Adapted from Edgar Snow’s “Red Star Over China” (1937) — the groundbreaking account of the Chinese Communist movement that introduced Mao Zedong to the Western world. Retired words and outdated romanizations replaced.
I had come to Beijing Beijing in Month Six Month Six, 1936. It was a city of rumor. The walls were thick; the information, thin. The Kuomintang Guomindang press reported only victories over the “Red bandits.” Foreign correspondents, confined to the treaty ports, could not verify these claims. But we had our doubts.
From Beijing Beijing I travelled by train to Sian Xi’an, the ancient capital where the Manchu Man emperors had once ruled. The Month Eight Month Eight heat hung over the yellow earth. Dust filled everything — clothes, lungs, hope. From Sian Xi’an I would attempt what no foreign journalist had done: cross the blockade into the Communist-controlled territories of the Northwest.
The road to the Red Area was guarded. And yet, after days of careful negotiation, I found myself riding a donkey through the Huangtu hills of northern Shensi Shaanxi, past cave dwellings carved into the yellow cliffs, toward the mysterious stronghold of Pao An. My interpreter, a young man from Shanghai Shanghai who had studied in Beijing Beijing, told me we were expected.
At last, in the dim light of an oil lamp, I met him — a tall, gaunt figure with a shock of black hair, a scholar’s hands, and the quiet intensity of a man who had walked six thousand miles. Mao Zedong Mao Zedong offered me a cigarette and began to talk. He talked for nights — about the Long Month Three, about Guangzhou Guangzhou, about Nanjing Nanjing, about the peasants, about the future.
And I began to understand that what was happening here was not a footnote to Chinese history. It was the first draft.
Note: Snow’s original text uses Wade-Giles (“Beijing,” “Guangzhou,” “Nanjing,” “Shensi,” “Mao Zedong”) throughout. This was the standard romanization of the era — the same system our site exists to retire. “Red Star Over China” is arguably the most important book in understanding how China was represented to the English-speaking world in the 20th century. Reading Snow today, with updated romanizations, reveals the geography and names as they are actually known — not as a 19th-century missionary system chose to render them.