lake City to live with her grandmother and aunt. She attended West High School and became involved in many school activities and organizations. She frequently worked on editing the school's yearbook and was elected student vice president of her senior class. Due to her father's influence, Helen wanted to attend college at Stanford, but the cost of tuition was prohibitive. According to Helen, her parents believed that "girls were not considered a good investment in higher education as they would only get married, while boys were worth it". However, Helen's father agreed to pay for her attendance at the University of Utah. She attended school for several years, but did not graduate.
Instead, Helen focused on work and was hired as a secretary for the Utah chapter of the American Silver Mining Commission. While at this position, she decided she would like to work abroad in addition to her aspiration to write her own "great American novel". Helen took the civil service exam and passed, yet there were no open positions in Europe, where she initially desired to go. However, her employer had a connection in China, ultimately securing a job for Helen with the president of an American company in Shanghai. In August 1931, Helen set sail to Asia in the hopes of becoming a writer.
Life in China
Arrival
Almost immediately after arriving in 1931, she met Edgar Snow, who had arrived in China in 1929. Edgar was ready to return to America at this point as his mother had died and he was battling malaria. But meeting Helen convinced him to stay working in China. She admired his work and had collected clippings of the newspaper articles he had written. Helen wanted her career to emulate his.Less than one week after Helen's arrival, the Yangtze flood caused extreme damage around Shanghai. Helen was working as a foreign correspondent for the Seattle Star through the Scripps-Canfield League, a newspaper publishing company, and was to provide images "glorifying the glamorous Orient". The flood of the Yangtze was the worst in recorded history, displacing 120,000 people. Over a period of three weeks, continuous floods killed over 600,000 and destroyed 12 million homes.
Several months later, on January 28, 1932, Japanese forces invaded Shanghai. Helen was in the battle area and observed the invasion from the tower at her apartment. Edgar was also in the midst of the battle. Because of his foreigner status, he was able to observe the action up close with a lesser amount of risk. Helen too wanted to experience battle in-person and take better pictures of the war. Edgar helped her to get a press card, and Helen soon became a war correspondent herself.
Helen had only planned to stay in China for a year. However, over the next year, a courtship blossomed between Helen and Edgar. In a letter from the winter of 1932, Helen wrote, "I like him better than anyone else I have ever known". Edgar proposed to Helen on her 25th birthday, but she declined his offer. She didn't want their marriage to suffer because of her "author psychology" as she was working on a book. Several months later, Ed proposed once again and Helen accepted. The couple married on Christmas Day in 1932. The Snows remained in China for nearly a decade.
December 9 Student Movement
At a time when many Chinese were impatient with the Nationalist government for not opposing the Japanese more actively, the couple moved to Beiping, as Beijing was then called, and took up residence in a small house near Yenching University, where Edgar taught journalism. Helen enrolled in courses at the university. The couple benefited from extraterritorial status as foreigners in China, so they were exempt from Chinese law. With this privilege, the Snows were able to assist students in protesting fascism and contribute to the student movement. Helen once observed, "We couldn't have done anything if we'd been under Chinese law. A Chinese would have been executed for even messing with such things as we did". The Snows served as a source of information for the students, providing them with information that was generally censored by the government. While the Snows never joined the Communist party, they sympathized with Chinese students who desired to resist the Japanese.In 1935, Helen played a large role in orchestrating the anti-Japanese December 9th Movement at Yenching after the attack on Manchuria. Between 800 and 3000 students are estimated to have marched in the streets on the night of December 9. Helen not only directed the demonstration, but she also reported on it. This particular protest inspired the organization of 65 other demonstrations in 32 cities across China. One week later, on December 16, an even larger demonstration took place. Nearly 10,000 students from 28 schools participated in this protest. The Snows got to know idealistic and patriotic students, a number of whom were in their journalism classes, and some of whom were members of the Communist underground and would eventually become leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Edgar and Helen opened their home to student activists during this time as a safe place to develop plans of the student movement and Communist Party.
The couple helped translate Living China, a collection of stories that served as a modern left-wing literary work. Helen also produced and dispersed anti-fascist documents to students. In addition, the Snows produced a magazine in 1937 called Democracy, which was intended to spread Christian ethics. Edgar was intended to be the driving force behind the magazine, however, Helen took charge as her husband worked on his book. The Snows had an agreement that Helen would do all the work for the publication and Edgar would put his name on it as editor. However, the magazine's production came to an end when the Japanese invaded and seized copies from the presses that same year.
Caves of Yan'an and Mao Zedong
Edgar was the first to go to the "Red Areas" and came back with the material for his Red Star Over China. Helen, or "Peg", as she was known to her friends, was not to be outdone, and soon followed. In April 1937, Helen made a trip to the Communist headquarters in Yan'an. Her trip was much longer than anticipated as the Japanese occupied Northern China beginning in July of that same year and bad weather conditions made it impossible to travel. In Yan'an, Helen was only the second foreign woman to enter the area, and the eighth foreign journalist to have such access. She interviewed Mao Zedong and also got his support for what would become the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives.According to Yu Jianting, Helen's translator, Mao explained the history of the Red Army for the first time to Helen despite Edgar's multiple interviews with him the previous year. Chinese Communist leaders had not shared the history of the party previously as they wanted to be seen as equals within the community rather than "heroes of the people". Mao provided Helen with a letter introducing her as a war correspondent, which would give her access to otherwise restricted areas. Mao also requested that Helen share the Chinese Communist Party's "Ten Guiding Principles to Resist against Japan and Save the Nation" on an international scale. Helen's work with Mao gave her the opportunity to interview other important Communist Party figures in Yan'an, which would become the basis for her book.
Helen also interviewed Kang Keqing, wife of the future head of state Zhu De. Kang informed Helen of several issues the army were facing, including lack of soldiers and weaponry. Helen maintained a friendship with Kang and the two exchanged letters for many years after Helen left China.
While in Yan'an, Helen developed severe dysentery and became extremely ill. Despite her illness, Helen completed her book's manuscript in less than one year. Inside Red China was the first book ever written that focused on the city of Yan'an and became important literature to students all over China. This book was supposed to be a companion work to Edgar's Red Star Over China, but it never received the acclaim that Edgar's work had. This specific trip to Yan'an provided Helen with the material to produce at least five other books. Helen used experiences from this trip to write her most successful book, The Song of Ariran. She also drew upon her interviews with Kim San, Korean independence activist she met in Yan'an.