A Home Far Away

Once upon a time, 90-year-old Lois Wheeler was a celebrated actress. She now looks back on her life, and that of her deceased husband, American journalist and author Edgar Snow. Drifting through her house, once home to her husband and children, she tells us about the illustrious career of the passionate Snow, who at a young age became fascinated by China. In the America of the 1950s, when Senator McCarthy was pursuing his witch-hunt against anything that even faintly smelled of communism, Snow's journalistic interest quickly attracted suspicion. The young couple found themselves blacklisted and decided to escape to Switzerland. In spite of much opposition, in the 1960s Snow was the first American journalist to interview Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong. Alongside Chinese ink drawings, wonderful archive footage of a long-lost China forms the backdrop to memories of a life slowly poisoned by the political battle against communism. How deep Snow's love for China was is demonstrated in his will, which included an unorthodox request. Appropriately given his fascination, Snow died in 1972: the year Nixon and Mao shook hands for the first time.