A senior at Yenching University in Beijing (then Beiping) in 1936, I was preparing for the mid-June final exams when the American journalist Edgar Snow revealed to me his secret plans to head for northern Shaanxi.

He had just been granted permission by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to visit the revolutionary base. Snow and I became close friends because of his hearty support for the Beiping student movement in December, which called on the nation to rise in resistance against Japanese invasion.

He asked me if I was willing to be his interpreter, because his Chinese was not good enough to carry out his reporting task.

What an opportune offer! We progressive students had closely followed the news of the Red Army, and the thought of going to northern Shaanxi to join the Red Army had run through my mind.

I accepted Snow's invitation as the opportunity of a lifetime without a moment's hesitation.

Snow and I worked out a simple plan for our journey. He was to head for Xi'an by himself. After he had secured permission for himself, and me as his interpreter, to get into Yenan (now spelled Yan'an), he would use a code to inform his wife Helen Snow in Beiping by wire.

I could then rendezvous with him at a local hotel.

Soon after Snow left Beiping by train, I took one of the final exams and even had a photo taken dressed up in robe and cap. I also asked the university secretary to write a formal letter of introduction to General Chang Hsueh-liang (1901-2001) certifying that I was a Yenching University graduate travelling to Northwest China to survey the banking situation there and was looking for assistance from the proper authorities.

A few days after Snow left, Helen notified me she had received a cable from her husband that I could take off as planned. I slipped out of the campus with a small leather suitcase. I left everything in my dorm intact and informed no one, classmate or relative, of my departure.

I arrived in Xi'an and checked in at a small hotel.

While browsing at a local bookstore, I chanced upon the latest edition of a progressive journal. It carried an article by the famous writer Lu Xun (1891-1936) entitled "My Reply to a Letter from the Trotskyites."

Dated June 9, 1936, the article praised Mao Zedong's proposal that "the different parties join forces to resist Japanese aggression."

I looked for Snow as previously arranged. He was staying at the Xijing (West Capital) Inn, the only modern and top-class hotel in town then. When I entered his room, I met another Westerner. Snow introduced him as George Hatem, an American physician.

Like Snow, Hatem had been recommended by Madam Soong Ching Ling to visit northern Shaanxi. Hatem was to devote his entire life to the development of public health in the Soviet region and later in New China. We became close friends too.

Snow and Hatem left for Yenan on a military truck, accompanied by a colonel of the Northeast Army and a CPC liaison officer in the Northeast Army.

I stayed behind to wait for the next underground liaison man to take me to northern Shaanxi.

The political situation in Xi'an and all of Shaanxi was quite complicated. There were the Northeast Army led by General Chang Hsueh-liang and the Northwest Army led by General Yang Hucheng.

By the time we arrived in Xi'an, Chang and Yang already recognized that the CPC and Red Army had put forward a reasonable proposal for resisting Japanese aggression and that the CPC was sincere, open and above-board.

There were CPC liaison men working at Yang's headquarters. They partly facilitated travels between Xi'an and Bao'an, where the headquarters of the Red Army was located.

But there were also the secret agents of the Kuomintang's Central Army and its special forces for the "extermination of the Communist bandits."

I was staying on the hotel's second floor. One day, two thugs who claimed to be from the Kuomintang's provincial department came upstairs and wanted to force their way into my room.

I blocked the door and chit-chatted with them. I mentioned a classmate of mine being the daughter of a high-ranking Kuomintang general and my mission to survey the local banking sector. They were impressed and I was able to send them away along with two other plainclothes men downstairs.

Three days later, I set off with three others, riding in a military truck. We were all dressed in uniforms that resembled those of the colonel of the Northeast Army who accompanied us.

The distance from Xi'an to Yenan was about 300 kilometres, so the trip took us more than two days by truck. We finally reached the area guarded by the Red Army after passing through various check-points and later walking in darkness and hunger for 20 kilometres.

How happy we were! Now at last we could breathe freely and talk unhindered.

On July 21, I was elated to see Zhou Enlai, for whom I had long cherished respect. He was then vice-chairman of the Military Commission of the CPC's Central Committee.

Brandishing a thick beard and dressed in a grey army uniform, he extended his hand to welcome us with a smile.

Working with Snow

We arrived at Bao'an County (Zhidan County today) after a day's journey and I was reunited with Snow and Hatem.

Snow told me he had had several interviews with Chairman Mao Zedong. Mao spoke mostly about the current situation in China and the CPC's efforts to form a national united front in the fight against Japanese aggression, as well as its preparations for national resistance. He also told Snow his personal history.

Snow felt he had gathered a rich load of information. In fact, he had already used up several notebooks. Afraid that he might have missed out on some major policy issues and names of people and places, he wanted me to help him check and make enquiries, if necessary.

Along with another colleague, I went to see Chairman Mao.

Mao told me he had received the journal with Lu Xun's letter forwarded by Zhou Enlai, and he was very happy that Lu Xun had made such a high evaluation of the Red Army's struggles.

While in Bao'an, Snow also talked to 100 or so CPC leaders and Red Army commanders.

During his interviews, some of the top CPC officials spoke to him directly in English.

At the town of Wuqi, where the Red Army's arsenal and several factories were situated, and at its maintenance base, Helianwan, Snow interviewed many workers, managerial personnel and engineers. He took exhaustive notes of the answers he got, including those about the women workers' pay and maternity leave.

In late August, Snow was about to head for the front in Ningxia. There, the Red Army was confronted by 200,000 Kuomintang troops and battles were frequent. I accompanied Snow when he went to say goodbye to Chairman Mao. Snow suggested that he take a photo of the Chairman.

As we stepped out of the cave, Mao looked quite smart in the sun. His clothes were neat but his hair was somewhat ruffled. So Snow took off his own brand new army cap with the red star and suggested the Chairman wear it. This was a shot that Snow was most proud of and which had become well known to most Chinese people.

Before we left Bao'an, Mao asked me to tell Snow to have his notes on his sessions with Mao about the establishment of a national united front against Japanese aggression and the CPC's relevant policies written out so that I could have the whole thing translated into Chinese.

Mao wanted to have it sent back to him in Bao'an by a special courier so that he could go over it himself. So, on our way to the front, we used the midday rest period to do that. We would sit in the open, under the sun.

Snow would type out his notes while I translated page by page into Chinese. As soon as one piece was finished, I put the translation into an envelope and had an army courier rush back to Bao'an with it.

It took us three sessions to accomplish this special task.

At Yuwangbao on the Ningxia front, Snow saw how the troops were drilled and trained against air raids. He witnessed the parade and performance of 1,000 cavalrymen, the most impressive of which was the camouflage display, when at the word of command from their leader, the horses and their riders all "disappeared," turning into a vast piece of farmland covered with green foliage.

Recording the history

Snow used his movie camera to record this grand spectacle.

During the interviews, Snow explored into CPC's national salvation programme, its military strategy and tactics, its united front policy and measures, its policy towards prisoners of war, its policy towards ethnic minorities, its religious policy, its stand on the land revolution, on the marriage system, its policy on industry and commerce, its logistics and so on and so forth.

He told me that he had found answers to all of the 90 questions he had listed before his trip.

He said he'd gathered many lively impressions and gained a much deeper understanding of the Red Army and they were totally different from the bandits that Chiang Kai-shek tried to make them out to be.

By acting as Snow's interpreter, I had a rare chance to meet all the cadres and fighters he interviewed, to learn about their trouble-loaded early lives and their danger-packed struggles.

They had full confidence in the final victory of the Chinese people's struggle against Japanese aggression. They were concerned not only with their own struggle, but also with the anti-Fascist international united front, such as the Spanish Republicans' war against Francisco Franco and the struggle of the Ethiopians under Emperor Haile Selassie against Italian aggression.

Snow had originally intended to have Hatem and me in his photos, but we asked Snow not to include us in his photographs, nor to have our names mentioned in his articles.

Hatem had many relatives in the United States, and I might one day be sent for underground work in the Kuomintang-controlled areas, so any mention of me or photos with me in them might compromise my work.

Snow accepted our request and kept his word. Only after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 did he mention my role, in the second edition of his book. By that time, I had already changed my name to Huang Hua (from Wang Rumei) and George Hatem had become Ma Haide.

End of the journey

Early in September of 1936, news came that one of Chiang Kai-shek's crack armies had moved from Zhengzhou, Henan Province, to Xi'an and Lanzhou. This was a clear Kuomintang attempt to form an encirclement to crack down on the coming junction of the Red Army's three main forces.

Snow must therefore leave northern Shaanxi before any possible interruption of the road to Xi'an, otherwise he might not be able to return to Beijing and use the precious materials he had gathered through his interviews to write his envisioned book.

On September 7, Snow was getting ready to leave Yuwangbao for Bao'an. It was time for Snow, Hatem and I to part company. While the horses and guides were waiting, the three of us warmly embraced one another.

The first thing Snow did after returning to Beiping was to send dispatches to newspapers in the United States and Britain.

Snow's book, "Red Star over China," was translated into Chinese in 1938 by a few underground Communists and published in the foreign concession in Shanghai by a publisher pen-named Fu She.

To escape Kuomintang's censorship, it was renamed "Travels to the West" to look like a travelogue. Widely distributed and read by progressive intellectuals, it became a powerful weapon against Kuomintang's news blackout and its baseless anti-Communist smears.

Tens of thousands of young people travelled long distances to reach Yan'an to join the revolution, many becoming members of the armed forces. Outside of China, "Red Star Over China" was the first book by a foreign correspondent about "Red China," as well as the first one to introduce to the world Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other CPC leaders, the Chinese Red Army and the people in the CPC-led revolutionary bases, complete with on-the-spot interviews and photos.

After its publication in Britain, it had five reprints within a month. It truly was a book that shook the world.

(China Daily 10/21/2006 page9)