A series of events are unfolding in Beijing, Shaanxi and Gansu to mark the centennial of the birth of Helen Foster Snow (1907-97), who, like her former husband Edgar Snow (1905-72), dedicated her life to building bridge of friendship between China and America.

 

As Zhang Qie, former deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Literature Fund, puts it, Helen Snow's books about China will be an everlasting source of inspiration to young people.

 

Her works "deserve equal honor to Snow's immortal work Red Star over China as they contribute to a better understanding of China. Her books, some published under the penname of Nym Wales, should be available for those who want to know more about the modern history of China in universities," Zhang was quoted as saying when he presented the Chinese literary award for International Understanding and Friendship to Helen Snow at her hometown in Madison, Connecticut, in 1991.

 

Those words best summarized her life and work, as she herself told her Chinese friends a few times that she spent most of her life opening the door between China and the West. A small-town girl born and schooled in Utah, Helen Foster came to China in 1931 when she was 23.

 

Clever, attractive, eager to be a writer, she first worked at secretarial jobs in Shanghai. There she met and married Edgar Snow, still a young and little-known journalist.

 

"In contrast to the mostly colonial-minded foreign community of the time, both (Helen Foster and Edgar Snow) came to a harmony of feelings with China's ordinary people, which conditioned all their subsequent writings and actions," Israel Epstein (1915-2005) described in his tribute to Helen in a memorial article published in 1998.

 

In 1936, Edgar Snow visited Yan'an of northwest China's Shaanxi Province to become the first foreign journalist to meet Mao Zedong and the Chinese communists. The trip resulted in his world famous work, Red Star Over China. Within a few months, Helen followed "with an equally perilous solo trip", and penned Inside Red China, "an account no less valuable historically", Epstein said. "Both books reflected their belief that they had seen the vital nucleus of China's future."

 

 

In the following years, Helen and Edgar Snow, along with noted New Zealander Rewi Alley, were among the initiators of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, which in China's wartime years (1937-45), "helped keep the country's economy going despite the enemy occupation of all of China's major manufacturing centers".

 

Both Snow and Alley described Helen as the first to push the idea of combining wartime work-relief with cooperative organization.

 

"The motto of those cooperatives, 'Gung Ho', (meaning 'work together') was destined to enter the American language," Epstein continued.

 

In her book, My China Years, published in 1984, she recalled: "My best energy and creative ability went into thinking of ways of getting the industrial cooperatives going... The Gung Ho project had a life of its own. No matter how many times it was given up as impossible and hopeless it rose again..."

 

In her life, some 50 of the books she wrote were about China. However, not all of them got published. Some were Chinese version only. Despite the difficulties, she continued her study on China with enthusiasm throughout her life. She said once that she wrote nothing than "expressing feelings as an honest American".

 

"Always I felt myself to be a personal representative of American people," she added. "Vaguely my husband and I had been aware that we occupied a kind of unique diplomatic position to build a bridge over the Milky Way to the Communist Chinese on our own terms."

 

And she held the firm belief in the value of both Snow's books and her own work.

 

In her article Red Star over China and Me for the book's 50th anniversary in 1988, she pointed out that Edgar Snow's classic writing was "a real comet with a long tail and a recurring afterglow", and her own books were "like a twinkling constellation of stars".

 

Above all, she said: "My works need to be put in a corner of a library and studied as a whole, not only as individual books. It is the experience of an American woman from 1907 to 1991 as of now. It does cover the big landscape and seascape of the 20th century from one perspective."

 

Edgar Snow was more than a reporter describing accurate situation of China and its future; he was also a messenger between China and the United States in 1970. In his letter to Chairman Mao, Snow mentioned his revisit to China in 1960.

 

He realized "what finally works on our bilateral relations is peaceful and competitive co-existence". Snow had warm exchanges with audiences from 50 universities and organizations all over China and his book On the other Side of the River gained worldwide attention.

 

Snow made his third visit to China in 1970 when China sent a welcome message to the then US president, Richard Nixon.

 

Helen Snow carried similar missions in her own way, despite the fact that she and Edgar Snow divorced in 1949.

 

"Edgar Snow built the first bridge between China and the West over the Pacific, the United States in particular. What I did was implementing his ideas" she was quoted as saying in Chinese literature. "I call my ideas 'BRIDGING'."

 

She further explained "bridging" in her letters to Chinese Writer's Association's Secretary in 1991. "I call my ideas "BRIDGING" over, not between, the conflicting ideologies and distances."

 

In the elegant well-compiled photo-essay memorabilia entitled Bridging of Helen Snow published by her niece, she wrote: "At the age of 84 in 1991, I have passed a few milestones along the way All my writing and thinking provides a 'bridge to the future' It is a body of writing that bridges over, not between, extremes of any kind, to find the valid thesis for building the best future."

 

As Han Suyin, the author known for her books on China, wrote: "Helen Snow's magnificent books on those epic years of China's revolutions, in 1936-37, her biographies of the men and women who struggled with such unbounded courage to liberate China's people from misery and bondage - will remain forever in the history of the world."

 

Some 20 American researchers and friends of Snow gather today with Chinese researchers at Peking University for a seminar on her and her former husband Edgar Snow's contributions to the country. Then the scholars will trace the couple's footsteps to Shaanxi Province. On Friday, another ceremony will be held for the 110th birthday of Rewi Alley.

 

(China Daily September 3, 2007)