Edgar Snow was born in 1905 to a poor family in Kansas City. In his youth, he worked as a farmer, railroad worker and printing apprentice. After graduating from college, he began his life's work in journalism, making his debut at The Star in Kansas City and the Sun in New York.
He later worked as a seafarer on a cargo ship to the ocean, traveled to Central America, and finally arrived in Hawaii, where he still contributed to some American newspapers. In 1928, at the height of the Chinese Revolution, he moved to Shanghai to serve as assistant editor of the Miller's Review and later as a special correspondent for the New York Sun and the London Daily Herald.
After 1930, he traveled to major Chinese cities and the three eastern provinces, Inner Mongolia, and Taiwan, as well as Japan, Korea, and the Dutch East Indies, to gather news. He made long travels through the southwestern provinces of China on foot through western Yunnan Province, reaching Burma and India, visiting Gandhi and other revolutionary leaders.
Snow was in Shanghai at the time of the September 18 Incident in 1931, witnessing the Songhu War of 1932 and the Rehe War of 1933.
After that, he worked as a professor in the Department of Journalism at Yenching University in Peking for two years, while studying Chinese and Chinese.
During his time, he became acquainted with smedley, a well-known progressive journalist in the United States, and had contacts with Xun, Soong Ching-ling, and some underground members of the Ccp.
He compiled an English-language selection of modern Chinese short stories, Living China, and was one of the first to introduce Lu Xun's writings to the West.
Because of the passion and love for Chinese people he generated during his four-month adventure in the Red Zone of the Northwest, he devoted almost all of his energies for the rest of his life.
Continue to explore and report on China issues. After the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japan. He worked as a war correspondent for British and American newspapers in China. 1939. He went to Yan'an again. I had a conversation with Chairman Mao.
According to Snow's last wishes, it is appropriate that part of his ashes be buried inside Peking University, the campus of the former Yenching University.
This was the starting point of his expedition to the Northwest in 1936, and the place where he compiled materials to write "Journey to the West" in 1937.
——Excerpt from "Red Star Shines on China"