Edgar Parks Snow (1905–1972) was a famous American writer and journalist. In 1928 he was sent to China as a journalist. In June 1936 he left Beiping (present-day Beijing) for Xian and moved on to Bao’an, Shannxi Province, capital of the Communist-held areas of China at that time and site of the Communist Party’s Central Committee’s headquarters. Over a four-month period he met many of the Communist leaders. His later book, Red Flag Over China, reported for the first time from a Western perspective the situation in the revolutionary area. Before leaving Beiping, Snow had borrowed a 16-mm camera from a fellow-journalist and teacher at Yenching (Yanjing) University, James White, and used it to depict the activities of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other leaders of the Red Army, so creating an immensely important historical record. In October 1936 Snow arrived back in Beiping and returned the camera back to White. White returned temporarily to the States in 1940 and handed this camera to his sister, D. E. Alexander, who presented it to the Museum in 1979. (Yao Jie)