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The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth

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The Long March by Sun Shuyun is simply the most moving book on China that I have ever read, and I have read a great many of them. She sets out to collect the memories of the last survivors of the Long March, and along the way, she exploded or cast serious doubts on a great many myths that have been created around the Long March. While this task sounds dry, the way she accomplishes it is simply unlike anything on China I have ever read. She begins every chapter with a narrative directly from one of the survivors in first person. She then moves to more narratives or the fruits of her extensive archival research or passages from official history. Immediately, the reader is moved by the first person narratives, which are often gut-wrenching. Then the mind is hit with her often incisive analysis and skepticism. One's heart and mind are both deeply challenged throughout the book.

I don't want to spoil it for the readers, but there are some real highlights in the book, including the chapter on the mass defections in the early stages of the March, the so-called Battle of the Luding Bridge, and the fate of the Fourth Army in the Western March (Western Legion). While some of these themes have been explored by Western scholars, her interviews and discussion about those left in the dust-bins of history were simply unparalleled and more haunting than anything I have every read. We read about a young boy from Hunan who was left among the Tibetans in Western Sichuan, the "crazy woman" who stands on the road waiting for her Red Army husband who never returned from the March, as well as those in the women's brigade who were deserted by their party and left to fend for themselves in the middle of hostile Muslim territory. These were the rough edges around the polish sheen of the official history that were shaved off decades ago. Sun has done a great service, to historians and to these people, by bringing their stories to light.

Sun Shuyun, being a product of the Long March heritage, is surprisingly even-handed in her treatment of history. She does not pander to official history, nor does she go over board in denying everything we say about the Long March. Clearly, the manipulation of the Long March myth was a stupendous feat of propaganda by Mao, and she acknowledges it as such. Clearly, many Long Marchers, especially those who stayed on after the first part, were sincere believers of some notion of communist justice, even if that ideology was a vague concept to most of them. Clearly, the purges of the 30s produced a highly disciplined core in the Red Army which went on to numerous suicide missions when called on to do so. I would add that this core of "true believers" was a key to the CCP's later success, although luck, the support of Zhang Xueliang, and the Xi'an Incident also had something to do with it.

Throughout the book, Sun conveys a sense that after the Red Army passed through Guizhou, Mao increasingly asserted control over the party. Toward the end of the book, we see a Mao beginning to play the part of a sadistic director who manipulated his actors every which way toward one goal: power for Mao himself. This picture fits very nicely with an emerging body of work (for example by Mao's Last Revolution and Mao: The Unknown Story) portraying Mao as a ruthless political, yes, genius who pulled every trick in the book to obtain and retain power. Regardless of the debate surrounding Mao, I think the power-hungry core of Mao is quite beyond dispute. We can debate whether the CCP could have emerged victorious in the bitter struggle against the KMT and (less so) the Japanese without such a power-hungry and devious man at its head. I tend to think the CCP would have failed with a "lesser" helmsman.

The book opens many doors for us "professional" scholars to explore. I believe some of my colleagues are indeed busy constructing alternative histories of the Chinese revolution. Sun's book shows us even more promising avenues of research, especially with oral history (though one must hurry!) and provincial archival research. I thought about doing a review for this book in a journal, but I simply couldn't wait. This book is an important one, and it will surely find itself into my syllabus this year. Victor Shih, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University

The phrase Long March conjure up a variety of stock images colored by the massive amount of propaganda that have obscured it ever since its occurrence. In The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth, the author uncovers the human story behind the propaganda, and find it so much more haunting and heartbreaking than any air-brushed propaganda can conceive.

Though the structure of the book is framed by the macro view of the movement of armies and history-making moments of political machinations, the substance and the strength of the book come from the individual interviews conducted by the author with the surviving veterans of the Long March, both men and women, now old and gray, living quiet, often poverty-stricken lives in remote parts of country. They had joined the Red Army as teenagers, naive, idealistic and hoping for food and freedom. What they received was the incredible deprivations and sufferings, death of friends, constant threat of hunger and enemy attack, captivity, torture, and finally, the abandonment by the very Party to which they had pledged their youth and life. All they had to cope with these tribulations were the strength of their convictions and the hardiness of spirit.

It is particularly touching to see how brightly those distant and often painful memories burn in the mind of these men and women in the twilight of their lives. One senses that the Long March was the defining story of their lives. It is told very well here.

I've long been fascinated by the Chinese and their history, so the opportunity to read Sun Shuyun's account of the 1934 Long March was intriguing. The author graduated from Beijing University, and is a filmmaker and television producer.

When one thinks of the Long March of 1934, there are scenes that immediately come to mind. But thinking about an event and reading about it are, however, two different things. It's especially jarring because there is the myth that has been offered to the world and then there is the reality. The reality is horrific and one can understand the Chinese desire to soften that reality.

In 1934, 200,000 Chinese soldiers were fighting a civil war. Chiang Kai-skek and his Nationalist troops forced the soldiers to flee. The soldiers were led by Mao Tse Tung, and the plan was a retreat to northern China, thousands of arduous miles to the north.

The author tells the story of the march vividly through interviews with men and women who survived the experience. These people are now old and often live lives of abject poverty. The stark contrast of then and now is that the survivors were once young idealists who wanted freedom. The march gave them sickness, death, hunger, torture, captivity and finally-the ultimate abandonment by the very ideal they believed in.

It's the human story that makes Shuyun's book brilliant. The human suffering, the strength and spirit, the conviction and determination for a cause believed in. The harsh time was life changing for everyone.

Armchair Interviews says: The Long March: The True History of China's Founding Myth is a must read.

An oral history approach, from the vantage point of the lower ranks of the Red Army, to describing the famous Long March that preceded Mao's political take over of mainland China. A good book for those interested in the pre-World War II history of the Middle Kingdom.

The author approaches her subject with an open mind, in spite of having grown up with only the high propaganda side of this epic tale. She finds brave, but very aged, Red army survivors who had fought through extreme difficulties (hostile weather, terrain, and enemy troops) for a cause they believed in, but under leadership that was extraordinarily uncaring of human life.

It is heartening that the PRC has changed enough over the last few decades for it now to apparently tolerate an open and honest historical inquiry by a citizen of a major political event pertaining to its founding, such as here by Sun Shuyun.

Seventy years after the Long March, a young Oxford educated Chinese journalist decided to retrace the route used by the Red Army in its epic 8,000 mile retreat. Along the way, she stopped to interview survivors of the Long March. What she discovered in these interviews was very different from the propaganda about the Long March she had learned while growing up in China. The survivors turned out to be ordinary people with extraordinary stories of hardship and perserverence. They were not the cardboard heroes that the Communist propogandists had created after the March. As a Westerner, it is interesting to learn how surprised the journalist was by learning that the Communist Party had lied to her.

This book was very different than what I had expected. I thought I was purchasing a straight historical narrative of the Great March. I was surprised by the how much the modern journalist's story was included in the book. It was not what I expected but nevertheless I enjoyed learning about how a young Chinese journalists interacts with her country's history. Ultimately, the final value for me of this book is that it makes me want to read Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China."

A tragedy is exposed for the revolutionaries who supported the communist party movement led by Mao Tse-tung. Many revolutionaries were later terminated,ignored, or accused of being disloyal after sacrificing their freedom, property and lives on behalf of the "Party". This book provides a good look at true communism and should be required reading for all students and anyone who loves freedom.

This is an exceptionally well researched book. I had read it prior to this purchase and recommend it to anyone that wants to debunk the myth that most Chinese have received as a foundational part of their education.

There many contemporary works tracing the steps of deToqueville and Louis & Clark and others, but this is the first I know of a book tracing the Red Army's Long March. While I do not know much about the literature of the Long March, this appears to be an important work for several reasons.

First, the interviews with the Long March survivors put on record first hand accounts which would otherwise be lost to posterity. Second, events previously unnoticed or unrecorded are documented are brought to light. Third, a good amount of this information coming from primary sources is in conflict with the official record.

Events described include the recruiting methods of the Red Army, the first party purge, the desertion rate, how the army was (and was not) fed and clothed, carrying the printing press at the expense of necessities and miscalculated military strategies.

While important, the book has flaws. The first is that it's hard to believe that the author began this trip expecting to document the march she had read in her history books. The author has been in western counties a while, and enough is in print that she should have approached her trip with some degree of skepticism. Second, the writer's TV journalist background shows. In many places the book reads like a script. The chapters are like 15 minute programs, with wide areas left out. Third, the translation of the some of interviews uses a vocabulary complexity far beyond what is expected for the education and experience level of the interviewees.

The author does a great job of meshing historical nuggets with her interviews of Long March Veterans. A bit too much about the women who participated, but overall a good read. Certainly something critical of the March was needed.

The Long March is based on Sun Shuyun travels through China to interview surviving Long Marchers and try to shed light on what really happened during these formative years of the Chinese Communist regime. Throughout the book, she compares the first hand evidence collected with simple soldiers (men and women) to the official "myths" that permeate the Chinese culture, folklore and education system.

The book is undeniably interesting, but a few shortcomings definitely impede the flow of the narrative, and disappoint any reader looking for a quick overview of the Long March. Firstly, Sun Shuyun appears to have had a rather naive outlook on the March before setting out on her journey. She is surprised at revelations that the Red Army resorted to kidnapping in order to raise funds, that there were massive ideological purges within the party as various people vied to gain control or that many historical events have been, till today, totally misrepresented for political purposes. While that might have been understandable coming from a Chinese writer growing up and still exposed to the Chinese propaganda machine, it is rather troubling coming from someone, like her, who spent years in the UK and produced material for the BBC !

Secondly, the book does not focus enough on the Big Guns (Mao, Zhu Enlai, etc...), the internal politics, the organization of the party and the Red Army to be a self contained book on the event. It looks at events at various points of the March without tying it all up in an overarching picture taking one from causes to aftermath.

It is nonetheless and interesting "add-on" to more complete books on the topic, giving a valuable perspective from the point of view of simple peasants caught in the whirlwind of Chinese history.