Eva Sandberg Xiao

In 1939, after twelve years in Moscow, Xiao was ordered to the revolutionary base at Yan'an; Sandberg was allowed to accompany him.

Xiao, a Hunanese and an old classmate of Mao Zedong's, took over the editorial department at the Lu Xun Academy of Arts.

Only in March 1949, with the leadership ensconced in a western suburb of Beijing, did Xiao board a train for Moscow with a delegation of writers; he was headed to Stockholm for committee work on the Geneva Conventions but very much looked forward to seeing his wife and children however briefly after four years.

Eva Sandberg had laid aside her Leica and begun making films of the People's Republic for use by the communist news agencies of Europe.

When her friend Nadia left Zhang Bao and returned to the Soviet Union, Sandberg knew there were only two other such prominent Soviet women remaining: Elisabeth (Lisa) Kishkin (李莎), wife of Li Lisan, a Lubianka survivor, and Grania (格拉娘), the uneducated wife of Chen Changhao (陈昌浩), a veteran of the alternate Long March of Zhang Guotao (purged 1937).