The symposium and art exhibition “Painting the Shining Red Star” was held to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Edger Snow’s Birth on June 1st in Yan’an Red Star Garden International Cultural Communication Park, which was jointly sponsored by the Xinhua Institute, the Liu Zhidan Research Association, the China Center for Edgar Snow Studies of Peking University, the Edgar & Helen Snow Studies Center of Shaanxi Province, the Snow Research Center of Yan’an University and Yan’an Red Star Garden International Cultural Communication Park. Yuan Yuan, Vice President and Secretary-General of Yan’an People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, and Ma Yifei, founder of Yan’an Red Star Garden, and others jointly unveiled the XFU-Red Star Garden off-campus internship base.

Symbolizing friendly exchanges between China and the United States, the Red Star Garden advocates internationalism of bridging cultural gaps and adhering to truth and objectivity, and it has now become an important platform for international cultural exchanges and youth education. The internship base aims to leverage its unique historical resources to cultivate new type of talents who love their own country and keep a watchful eye on the rest of the world, providing a platform for XFU students to immerse themselves in history, sharpen their practical skills, and nurture a sense of national sentiment. Yuan Xiaolu, the Dean, pointed out that the college will use the base as a keystone‌ to integrate academic research, digital innovation, and talent development, allowing the spirit of Snow to be revitalized in the younger generation.

The academic symposium started in the afternoon of June 1, 2025. Many top experts and scholars in the field of Snow study attended. Nancy Hill, President Emeritus of the Edgar Snow Memorial Foundation, Sidne Ward, Incumbent Chair, Samuel Colin Maclean from Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, as well as over 100 experts from institutions like the Shanghai Soong Ching Ling Research Center, Peking University, Northwest University, Yan’an University, and Xi’an Fanyi University attended. They focused on how to tell the stories of China’s foreign friends, pass on their internationalism, promote nongovernmental international cultural exchanges and cooperation, and achieve mutual benefits.

Professor Yuan Xiaolu, expounded on the contemporary value of the Snow spirit during the discussion session. He pointed out that the legacy of Snow mainly offers three major inspirations for international communication and talent cultivation in the new era. The first is the “third-person point of view” on the study of the history of the Communist Party of China; The second is the bridging role of foreign friends’ research; The third is the digitalized legacy. Professor Yuan emphasized that foreign friends represented by Edgar Snow provided irreplaceable external observational historical materials for the study of the history of the CPC. Their objective records filled the narrative gaps in specific historical periods and helped the international community understand the true context of the Chinese revolution. The English School of Xi ’an Fanyi University will, in line with its educational characteristics, jointly promote the ‌Digital and AI-tech Integration of Snow’s documents. By leveraging digital technology, it will revitalize precious archives, expand the breadth of research, and set an example for telling China’s story well and advancing intercultural dialogue.

Zhang Qian and He Jiale, young teachers of XFU, serve as simultaneous interpreter to bridge the language gaps between Chinese and American experts and scholars. Their accurate and fluent bilingual interpretation effectively facilitated in-depth intellectual exchanges between Chinese and American scholars, ensuring smooth and substantive dialogues throughout the high-level international symposium, thereby providing robust linguistic support for its successful conclusion.

By taking the Yan’an Red Star Garden Internship Base as a key platform, XFU will continue to deepen international friendship studies, enhance practical training in language services, and cultivate a new generation of ‘gap-bridging talents’ who are linguistically proficient, culturally literate, and patriotically minded. These efforts will contribute the ‘XFU Strength’ to advancing mutual learning between China and other countries, and to fostering people-to-people bonds between China and the world.

Translated by Pan Beibei | Reviewed by Wang Peng