Unsafe Harbour

The Red 2nd and 6th Army groups made three attempts to build new base areas on their Long March. The closest they came to success was in the Bijie area of Northwest Guizhou, where we have spent most of the last month.

This is still probably the poorest and most backward part of one of China's poorest provinces. Its remoteness, of course, was what attracted the Reds, who believed they could defend the area much as they had their old base in Northwest Hunan. They also had high hopes for the locals, who were not only poor and oppressed-therefore prime candidates for recruitment-but who also had positive experience with a previous Red Army, the 9th Army Group, which had passed through the Bijie area one year earlier. As it turned out, Bijie provided more new recruits than any other area on any of the various Long March routes. Five thousand peasants signed up. Many of these were members of the Miao minority, who were particularly impressed with the Reds because they handed out guns-the Miao liked guns both for hunting and for dealing with Han Chinese bully boys, who liked to give the Miao a hard time.

 

For the first time since we left the base area in Hunan, in Bijie we found Long March veterans living on the route itself. As far as we could discover, only two are still alive, and one was in a hospital. One, however, was in fine fettle; so we made a diversion to the small town of Wuli, where 86-year-old Liu Jicheng lives, just down the road from where he joined up 70 years ago.

 

Liu ran away from home to join the army. "I was afraid my parents would stop me if I told them," he said, which I think gives you some idea of how appalling rural life was, if risking your life in the Red Army seemed so attractive.

 

"Wasn't your landlord good to your family?" I asked.

 

Liu paused, then grinned, "If he'd been good, I wouldn't have needed to become a soldier, would I?"

 

The class struggle also took on an ethnic dimension in parts of this region. Just this morning (March 17) we had tea with an 83-year-old Han gentleman named Zhang Qifang. A small unit of the Red Army passed through Zhang's village, stopping to eat in his house, and Zhang may well have joined if he had been a little older. His father had been murdered by one of the local big landlords, a member of the Yi minority. The Yi had ruled large parts of this area since at least the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Whereas the Han had oppressed the Miao further to the east, in Zhang's area the ethnic boot was on the other foot. It's little wonder that the Reds' propaganda in favour of ethnic equality had greater resonance than the Guomindang's Han assimilationist policy.

 

But the Bijie base only survived for three weeks. Neither Chiang Kai-shek nor the local warlords were of a mind to let another Soviet zone develop, and their forces converged from three directions: from Guiyang to the southeast, Sichuan to the north, and Yunnan to the west. On February 26, 1935, the main force of the 2nd and 6th armies gathered in Bijie to hear an address by senior commander He Long. He told them they would be marching west; in fact, they were about to embark on a massive circular march designed to break up the enemy's formation and open up an escape route. This march would take them deep into the Wumeng Mountains and keep them there for about three weeks. For the captive priest Rudolf Bosshardt, who was set free soon after the Reds left the Wumeng region and therefore avoided the great Snow Mountains and the Swamps of Sichuan, this was the most difficult and desolate period of the whole Long March.

 

And it's where Yang Xiao and I are right now. As I type these lines, the wind is ruffling our tent at the top of the ridge above Kele (This is one of China's most important archaeological sites, but that's another story. See: www.newlongmarch2.com). There is a coalmine below us being worked by hand and pit pony. The paths are covered in loose gravel and are terrifically dangerous. If we get down the other side in one piece tomorrow morning, we'll be about half a day's march from Yunnan, province No. 3 on the New Long March 2.

 

For regular updates and pictures from the road, see www.newlongmarch2.com

 

 

 

1) Chairman Mao waxed poetic about the Wumeng Mountains, but it was the Red 2nd and 6th Army groups who really got to know this area. They spent the best part of a month traipsing these hills in order to evade the enemy's encirclement. For those who dropped out before the Snow Mountains and Swamps, this was the toughest part of the Long March. This picture was taken March 17 above Shuopo Zhai, around 2,300 metres above sea level.

 

2) Zhang Qifang, 83, was too young to join the Reds when they ate in his home above Kele. Zhang's Han father was murdered by one of the local Yi landlords.

 

3) Liu Jicheng, 86, ran away from home to join the Red Army when it passed close to  his home in Qianxi County. He made it all the way to the end, but was later injured fighting the Japanese and returned home to peasant life, an unusual fate for a Long March veteran, most of whom got good jobs after the Revolution.

 

4) The only leading Party man to die on the Long March met his end at this spot, allegedly drowned in an accident as he tried to cross the Liuchong River. Xia Xi was head of the 6th Army Group's political department. Local gossip says he was actually shot by one of the local landlord's men, who fought the Reds in the village nearby. Army gossip says the soldiers stood by and let him drown because they hated his guts. It's a mystery.

 

5) Bijie resident Zhou Suyuan was the most prominent intellectual to join the Reds during the Long March. At 58, he was one of the oldest people to complete the journey. He later became deputy governor of Guizhou Province.

 

6) Zhou Suyuan's fifth daughter, Zhou Pingyi, 79, checks our Web report on her father for errors.

 

7) These boots made Ed's life a misery for four days. They were put to death the moment reinforcements arrived.

 

8) The Reds were always in action. This graphic in the Bijie museum tots up the local tyrants put down in the seven counties of the base area.