ABSTRACT
Only a relative handful of American reporters have ever been assigned to cover China. A brief survey of six of the accounts they wrote over six decades shows that they have had their hands full. War, revolution and the Cold War made access difficult; distance and cultural difference frustrated understanding. The most memorable part of Red Star Over China is Snow's biography of Mao Zedong. Mao spent many nights responding to lists of questions Snow had submitted before finally addressing the details of his personal history. Ten years after edgar snow made his visit to "Red China", Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby published their classic work, Thunder Out of China—a work not so much of reporting as of instant history. Snow, who sets down his experiences in The Other Side of the River, finds himself in a new world, obliged to operate under the controlled conditions of a closed society.
