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What's New on the New Long March?

The first time I set out on a Long March, my companion Andy and I were seen off by five friends, two provincial journalists and a couple of minor local officials. This time, my fellow Long Marcher, Yang Xiao, and I were chauffeured to the departure point in a fleet of 15 cars. Red banners bearing our names were strung across the Long March memorial in Liujiaping, Sangzhi County-the starting point of New Long March 2, speeches were made and 160 schoolchildren in formation sang revolutionary songs and waved red flags on our behalf.

So when people ask-as they often do-what's different about the New Long March this time, I'm tempted to answer: "Everything."

The cast of historical characters is little known but richly colourful: from the moustachioed bandit-turned revolutionary He Long to the scholarly Xiao Ke, the youngest general in the Red Army; from the murderous Xia Xi, who drowned on the Long March, as his own men idly watched, to the rough-spoken Wang Zhen, who would end his career more than 50 years later as vice-president of the People's Republic. And, because this Long March is not overshadowed by Chairman Mao, its history is more rounded and easier to dig into.

Mind you, for the peasants on this Long March trail, Mao is still the man. As Andy and I noticed last time out, in many areas there is hardly a home that does not have a portrait of the late Chairman in the position traditionally reserved for honouring ancestors. Beijingers tend to be unaware of this; for them, Mao is more of a kitsch figure who belongs on tacky lighters that play "The East is Red." But, out here, Mao is almost universally admired; even by those old enough to remember and compare the privations of the Maoist era with today's relative prosperity (Yang Xiao has been astonished to find peasants feeding their pigs rice, which was a luxury for humans when he was a child). Mao gets credit for the fruits of "reform and opening." In some places, he is explicitly a divine figure. Two days ago, we passed through a village where one family had pressed two images of Mao into service as "door gods" to guard their home.

Our progress has also suffered fewer interruptions than last time. While Andy and I were regularly stopped and interrogated by local authorities, New Long March 2 has been welcomed with serene indifference. Policemen wave and carry on with their business. It seems people are more focused on their own concerns and less bothered about outsiders than they were three years ago. Perhaps this is a measure of greater openness and increased pressure. I think the cost of living has generally gone up since New Long March 1. Education, for example, has been fantastically expensive in the places where we've asked-up to 6,000 yuan for a year in middle school, once living expenses are factored in. Whole villages are dependent on their younger people going to the cities to work menial or manual jobs-they will be in trouble if the pace of urban development slows and the jobs dry up. Still, the peasants say they are doing better since the central government basically abolished local taxation last year.

As marchers, probably the most important advances on New Long March 1 are the weight of our packs and the improvement in our communications. Our tent, for example, weighs three times less than it did three years ago. And while we are often in towns and villages with no mobile telephone signals, when we are, there is the magic of the wireless Internet, which was completely unknown to NLM1. To be honest, it's also completely unknown to the locals, none of whom have ever seen a wireless-enabled laptop computer before. Trendy kids in the Internet bars use the Web to flirt on MSN and play violent games. The Internet seems as restricted in its applications as electricity; while every village has power, it seems to serve just two main purposes: feeding weak light bulbs and television sets.

But for every remarkable innovation, such as peasants watching Phoenix Satellite TV from Hong Kong, there is an underlying continuity to experience on the Long March trail. We still meet unfailing courtesy in mountain districts, while on main roads and in towns preening young men on motorcycles (what Yang Xiao calls "moto youth") make fun of us and ride off in a hurry. At least they have been more creative lately: "Down with imperialism!" cried one in Guanyinge two days ago. We are still warned about the "bad people" or "wild areas" that lie in wait just over the mountain, where in fact we are greeted with even greater goodwill and generosity. Old prejudices die hard. In Zhubuxi, the villagers admitted (with more than a touch of pride) that in the old days they had, indeed, been wild and dangerous. We stayed with an old fellow named Li Youde, who recalled his wedding (at age 12) in 1949. Banditry was rife in the area, but because the bandits were scared of Zhubuxi, they came to Li's wedding to pay their respects and to deliver red envelopes stuffed with cash.

We are still harassed and attacked by dogs several times a day, though in Yuanling County this problem eased for a while, because villagers have given up raising dogs. Endemic rabies has made it too dangerous, not so much because of the disease itself, but because of the owner's obligation to pay for rabies injections if a dog bites someone.

We're still a novelty item in the places we march through, especially as I'm usually the first foreigner to have visited. We therefore get quite a bit of attention from local journalists, and just like on New Long March 1 it doesn't in the least matter what we say to them; they just make it all up afresh afterwards. In Changsha, Mr. Xiao Meng of Hunan Satellite TV's daily paper brought along a female student who claimed she wanted to join our March. We politely explained that this was not possible. It was only when Mr. Xiao's report came out that we realised why this girl had been brought to the interview-to serve Xiao's bizarre story angle. "She reminded Dr. Jocelyn of his first love," he wrote.

You see, the New Long March is not just a historical research expedition; with the Chinese media in tow, it's also a journey of self-discovery.