Red Star over China: The Classic Account of the Birth of Chinese Communism
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The first Westerner to meet Mao Tse-tung and the Chines...)
The first Westerner to meet Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist leaders in 1936, Edgar Snow came away with the first authorized account of Mao’s life, as well as a history of the famous Long March and the men and women who were responsible for the Chinese revolution. Out of that experience came Red Star Over China, a classic work that remains one of the most important books ever written about the birth of the Communist movement in China. This edition includes extensive notes on military and political developments in China, further interviews with Mao Tse-tung, a chronology covering 125 years of Chinese revolution, and nearly a hundred detailed biographies of the men and women who were instrumental in making China what it is today.
Edgar Parks Snow was an American journalist from Missouri. He visited China several times, opened it to the American readers and wrote his fundamental work Red China Today (1971), his account of that trips.
Background
He was born on July 19, 1905 in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, the third and youngest child of James Edgar Snow and Anna Catherine Edelman. His father's family were early settlers in Virginia (Snow sometimes claimed descent from a passenger on the Mayflower's second trip) who moved westward through Kentucky as far as Kansas. Edgar's father had a printing and publishing business in Kansas City.
On the maternal side, Snow's ancestors were more recent immigrants from Ireland and Silesia; they came to Kansas City by way of Columbus.
Education
Following graduation from Westport High School in 1923, Edgar attended the Junior College of Kansas City for a year before moving to New York City in 1925. Later he attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism as an advertising major.
Career
As a youth, Edgar worked for his father, as well as in a drug store and as a harvest hand.
He went to New York City in 1926, where he worked for Medley Scovil, an advertising agency specializing in brokerage accounts. He remained in Scovil's employ until 1928.
On July 6, 1928, Snow arrived in Shanghai for a brief stay during a planned trip around the world. J. B. Powell hired him as assistant advertising manager and sometime reporter on the China Weekly Review. Snow would remain in Asia until 1941. In his first years, many of his pieces were travel accounts. Edgar worked as a journalist and taught some courses at Yenching (later Beijing) University. Friendly with radical students, Snow encouraged the student demonstrations of December 1935.
Snow's life changed forever in 1936, when he traveled to Shanxi to visit the besieged Chinese Communist bastion at Paoan. Red Star Over China (1937) was the first account of life in the Soviet area, and it quickly became the major source of knowledge on the Chinese Communist party and its leaders. He followed this triumph with coverage of the expanding Sino-Japanese War.
Following his return to the United States in early 1941, Snow served as an associate editor for the Saturday Evening Post and was its chief war correspondent in Russia. After the war, his report on Gandhi's assassination was dubbed "one of the classics of American journalism" by William Shirer.
He severed his connection with the Saturday Evening Post. With Snow's career at its low point, and his wife unofficially blacklisted from acting, the Snows took up residence in Switzerland. There, he wrote for several European journals. In 1960, as relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China began to thaw, Snow was hired to be the first American journalist to return to the mainland. Just before the inauguration of "ping-pong diplomacy, " Snow visited China again and stood on the reviewing stand at Tiananmen Square with Mao Zedong in 1970. Red China Today (1971), his account of that trip, was his last major work.
Snow died of cancer in his home at Eysins, Switzerland, on February 15, 1972.
He was charged with sympathy for the Chinese Communist movement (sympathies for Mao).
Views
Quotations:
"In working overseas you were bound to notice that fifteen of every sixteen people on earth were not Americans. Those fifteen were likely to behave as if their interests were more important than any of ours which conflicted with them. "
Personality
Snow was an honest writer.
Connections
In Shanghai Snow met Helen ("Peg") Foster, of Utah, who had come to Shanghai to take a minor position in the American Consulate. They were married on Christmas Day, 1932, in Tokyo. After a honeymoon trip through Southeast Asia, the Snows settled in Beijing.
Meanwhile, in May 1949, he and Helen Foster Snow divorced. Nine days later, he married Lois Wheeler, an actress, at Snedens Landing. They subsequently had two children.