46. Laugh at Hardship

What are mostly well known about China? Someone may say the unbelievable variety of gourmet cuisine.

Come on, China can do much better than that. To me, there have been many incredible achievements in the Chinese long history, but from a culturally symbolic perspective in particular, two things: one is the Great Wall over the northern mountains; the other is the Long March across half of China ever recorded in the human history.

Although some may still ask: what is the Long March? Hope the poem below will first offer some clues.

The Long March

By Mao Zedong October 1935

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The Red Army fears not the trials of the Long March

And thinks nothing of a thousand mountains and rivers.

The Wuling Ridges spread out like ripples;

The Wumeng Ranges roll like balls of clay.

Warmly are the cliffs wrapped in clouds washed by the Gold Sand River;

Chilly are the iron chains lying across the width of the Dadu Bridge.

A thousand acres of snow on the Min Mountain delight

Our troops who have just left them behind.

Primarily notable for having founded and then led People's Republic of China for nearly thirty years, Mao Zedong (1893-1976) also wrote many marvelous poems in his life, which vividly portrayed his dynamic career of revolution and leadership.

His poems are all in the traditional Chinese verse style, highly romantic, well written and of high literature quality. Many of Mao's poems have remained very popular in China and really integrated with the popular culture. As the result they are frequently quoted in various occasions and writings.

The Long March is a story of human survival and victory through all kinds of hardship and challenges. The gist of it can be summarized into" Go through it and win!"

No wonder today China names its space program and rocket after the Long March, and that clearly shows the Chinese determination, knowing it might be a long and painful journey, to reach the outer space for human new fronts.

So how came for the Long March?

On October 19, 1934 the embattled Chinese Red Army began the Long March with 80,000 troops, as the result of strategic failure to its enemy of a million men and an air force of more than four hundred airplanes as well as loss of their base in Southern China.

So a breakout was inevitable and they had to fight for the final survival.

The Red Army marched on bare foot with very limited supplies through eleven provinces, over raging rivers and snow mountains, through swamps and forbidden zones of severe weather. Along the way, they had to fight their major rival armies, the troops of provincial warlords, local bandits and hostile tribesmen.

Mao Zedong who earlier lost his power to some Soviet Union trained young radicals managed to take his position back along the journey by showing incredibly strong leadership to bring the endangered Red Army away from elimination.

After losing over 50,000 troops, marching for a whole year (368 days to be exact) and 25,000 circuitous Li (12500 kilometers or about 8000 miles), they arrived at the other end of China in the northwest Shanxi province near the Great Wall, on October 20, 1935.

The Long March posted a great test to the Red Army. Once they survived it, they, although by that time small and weak, started to march towards victory.

Wait, is "victory" here a typo? No, it is surely not. Already passed the severest test ever, they handled those downstream challenges with more confidence and experiences, and only 14 years later they took over the whole China.

When we look back, the Long March is regarded way beyond the cultural and ideological level. The best book I've read about the Long March by American writers is "The Long March: The Untold Story" by Harrison Evans Salisbury (1908-1993), because it touched the very spirit of the Long March by labeling it as a triumph of human spirits and survival.

A lot of things in our life, especially great things, will surely need a long journey to get there and those who don't give in and manage to reach the destination are no doubt heroes. Such arduous struggle wouldn't be fought in vain.

Good news is, in your Long March, you won't walk alone. Great soul mates will accompany you and victory will have you eventually paid back, as expressed in this famous Broadway lyric below:

You will Never Walk Alone

Written by Oscar Hammerstein II

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When you walk through a storm,

Hold your head up high,

And don't be afraid of the dark.

At the end of a storm,

There's a golden sky,

And the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind, Walk on through the rain,

Though your dreams be tossed and blown.

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Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,

And you'll never walk alone.......

You'll never walk alone.

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Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,

And you'll never walk alone.......

You'll never walk alone.