Women of the Long March

by Lily Xiao Hong Lee, Sue Wiles

The Long March, a year-long retreat made by the Chinese Communist Red Army escaping from destruction by the Nationalist forces, is a central turning point in the history of modern China. Thirty women marched with the top leaders, including Mao Zedong and Deng Xioping, during the 6,000-mile trek, and 3,000 women were among the ranks. This book, one of the few to focus on the women, tells their story through the biographies of three key players. Just 17 when they became lovers, Mao's second wife, He Zizhen, bore his children along the way and was forced to leave them behind; Kang Kequing, wife of Zhu De, endured the same hardships as the men, shouldered arms, and fought alongside her male comrades; Commander Wang Quanyuan was captured with her battalion by enemy cavalry that forced the women to become concubines. Drawing on interviews and published and unpublished sources, this book details their experiences on the March and subsequent lives in Communist China.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a biography that focuses on the stories of three women who completed the Long March as part of the Communist Party of China from 1934-1935. The women themselves are interesting, but the way their stories are told leaves something to be desired. The authors attempt to balance interviews with the women at the end of their lives with official Communist biographies and writings of Western journalists from the 1930s. The end product is mixed, and the book probably would have worked better as a historical novel that tried to fill in the gaps in these women’s lives.

[Kay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bailed after the second chapter.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m having a flirtation with non fiction audio books, and Women of the Long March was a new audio book at the library. I knew very little about Mao Zedong’s Long March through China, and what I knew was dry history, nothing more. This book brings the story to life, by revealing the hardships of three of the 30 women who joined the men on this march, and it’s quite rivetting.

At home we have a copy of China the Long March by Anthony Lawrence, published in 1986 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the march. It’s a beautiful book with glorious photos of the terrain the Communists covered but it’s long out of print (and selling for $100 or more, second-hand on Biblioz). I had browsed through it a couple of times but never really engaged with it beyond understanding that the Communists, led by Mao Zedong, had tramped through huge swathes of China gathering support from the peasants while he was pursued by the Nationalists (Kuomintang), led by Chiang Kai-Shek. These two opposing forces then collaborated to oust the Japanese invaders from 1937-1945 and then hostilities resumed, resulting in Chiang Kai-Shek’s exile in Taiwan and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on the mainland in 1949 under the Communists.

Although he had been educated in Soviet Russia, Chiang had purged the Communists from the Kuomintang with the aim of unifying and modernising China, and he had defeated them in 1926. The Communists then withdrew to rural collectives in the remote North West to muster support and engage in guerrilla warfare – while Chiang made financial, educational and transport reforms in the areas under his control. In 1934 he restored Confucian values (loyalty to family and country) as a way of confronting Communist values, (loyalty to family and the party) but since the peasants of rural China still lived in hopeless gruelling poverty because landlords and taxes exploited them mercilessly, they were more attracted by Mao’s philosophy of land reforms. Mao and his followers gained substantial support on the Long March because in areas they controlled they established ‘soviets’, and redistributed land and harvests according to collectivist principles.

There were actually several Long Marches led by competing interests, which you can see from the Wikipedia map at left. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march ). Women of the Long March covers the experience of three women in the First Front Army, on their march which began in 1935 and ended almost a year later after when they had covered a distance of about 13000 km, or the distance from north to south Australia and back again.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2009/03/20/w...

[Ann Clark]

Listened to the audio book. I know very little about this time in history, and found the stories quite powerful. Most interesting to me from a cultural competence perspective is learning about the concept of guanxi, which I am motivated to learn more about.