The second presentation of the Helen Foster Snow Journalism Award was held in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, on Oct 16. Thirteen Chinese journalists promoting Sino-US friendship and world peace won the award.

Launched by the Shaanxi Journalism Association and Shaanxi Translation Association in 2001, the award is named after Helen Foster Snow (1907-97), a well-known American journalist, writer and social activist.

Speaking at the presentation ceremony, Li Wei, director general of the Department for Overseas Communication under the Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said that Helen Foster Snow was a faithful friend of China who braved gunfire during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) to reach Yan'an, Shaanxi，from Xi'an. She brought the true story of China to the world.

Unlike other journalists who stayed for only two or three days, Helen Foster Snow spent 4.5 months in Yan'an, interviewing Mao Zedong and more than 30 other leaders of the Red Army, according to her niece Sheril Foster Bischoff.

Helen Foster Snow was the ex-wife of Edgar Snow (1905-72), the author of the book "Red Star Over China" published in 1936 after he visited northern Shaanxi where he interviewed leaders of the Red Army.

Helen Foster Snow reported from China in the 1930s under the name "Nym Wales" on the developing revolution in China. Like Edgar Snow, she was never a member of the Chinese or American Communist Party but was sympathetic to the revolutionaries in China.

In the late 1940s, critics grouped her with the China Hands as one of those responsible for the "loss of China", going beyond sympathy to active support of Mao Zedong's revolution.

Xi'an hosts Helen Foster Snow Journalism Award