Rare photographs offer visual records of Chinese Red Army's Long March

As China commemorates the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Red Army's Long March, a rare collection of photographs documenting the historic expedition from 1934 to 1936 has come to light.

In an earlier interview, reporters from China's Xinhua News Agency learned that an extensive collection of materials left by Helen Foster Snow, an American journalist and the wife of Edgar Snow – a US journalist who brought the story of the Long March to the world – has been preserved at Brigham Young University (BYU) in the US.

In 1937, Helen Snow risked her life to travel to Yan'an in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, where she spent more than four months interviewing people in the region.

Her works include Inside Red China , the sequel to Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China .

She took with her the documents, manuscripts and photographs she had collected when she left China.

Helen Snow died in 1997.

In accordance with her wishes, a large collection of her archival materials and photographs was donated to BYU.

To mark the 90th anniversary, Xinhua reporters went to the university's library, uncovering a collection of precious photographs documenting the Long March, including two particularly rare images.

One image captures soldiers of the 25th Army crossing the Wei River, offering a rare glimpse of the march.

The other photograph features two people from an ethnic minority group encountered along the Long March.

It was personally given to Helen Snow by Kang Keqing, the wife of Chinese general Zhu De, who served as commander-in-chief of the Red Army at the time.

Here are other precious photographs from Helen Snow's collection exhibited in the L.

Tom Perry Special Collections at BYU's Harold B.

Lee Library.