A Young Chinese Journalist Retraces the Long March

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	• The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth Sun Shuyun Anchor, 2008 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An Important Work

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.

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Mao's Myth

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.

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A Young Chinese Journalist Retraces the Long March

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."

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Interesting, but somewhat limited scope

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.

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A historical "must read" about China

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.

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reviews: page 1, 2

In The Long March, Sun Shuyun uncovers the true story behind the mythic march of Mao's soldiers across China, exposing the famine, disease, and desertion behind the legend.

In 1934, in the midst of civil war, the Communist party and its 200,000 soldiers were forced from their bases by Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist troops. Led by Mao Tse Tung, they set off on a strategic retreat to the barren north of China, thousands of miles away. As Sun Shuyun travels along the march route, her interviews with survivors and villagers show that the forces at work during the days of the revolution ? poverty, sickness, and Mao's use of terror, propaganda, and ruthless purges ? have shaped modern China irrevocably. Uncovering the forced recruitment, political infighting, and futile deaths behind the myth, Shuyun creates a compelling narrative of a turning point in modern Chinese history, and a fascinating journey that spans China, old and new.

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