Helen Foster Snow traveled to China in 1931 and returned to the United States in 1940. Soon after arriving in Shanghai, she married American journalist Edgar Snow. Together they helped organize and participated in the December 1935 anti-Japanese student demonstrations. Edgar traveled to Bao'an in 1936 to interview Communist Party leaders who had just completed the Long March. He based Red Star Over China primarily on these interviews. In 1937, Helen spent four months in Yan'an. Her book Inside Red China is based on her extensive interviews with Mao Zedong, Zhu De, and many other prominent CCP leaders who had recently arrived in Yan'an. Together, these two books are one of the few eyewitness accounts of the fledgling Communists in China. Later Helen and Ed played a central role in organizing the Gungho cooperatives (INDUSCO) to help Chinese in the anti-Japanese war.

Following her death in 1997, Helen's family donated her papers and photographs to the Brigham Young University library. This collection of unpublished manuscripts, documents and photographs is a valuable resource for scholars interested in China. The library is presently sorting and cataloguing them. KBYU, a PBS station, is producing a documentary on Helen's China years.

On October 26-27, 2000, BYU will hold a Helen Foster Snow Symposium, officially open the Helen Foster Snow Collection, and premier the documentary Helen Foster Snow: My China Years. We are interested in papers relating to Helen Snow, women in China, U.S.-China relations in the 1930s, and American journalists in China. Scholars interested in participating should contact Eric Hyer, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University for further details: Telephone: (801) 378-4699, Fax: (801) 378-5730, email: eric_hyer@byu.edu.