(Text/Ding Ming, Harina)
At the foot of the Yin Mountains, on the banks of the Yellow River, on the Tumut Plain, a white jade statue inscribed "Edgar Snow's Awakening Point" attracts thousands of people here every year to admire the valuable qualities of an American journalist who tells the truth. As this year's China Journalists' Day approaches, it has become a popular spot for people to visit and admire.
The beginning of an awakening in a lifetime
More than 90 years ago, the Chinese people, who had suffered from Japanese imperialist aggression and the dark rule of the Kuomintang, lived in dire straits, and their real living conditions were little known to the international community in the news blockade between the Japanese aggressors and the Kuomintang. At this time, a Western journalist with conscience, truth-seeking, and courage to speak the truth stepped forward and made public the truth about the survival of the Chinese people at that time. He was Edgar Snow.
Snow was born in 1905 to an ordinary peasant family in Missouri. He worked as a farmer, a railway worker, and a printing apprentice, and suffered hardships. In 1925, Snow came to the prestigious University of Missouri to study journalism and became a journalist after graduation.
In July 1928, Snow boarded an ocean-going ship to China with curiosity about the Eastern world, and worked in Shanghai as assistant editor of the Miller's Review and as a far eastern correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. He then worked as a professor at Yenching University for two more years. This series of experiences has given Snow a very unique feeling for China.
At that time, Shanghai, known to Westerners as the "Paris of the East", was a strange scene: "Naked coolies, carrying heavy goods with trembling bamboo flats, trotting past the intimidating Indian patrol." The British in a polished car scrambled with a rickshaw on the road. Signs and banners in Chinese characters are hung everywhere, except for areas under the jurisdiction of foreigners. ”
After seeing the prosperity of greater Shanghai, Snow decided to go to northwest China to have a look.
In 1929, Snow was invited by the Ministry of Communications of the Kuomintang government to take a bumpy train from Shanghai to Suiyuan to investigate northwest China, and the terminus of this train was Sarazi.
Today's Sarazi is lined with trees, high-rise buildings, business is prosperous, and the people are happy. But in 1929, when Snow first got off the train, he saw hunger and devastation. According to Gao Jingzhe, director of the Tumut Right Banner History Office in Baotou City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, to which Saraqi now belongs, in 1929, a major drought occurred in northwest China, and many places had no harvest of grain, ordinary people were hungry, and at the same time, plague was also prevalent in some places. At the end of the Shanghai-Sui Railway, Sarazi was one of the hardest hit places.
Snow went from the bright and green shanghai of drunken gold to the northwest of China where "white bones are exposed in the wild, and there is no chicken chirping for thousands of miles", and to Saraqi, which is desolate and lifeless. The beginning and end of a railway, connecting heaven and hell. On the one hand, the rich people are hoarding grain and living in qi, three wives and four concubines, and they have to set up thirty-six dishes for a meal; on the other hand, the poor masses are hungry, sell their children and women, and even reach the point where people eat people.
The strong contrast gave Snow a strong shock. Driven by responsibility and compassion as a journalist with a conscience, he wrote a long essay entitled "Saving 250,000 Lives" and reported on the drought in the north in 1928.
Snow believes that it was after Sarazi witnessed the tragic scene of devastation and people's livelihood that his sense of responsibility and mission as a journalist was completely awakened. He wrote in The Journey of Restoration: "I arrived at Sarazi, a small town south of the Gobi Desert... This is the beginning of an awakening in my life. ”
In 1931, the Japanese army launched the September 18 Incident, and the three northeastern provinces soon fell. Snow is extremely sympathetic to China's suffering. He spared no effort to go to the northeast and Shanghai, went deep into the front line of the anti-Japanese resistance, collected materials, and published a report and newsletter "Far East Front".
After that, Snow's footsteps spread throughout northeast China, Taiwan, Yunnan and other places, wrote a lot of influential objective news reports, and began to think and look for a way out and hope for China. Eventually, he found the base area of the anti-Japanese revolution in the northwest led by the Communist Party of China.
Conveying China's "Voice of the War of Resistance"
The year 1936 was a turning point for China. This year was equally crucial in Snow's life. It was in June of that year, with the help of Song Qingling, that Snow finally ushered in an opportunity to enter the Northern Shaanxi Soviet Region.
With the mood of "taking a foreigner's head and taking a risk," Snow and Ma Haide, a doctor from the United States, set off from Beijing with a letter of introduction, two cameras, and 24 films, risking their lives all the way west, going deep into the shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia anti-Japanese revolutionary base area, becoming the first Western journalist to report on the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in the Red Soviet Zone.
Before arriving in the Soviet zone, Snow was also influenced by rumors that the Red Army was a group of tenacious outlaws and disobedients. But in northern Shaanxi, he heard the local people refer to the Red Army as "our army", and saw that when passing through the wild apricot forest, the Red Army soldiers scattered to pick wild apricots, but when they walked through the private orchard, no one touched the fruit inside.
Snow also found that the Red Army was a truly "national" armed force, whose origin and dialect did not affect unity; that they were mostly young peasants and workers who considered themselves to be fighting for their families, their land, and their country; and their optimism about the revolution despite their scars.
At the time, the temporary capital of the Northern Shaanxi Soviet District (present-day Zhidan County, Shaanxi Province), Snow met mao Zedong, the leader of the Red Army. Mao Zedong had a long conversation with him and gave him a unified Red Army hat and new uniform.
According to Cao Tingting, a docent at the Memorial Hall of the Zhidan County Security Revolution, "As the first foreign journalist to interview Mao Zedong, Snow and Mao Zedong established an extraordinary friendship. In dozens of long, all-night conversations, Mao Zedong personally answered questions about the basic policies of the Communist Party, the War of Resistance Against Japan, cooperation between the Red Army and the Kuomintang army, and his own life. ”
After the security guards interviewed the leaders of the Red Army, Snow offered to go to the front line to interview, and went to Yuhai County, Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Province (present-day Tongxin County, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region), where the General Headquarters of the Red Army was stationed in the Western Expedition.
According to Yang Wenyuan, an expert on party history in Tongxin County, the Huimin Autonomous Government of Yuhai County, Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Province, was the first county-level ethnic autonomous government established in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region in 1936. Snow completed nearly 1/3 of the chapters of his book "Red Star Shines on China" here, giving a detailed account of the Red Army stationed here at that time.
Yuwang fort, a historic mingyi ancient town in Tongxin County, Wuzhong City, Ningxia, has a ruins of an ancient city in the town, and there are still remnants of the rammed city wall. The trumpeter on the cover of "Red Star Shines on China" was shot here.
Yang Wenyuan said that in the summer of 1936, on the thick ancient city wall of Yuwangbao, a Red Army soldier blew a loud military trumpet facing the rising sun, and the red flag behind him was waving in the wind. Soon after, "Red Star Shines on China" with this classic photo as the cover shocked the world, and the heroic trumpeter and its symbol of the young "Red China" conveyed to the world the indomitable "Voice of the War of Resistance".
From seeking the truth to seeking the truth
In the four months of interviews, Snow not only obtained vivid first-hand material: a total of 16 notebooks and 24 rolls of film, leaving a large number of written materials and photos, but also solved the doubts in his heart, enabling him to complete the transformation from seeking the truth to seeking the truth.
After leaving northern Shaanxi, he wrote the book "Red Star Shines on China" based on his experiences and observations in the past four months.
Unlike some Western journalists who look at China with colored glasses and ignore facts and smear China, Snow, in his book "The Red Star Shines on China," without any political prejudice or partisan color, through first-hand information obtained through personal interviews, for the first time gave the whole world a true and comprehensive report on the course of the Long March of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, reported to the people of all countries in the world the revolutionary spirit of the arduous struggle of the Communist Party of China and the military and people of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and reported the CPC's stand of upholding the anti-Japanese national united front and its determination to resist the Japanese aggressors It dismantled all kinds of rumor offensives at that time that distorted and vilified the Communist Party.
In October 1937, "Red Star Over China" caused a sensation in the United Kingdom, selling more than 100,000 copies. The book has been translated into nearly 20 languages and has spread around the world over the decades with hundreds of millions of readers.
A year later, the first full translation of the first Chinese of "Red Star Shines on China" was published in Shanghai. In consideration of the fact that it would be distributed in the enemy-occupied areas and the areas ruled by the Kuomintang government, in order to avoid censorship of books and newspapers, the translation was renamed "Journey to the West".
The publication of "Red Star Shines on China" sounded like spring thunder, piercing the long-standing press blockade of the Kuomintang reactionaries in one fell swoop, not only announcing to the whole world the existence of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, but also answering a major question of concern to the people of the whole world with ironclad facts: The Communist Party of China, located in the border area, is the core force opposing Japanese aggression and is China's future and hope.
Under the influence of this book, groups of patriotic young people and foreign friends rushed to Yan'an. In a letter to a friend, Bethune said: "If you want to ask me why I went to China, please read Edgar Snow's "The Red Star Shines on China", and you will surely feel the same way as I will read it." American friends Yang Zao and Han Chun also came to Yan'an one after another after watching "Red Star Shines on China" and dedicated their lives to China's dairy cattle cause.
Win the admiration of Chinese people
As a Western journalist, Snow fulfilled his mission of seeking truth in China, and in the cause of the liberation of the Chinese people and the subsequent construction cause, he realized his sublimation from seeking the truth to seeking truth and seeking faith. While letting Western countries understand and understand China, he also deeply rooted the roots of his faith and his ashes in China.
In 1941, after the Anhui Incident, which shocked China and foreign countries, because Snow ruthlessly exposed the Kuomintang reactionaries in the form of news reports, he was suppressed by the Kuomintang and returned to China. Influenced by the proliferation of McCarthyism in the United States in the 1950s, Snow was persecuted by the United States and forced to move to Switzerland after returning to China, but he has always been concerned about China and has firmly believed in supporting the just cause of the Chinese people.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Snow visited China three times and was cordially received by the central leaders. In 1971, he wrote an article in the monthly magazine "Life" in the United States, which promoted the visit of US President Nixon to China and contributed to the friendly development of Sino-US relations.
On February 15, 1972, just a week before Nixon's visit to China, Snow died of illness in Geneva, Switzerland. During his serious illness, Snow left a will: "I love China, and I would like to leave a part of me there after I die, just as I did when I was alive." ”
With the consent of the Chinese government, on October 19, 1973, Snow's wife buried part of his ashes in the United States and part of it to China in accordance with his will, and buried it on the shore of the unnamed lake at Peking University, becoming a permanent memorial for Chinese people.
Throughout his life, Snow was enthusiastic about Chinese the just cause of the people, spared no effort to publicize the cause of The Chinese revolution and construction, and won the admiration of the Chinese people. In 2009, Snow was selected as one of China's top ten international friends along with Bethune and John Rabe.
In 1991, with deep remembrance of this outstanding journalist and internationalist fighter, the people of Sarazi erected a white jade statue of him in the small amusement park in the town of Sarazi, with the inscription "Edgar Snow Awakening Point" written by Buhe, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.
In October 2019, the Tumut Right Banner Government moved the Snow Statue to the Shulechuan Cultural Park. Today, in this place with its back to the green mountains and evergreen seasons, Mr. Snow's statue looks down on Sarazi and witnesses the earth-shaking changes that have taken place in this hot land of northwest China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to Zhang Hongyu, chairman of Tumut Right Banner Shulechuan Cultural Tourism Investment Co., Ltd., the "Edgar Snow Awakening Point" has become a hot spot for people to visit and admire in recent years, receiving thousands of visitors every year, and receiving more than 50,000 people in the highest year.
2The sculpture of the Red Army's "trumpeter" in front of the Memorial Hall of the Red Army's Western Expedition in Tongxin County, Wuzhong City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Ding Ming photo)
Source: Reference News Network