The Long March: The true story behind the legendary journey that made Mao's China

by Ed ; McEwen Andrew Jocelyn, Andrew McEwen

This is a living history of the legendary journey that made Mao's China. In October 1934, the First Front Army of the Chinese Communist Party fled annihilation by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. Some 80,000 men, women and children left their homes to walk with Mao into the unknown. One year, 4,000 miles and countless battles later, fewer than 4,000 were left. From these survivors would grow the army that conquered China 14 years on, changing history for ever. In October 2002, Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwen set off to retrace the Red Army's footsteps, and record the experiences of the last-remaining witnesses and participants of the Long March - before it was too late. The result is an account of the March based squarely on eye-witness accounts. It contrasts starkly with the official version and with recent contentions that the March was a fraud. The Long March really did happen, but it was spun into the key propaganda tool Mao wielded in his rise to ultimate power. Bringing together the historic event, with images of a changing society and their own March - a remarkable feat of endurance in itself - the authors offer a unique picture of China, past and present.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Travel, Asia

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Marloes Baren · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars simply because I enjoyed it so, so much.
I always love a good mixture of present-day adventure and history, and certainly appreciate how the authors went about combining these different elements.
They pay fair attention to the different perspectives, the difficulty of deciding what was real and what was fiction, and the challenges in this regard of censorship. However, this never makes the narrative become 'dry' and does not take away from the book reading like a true real life adventure.

[Luis Galveias · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is far from being a masterpiece but won my evaluation for the adventure and for discovering a China off the beaten track that only a few could have witnessed. Beear in mind the heavy restrictions in visiting non tourist areas in China and the fact that the country has been growing so fast. In the meanwhile it also reveals some secrets concerning Mao's heritage... A pleasant read for sure.

[Joke Kolthoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vlak voor de eindstreep stelt een controleur op illegale houtkap de vraag aan de schrijvers: " wat heeft dat voor zin, de Lange Mars lopen?". En dat kun je je inderdaad afvragen. Maar het levert wel een indringende beschrijving op van een zware tocht, een beeld van het Chinese platteland, gebruiken, etnische groepen en de gastvrijheid van de bewoners in de vele dorpen en stadjes die onderweg worden aangedaan. Tussendoor fragmenten van de oorspronkelijke Lange Mars en de strijd met de Kwomintang, soms gebaseerd op gesprekjes met hoogbejaarde strijders.
Bij de voor mij ingewikkelde chinese namen raakte ik soms de draad kwijt. Ik kan me goed voorstellen dat de schrijvers deze tocht nooit zullen vergeten.

[Jakub Jadwiszczak · Rating 4 out of 5]

great read

[Warren Needham · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read folding two of my favourite genres into one. Firstly I liked it from an historical perspective as it gave me a greater understanding of the Chinese Red army's Long March and the hardships they went through. This also fed into my desire to learn more about the societal structures that lead to the cultural revolution in China. It went some way to help me understand why the revolution came about.

The 2nd reason I liked it was because it is essentially an adventure travel diary. Two Englishmen setting out to follow in the footsteps of the Red Army, covering thousands of kilometers on foot across some of the most inhospitable countryside on Earth, is an amazing story. To even begin to contemplate doing this boggles the mind. This is the sort of travel I would like to undertake and it made me think "what if I........."

[Vitor Hugo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read the portuguese translation, by Maria Filomena Duarte.
This book might not shine for the literary quality, but under the guise of a historical reconstruction, I found a fabulous description of rural and remote China and the customs of its people.

[Suresh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book four stars because I found it to be an entertaining read but I didn't feel it was all it could have been nor what I expected it to be. I first read about this book in Time Out Beijing in 2005. It was billed as being a book that retraced the steps of the Long March and was fascinating in that it added a lot of human story back to the Long March re: interviews with the survivors and cut through some of the myth in the official story.

I found the book to be very entertaining, part travel book with a lot of the familiar quips and observations about being a lao wai (or Gwai Lou as the case may be) living in China. It also retells the basic story of the Long March and provides a decent summary of the history that came thereafter. It had some interesting stories told by the survivors and added a few new bits of information to the history of the Long March. The maps and the description of the actual terrain over which the route of the march travelled was quite interesting and not well covered in other accounts other than in general detail. In these respects this was a very good book.

I felt the book suffered a few weaknesses also. First, there are not near enough interviews and first-hand accounts of the Long March. I think since this project came as late as it did (nearly 70 years after the March) and because it was two foreigners writing the book (though they must have had a decent command of Putonghua to be able to do this), I think they simply didn't get enough quality first-hand accounts to fill a book with, so they're interspersed here and there, but a lot of the book is basically a summary of Long March history available elsewhere and the a lot is about the actual experience of the authors trudging through mile after mile. I also felt the book suffered from a bit of Western bias. I don't think this was the deliberate choice of the authors but its hard to write a historical account without one's own history coming across as well. I felt the authors did the best to downplay this, but it still comes across, especially in the descriptions of Mao, who the authors seem to see purely negatively but who in the eyes of most Chinese is at least a complicated mix of good and bad.

This is a good read for those who are interested in this period of history and adds some new details and provides a mental picture of the places the route passes through and how they are today. I think I'm going to pick up the Sun Shuyun book as well as I've read it does a good job with first hand accounts of the march. This book fell a bit short in that category, but made up for it with a witty and entertaining adventure retracing the steps of the First front army.

[Monique · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book a lot. It's a history book, a travel guide and an adventure story in one. During their journey following the way Mao and his Red Army went during the Long March, Jocelyn and McEwen refuting some of the story and find out long lost things.They even found a woman who might be Mao's forgotten daughter.
Although not everything that is said about the Long March is true, Ed Jocelyn writes with respect about the people who made the Long March. His way of writing and telling the story of this marvellous piece of Chinese history makes it a very nice book to read.