There is a famous communist image of a young
Mao Zedong wearing a “flat cap” featuring a red star on its front. As legend has it, the cap was a gift from the
American journalist Edgar Snow, one of the few Westerners allowed behind
communist lines in the ‘30s as China
was caught in the grip of civil war and war with Japan. Regardless of the veracity of the story, the
cap would go on to feature prominently in communist propaganda, as would Snow’s
resulting documentary, Red Star over
China, in the West.
Though written at the time as a journalist piece,
Snow’s appraisal of the communist movement in China in the ‘30s has since
become a work of history. The narrative
predominantly relates the movement’s history, starting with the beginning of
the 20th century to the date the book was published (1937). From its early days in the southeast, the
Long March, to its hiding out in caves of the north fighting against
Nationalist and Japanese forces, Snow uses both Chinese and external sources in
detailing the movement. Each of these
phases is given its political and dramatic due, though in the time since,
better books have been published detailing the varying aspects.
