Helen meeting the then vice-premier Wang Zhen in Xi'an, 1978. [Photo/China Daily]

War years

After their adventures in Northwest China, the couple left Peking after it was occupied by the Japanese army for Shanghai.

But in late 1937, Helen was watching from the deck of the S.S. President Lincoln as Shanghai was burned by the Japanese.

At least 80 percent of Shanghai's factories and workshops had been destroyed or expropriated by the Japanese.

There were crowds of refugees suffering all kinds of diseases and in rags, said Gary Hansen, a professor from Utah State University, in a speech in 1996.

It was at the Medhurst Apartments in Shanghai, the Snows and their friend Rewi Alley initiated the idea of industrial cooperatives.

"While seeking a way to help these people, Helen found the answer during a dinner-table discussion in early 1938," he said.

Alley recalled in China Remembers Edgar Snow that Helen said: "There must be a people's movement for production. ... Industrial cooperatives are the answer!"

In the following seven years, under extremely difficult conditions, nearly 2,000 industrial cooperatives employing over 300,000 people were systematically organized in China, said Hansen.

At the end of 1940 and the beginning of 1941, the Snows left Shanghai for America. In 1949, they divorced. Edgar died in 1972.