Baotou Evening News (August 31, 2017) Published an article titled "Snow and the "Life Awakening Point" Sarazi" in the 08th edition
Snow and the "Life Awakening Point" Sarazi
Edgar Snow
1905.7.19-1972.2.15), a famous American journalist. He came to China in 1928 and served as a correspondent and correspondent for several Newspapers in Europe and the United States. From April 1933 to June 1935, Snow was also a lecturer in the Department of Journalism at Yenching University in Peking.
In June 1936, Snow visited the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and wrote a large number of newsletters, becoming the first Western journalist to cover the Red Zone. After the founding of New China, he visited China three times and met with Chairman Mao Zedong.
On February 15, 1972, Snow died of illness in Geneva, Switzerland. In accordance with his last wishes, part of his ashes were buried in China.
◎ Reporter Li Yaqiang Zhou Tao
In the early autumn of the Tumut Right Banner, autumn is high and the sky is high and cloudy, and in the small park of Great North Street in Sarazi Town, a bust of Edgar Snow appears quiet and solemn. This foreign journalist has left a series of touching footprints on the land of Sarazi, and Sarazi has also become the awakening point of Snow's life. On the back of the statue, there is a handwritten inscription by Buhe, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress: Remembering Mr. Snow.
The original site of this small park is the place where Mr. Snow witnessed the dumping of the body after a great famine in Sarazi, which is known locally as the "mass grave". Today, it has been announced by the Baotou Municipal People's Government as a municipal cultural relics protection unit, witnessing the obscure years of the past.
1
Documenting "China under the Red Flag" with a Unique Perspective
At the end of the 1920s, there were droughts in northern China for several consecutive years, especially in the eighteenth year of the Republic of China (1929), and the Suiyuan region suffered a major drought in history, and thousands of Mongolian and Han ethnic victims died of hunger. According to the "Chronicle of Saraqi County", "In the 18th year of the Republic of China, the drought and drought arose again, the people did not have a good life, the disaster was very serious, and there was no ancient ... The people are ruined, the ten rooms are turned into Qiu Ruins, the wives and children of the cities are sold, the people are all charred, the open ground is used as a reverse brigade, the ancient temple is deserted as a lodging, the bark of wild grasses and trees is fed, and the locusts and locusts are full of hunger. However, the Kuomintang government downplayed this and whitewashed Taiping.
Edgar Snow came to China in 1928 as assistant editor-in-chief of the Miller's Review in Shanghai and later as a southeast Asian correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and The Daily Herald in London. After the "9.18" incident, he visited the northeast and Shanghai fronts and published a collection of reports and newsletters, "Far East Front.". In Shanghai, he met Song Qingling and Lu Xun, which sparked his interest in recording the sufferings of the Chinese people and China's new literature and art, and later told Xiao Qian, "Lu Xun is a key to teaching me to understand China."
In June 1936, under the arrangement of Soong Ching-ling, Snow made his first visit to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and visited many CCP leaders. In Yan'an, he told Mao Zedong about the reality of the "12.9" movement that he had witnessed.
At the end of October, after Returning to Beiping, Snow published a large number of newsletters and enthusiastically introduced his experiences in northern Shaanxi to young students from Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Yenching University. On March 5 and 22, 1937, he took the opportunity of the meeting of the Yanda Journalism Society and the Historical Society to screen his own films and slides reflecting life in the Soviet Union, and displayed photos, so that the young people in the Kuomintang area could see the image of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Peng Dehuai and other Leaders of the Red Army, and see "China under the Red Flag".
On the eve of the Lugou Bridge Incident in 1937, Snow completed the writing of "Journey to the West". In October, "Red Star Shines on China" (Journey to the West) was published in London, England, causing a great sensation among progressive readers at home and abroad. In February 1938, the Chinese translation was published in Shanghai, allowing more people to see the true image of the Communist Party of China and the Red Army.
2
In Sarazi he found a life awakening point
In the spring of 1927, Edgar Snow, a 24-year-old American journalist, took advantage of the opportunity provided by the Nationalist government to inspect China's railways to Suiyuan (present-day Hohhot) and then to Sarazi on the Pingsui Railway Line.
In the summer of that year, he witnessed a terrible famine in Sarazi and gave a true account of the plight of life in the area. Snow described Salazi at the time in Journey to the Beginning: "At the end of my first year abroad, I was quite far away from my hometown. I arrived at the small town of Sarazi, south of the Gobi Desert. In that part of northwest China, I witnessed thousands of children dying in a famine that ended up claiming more than five million lives. This is the beginning of an awakening in my life. ”
Later, in the reportage "Saving 250,000 Lives", Snow wrote: "I walked on the lifeless streets of Sarazi, lined with men, women and children who were about to starve to death, some sitting in the doorways of houses, some sitting on the stones on the side of the street, some sitting on the ruins of the wall, and some lying powerlessly in the ditches. I walked in another place and saw the most palpitating scene I had ever seen in my life: a boy less than six years old, sitting next to an old man who might have died or was dying. The boy had nothing but a thick layer of dust and dirt. He pushed the old man's body on one side, exerting all the strength inside his thin and twisted body, desperately shouting to his loved ones to sit up and talk. There were so many dead people that they could only dig a horizontal trench outside the walls to bury things, and even then it was difficult to find someone with the strength to dig the ditch. ”
At this time, Sarazi was both plagued by rats and floods, and starvation was unbearable, which was actually a microcosm of the Chinese countryside at that time, which was very different from the China that Snow had seen before. During the inspection, he heard and witnessed many incidents of disaster relief materials being detained, resold and exploited. It was this experience that made him awaken and his identification with the National Government in vain, and it was this experience that brought him closely to the cause of the Chinese people. Since then, he has ventured to explore the Chinese Red Army, and in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, he has interviewed Mao Zedong, Peng Dehuai, Nie Rongzhen and other Leaders of the Red Army, written a large number of communication reports, written a sensational world and influenced China's "Journey to the West", clarified the muddy public opinion and distorted truth, awakened more people to see the direction of the development of the times, and Sarazi became a symbol of his ideological growth and maturity as a journalist.
3
Mrs. Snow was appointed Honorary President of Tuyou Banner Hospital
After Snow returned to the United States in 1941, he still publicized China's War of Resistance Against Japan to the American people and the people of the world. He said: "I am still in favor of the cause of China, which fundamentally belongs to the cause of the Chinese people, and I am in favour of any measure that will help the Chinese people to help themselves, because only by adopting this method can they save themselves." ”
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Snow made three long-term visits to China. In those days when the U.S. government was isolating China and armed support for Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek regime, this was truly unique to an American. When Snow visited Beijing in 1960, he realized that China's leaders hoped his arrival might help build a bridge of friendship between China and the United States. "The future is difficult, but bridges can be built, and they will eventually be built," he said. Although Snow visited China three times, he was not able to return to Sarazi again.
On February 15, 1972, Snow died, and Mao Zedong said in a telegram of condolences: Mr. Snow is a friend of the Chinese people, he has made unremitting efforts and made important contributions to enhancing the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples all his life, and he will always live in the hearts of the Chinese people.
In July 1985, Mrs. Lois Wheeler Snow visited China and arrived in Sarazi on 21 July, finally fulfilling Snow's wish to visit Sarazi again during his lifetime. Mrs. Snow was hired as the honorary president of tuyouqi hospital and planted a pine tree in Sarazi hospital to symbolize friendship.
In 1992, the Tuyou Banner People's Government erected a bust of Edgar Snow in the small park of Great North Street in Sarazi Town, with the words "Awakening Point" engraved on the front of the stele and the handwritten inscription "Remembering Mr. Snow" by Buhe, former vice chairman of the National People's Congress.
Today, the beautiful Sarazi is greeting visitors with rapid changes, and we believe that Snow's Sarazi is gone. The industrious and kind people of all ethnic groups in Tuyou Banner are united and forge ahead, and a modern city with economic prosperity, social progress and improvement of people's livelihood is rising on the Tumo River.