Sun Shuyun · 2006 · survival
The Long March, 1934-35. Encircled in their Jiangxi base, some eighty-six thousand Chinese communists broke out and fled west and north - shattered at the Xiang River, regrouping under Mao at Zunyi, storming the Dadu at Luding Bridge, and struggling over snow peaks and grasslands to Shaanxi. Barely a tenth survived the retreat that made Mao's revolution.
- 1Ruijin
Encircled and being ground down in their Jiangxi Soviet, more than eighty thousand Red Army soldiers and officials break out westward from around Ruijin in October 1934, carrying their whole revolution on their backs.
- 2The Xiang River
At the Xiang River the Nationalist armies close the trap; in a week of slaughter the Red Army forces the crossing but loses more than half its strength - the darkest hour of the march.
- 3Zunyi
Regrouping in the Guizhou town of Zunyi in January 1935, the shaken survivors hold the conference that raises Mao Zedong to command - and turns the desperate retreat into a war of movement and feints.
- 4Luding Bridge
After crossing the Jinsha, the vanguard reaches the Dadu River and storms the chain-link Luding Bridge under fire, hauling themselves hand over hand above the torrent to seize the far bank and the way north.
- 5The grasslands
Beyond lie the cruelest miles: the snowbound Jiajin mountains and then the trackless high grasslands and bogs, where cold, hunger and the sucking marsh swallow thousands more of the dwindling column.
- 6Shaanxi
In October 1935, barely a tenth of those who set out straggle into the communist base in northern Shaanxi around Yan'an - a broken remnant, but the seed of the army that will one day rule all China.