Long March II: Retracing the Steps of the Second Front Army

Editor's Note:

From October 2002 until November 2003, two long-term British residents of Beijing, Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwen, retraced the Long March of the Chinese Communist First Front Army. They began their trek during the same month of the year that the First Front Army left Jiangxi Province in 1934 and ended their trek at about the same time that the battered and battle-hardened army, under the effective command of Mao Zedong, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), arrived in Shaanxi in 1935. It was the first and only time that the Long March had been recreated by anyone from outside China.

On November 19, 2005, the historian Jocelyn, this time accompanied by friend and fellow trekker Yang Xiao, a native of Sichuan, set out from Sangzhi County in Hunan Province to retrace the little-known Long March of the CPC's Second Front Army, a journey that is expected to take about 339 days before ending in Gansu in October 2006. They will encounter jungles and grasslands, pastoral valleys and snow-covered peaks, just as some of China's most famed Red Army heroes when they passed through Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan and Gansu provinces, walking an estimated 5,000 kilometres, 70 years ago.

 

My mother is very disappointed with me. While my big brother is fulfilling filial duties during Christmas this month, for the second time in four years I will be phoning in my greetings from some frigid outpost of Guizhou Province.

"When are you going to stop this?" she wonders.

I don't know the answer to that one. Right now, I can't really look beyond the end of this week. As I write these lines, I'm in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, preparing to move northwest to a little town called Sangzhi. In less than five days, my companion Yang Xiao and I will walk out of Sangzhi and remain on the road for the next 338 days-if all goes well, that is. To consider all but the first of those 300-plus days is just a bit too daunting, even though this is my second time on the Long March.

If you're anything like my friends, you may be asking: Why do it all again?

But we're not doing anything again; we're doing something completely new, something that no one has ever done before.

You see, Chairman Mao's famous journey is only part of the Long March story. In 1935, shortly after Mao and the remnants of his army had reached their new base in northern Shaanxi, the Red Second Front Army set out from Hunan on its own Long March to Northwest China. As with the First Front Army, they crossed Guizhou into Yunnan, but where Mao turned north across the Jinsha River, the Second was driven further west to Lijiang and then north along what is today's border with the Tibet Autonomous Region. Mao crossed four Great Snow Mountains; the Second crossed eight. While Mao spent only a week in the deadly swamps of northern Sichuan, the Second took a month to cross this region. By the time the rear units reached the edge of the swamps, both sides of the route were lined with corpses of the fallen.

Few people appreciate the scale and importance of the Second's odyssey. When I was retracing the Mao's epic journey, a Chinese historian said to me: "You ought to go further. The soldiers of the Second Army are like the orphans of the Long March; no one pays any attention to them."

Of course, I'd be lying if I didn't admit another reason for getting back on the road.

However hard the Red army trail may be, these days it can also be a lot of fun. As one veteran wryly put it to me: "The Second marched through more scenic spots than anyone else."

From Zhangjiajie to Lijiang, across the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and the entire Shangri-la region, our research will take us through some of China's most beautiful places. Even my Mum agrees that's enough reason to walk the Long March, though she'd still rather I was home for Christmas.

Follow Jocelyn and Yang's journey as it unfolds at: www.btmbeijing.com or newlongmarch2.com.