More than two thousand years ago, the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi wrote, "A journey of a thousand li (a traditional Chinese unit of distance, 1 li = 0.5 km) begins beneath one's feet." The humility of that line has always resonated with me; it reduces every great undertaking to a single step on the ground. The most famous journey in modern Chinese history, the Long March, strikes me as a clear illustration of that wisdom. Covering not a thousand li but twenty-five thousand, some twelve thousand kilometers, it too began, as every journey does, beneath the feet of ordinary people.
The bare facts alone are staggering. Between the autumn of 1934 and the autumn of 1935, the Red Army withdrew from its southern bases and walked, fought, and climbed its way across the breadth of China to the dry hills of the northwest, passing through more than 10 provinces, scaling over 40 mountains, and crossing nearly 100 rivers. Along the way, marchers forded icy currents, braved snow peaks where the thin air killed as surely as any bullet, and traversed vast grasslands once known as a "death trap," a bog-ridden wilderness that swallowed men whole. When supplies ran out, they boiled leather belts for sustenance, dug for roots, and buried their dead by the roadside without pausing long to mourn. The column moved back and forth to evade encirclement, famously crossing the Chishui River four times to shake off a far larger enemy, so that the true distance marched was far greater than any line drawn on a map. More than ninety years later, the sheer scale of those distances remains nearly impossible to fathom.
It is important to be honest about what this was. At its beginning, the Long March was a retreat, born of encirclement and near defeat, a tenacious bid for survival. The cost was terrible. The Central Red Army set out with more than 80,000 soldiers, but only a few thousand reached their destination. The great majority never arrived. Any account that forgets this forgets the heart of the march, for its meaning lies not only in glory but also in endurance: in the simple fact that a retreat column kept moving forward when every reason argued for giving up.
Somewhere in the middle of that ordeal, in the small town of Zunyi in southwest China's Guizhou Province, the direction of the whole movement shifted, and out of that turning point emerged new leadership, and a new path forward. There is an old idea in the Chinese classic "Book of Changes" that I return to often: when something reaches its limit, it must change, and through that change it finds the way to endure.
In China, this endurance has a name, the Long March spirit, and it is invoked far beyond its origins, echoing in the language of science, development, and any long, difficult undertaking. The marchers themselves were, for the most part, very young, boys and girls in their teens and twenties shouldering rifles nearly as tall as themselves. Many were even younger than the students I teach today, and most who fell were left with neither grave nor name. A nation reminds itself that even the hardest road is walked one step at a time, and what seems impossible yields to persistence. One may read the politics of it in many ways, but the human core is clear. It is the oldest lesson of the march.
Today, China speaks of a new Long March, referring to the long, unfinished road that still lies ahead. The phrase has lost none of its force. It carries the same quiet confidence as the old words of Laozi: however distant the destination, the way to it opens beneath one's feet, one step after another. More than ninety years later, the marchers are gone, but the road they walked has become a way of thinking, a reminder that to endure is itself a kind of victory.
The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of China Focus.
