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But if Snow's book is less exciting than Reed's, its material was gathered under even more difficult conditions. On his way to Soviet territory, Snow traveled first to Sian where, six months later, Chiang Kai-shek was to be kidnapped.* He found Communist sympathizers all over the place, a Red Army commander, with a price on his head, on the staff of Chiang Kai-shek's commander. After he had gone through the Red lines he was followed (although he did not know it) by roving White "bandits" bent on robbery. The Reds received reports that a crazy "foreign devil'' was leading an attack on them by marching a mile ahead of his troops. First Soviet citizens to whom Snow spoke—a farmer and a local official—said cheerfully, "Hai p'a," which Snow thought meant "I'm afraid." Snow did not know what they were afraid of, finally discovered that in Shensi dialect "Hai p'a" means "I don't understand."
Snow found Soviet China a territory about the size of England. He was welcomed by wiry, black-bearded Red Commander Chou Enlai, scion of a Mandarin family, one-time head of Whampoa Academy (Chiang Kai-shek's officers' training school), who suggested a 92-day itinerary, gave Snow permission to write as he pleased. Astonished at the youthfulness of the Red Army personnel (average age of its officers was 24, of its rank & file, 19), Snow was more astonished by the background of Red Army leaders. One was Commander-in-Chief Chu Teh, an "old-shoe sort of man" now past 50, once a powerful politician adept at the chess game of Chinese politics, who became a revolutionist in 1922 and gave his fortune to the Reds. Another was Lin-Piao, 29-year-old head of the Red Academy and conceded to be one of the greatest military strategists in China, who had been a colonel in Chiang Kai-shek's army at 20.
But the Red leader who made the greatest impression on Snow was 44-year- old Mao Tse-tung, "Lincolnesque" Chairman of the Chinese People's Soviet Government, a peasant who turned classical scholar, organized the Communist Party in China, and became as well-known to Chinese as Chiang Kai-shek when Chiang Kai-shek put a price of $250,000 on his head. Evenings, perched on a stool inside Mao's solid-stone hut, Snow slowly took down Mao's patiently dictated autobiography. Incorporated into Red Star Over China, it makes a valuable document in its own right. When Chiang Kai-shek broke with the Communists in 1927, Mao organized the Soviet in Hunan Province. Despite the internal feuds and contradictory policies of the Comintern, the Hunan Soviet lasted from 1930 to 1934, and with only 40,000 men stood off four attacks by Chiang Kai-shek's armies. For this success, Mao had a succinct reason: The misery of the peasants, whose desperate lot (their taxes were collected as far as 60 years in advance) led them to support the Reds' guerrilla warfare.