Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the 1990s. For the Chinese Communists, the Long March became the
stuff of legends. It was a crucial, nation-making event, and to have par-
ticipated in it was like having fought at Vimy Ridge in World War I for
Canadians or having wintered at Valley Forge for Americans. The
Long March today is immortalized in China in movies, television
dramas, novels, plays, and ear-splitting arias sung by rosy-cheeked
peasant girls. Chinese space rockets today are called Long March rock-
ets, and the CCP still occasionally touts “the Yan'an spirit” as a pristine
and selfless ideological puritanism to counter what it sees as the corro-
sive cultural and economic influences of the modern Western, capital-
istic world.
In reality, the Long March was the long retreat of a defeated army
and regime. The Nationalists called it the “Great Rat Scamper” (da liu-
cuan), and many old Nationalists in Taiwan today still chuckle at its
glorification and exaggeration in mainland China. KMT aircraft fol-
lowed the course of the Long March and regularly bombed and strafed
it, so that the marchers eventually had to march at night and rest
during the daytime. Hostile foot soldiers often ambushed them and
decimated their numbers. The Long Marchers suffered terribly and
often went without shoes, warm clothing, and adequate nutrition.
(Photographs of Mao taken right after the Long March show him to
be gaunt and emaciated, and the fewmonths after he arrived in Yan'an
were the only time in his adult life when he was not overweight.)
On January 5, 1935, the Long Marchers stopped in the town of Zunyi
in Guizhou province where they conferred on their damage and
progress. One Communist leader after another stood up to denounce
those who had insisted on positional warfare in fighting against the
last Nationalist extermination campaign. This pleased Mao, who, of
course, had also criticized the nonguerrilla style of warfare and argued
that the decision to break out of the encirclement in one block had pro-
duced needless casualties. Mao was given strategic leadership over
the Red Army and also admitted to the Standing Committee of the
Politburo, the highest policy-making body of the CCP. Ever after this,
Mao was the dominant personality of the Chinese Communist move-
ment. The conference at Zunyi made his career, and throughout the
rest of his life he retained supreme command over the Red Army.
The adventures and narrow escapes encountered and overcome by
the Long Marchers are too numerous to recount in detail. One chal-
lenge,however,thecrossingoftheLudingBridgeinasteepand
mountainous region in Sichuan province, stands out as the most
notable. The bridge was a suspension bridge from which KMT troops
