The Long March: Retreat Across China

By autumn 1934 the Nationalists' fifth encirclement campaign was crushing the Jiangxi Soviet, the Communist state centred on Ruijin. The party's leaders, Bo Gu and the German Comintern adviser Otto Braun, decided to abandon it. From mid-October about 86,000 troops, 11,000 officials and thousands of porters crossed the Yudu River and broke through the Nationalist lines, leaving 16,000 men behind as a rear guard. Many of those left behind, including Mao's youngest brother, were later caught and executed.

Location precision: The army crossed at several points along the river; the pin marks the Long March departure monument in Yudu.

Visitor guidance: The departure monument and the old crossing point stand together on the riverbank in Yudu town.

The fourth and last blockade line ran along the Xiang River in northern Guangxi. On 27 November the vanguard seized the undefended crossing at Jieshou, but the main column, slowed by its baggage, took days to arrive while Nationalist troops closed in from both sides. The fighting lasted into December. By the time the army was across, it had shrunk from about 86,000 to roughly 36,000. The disaster turned many officers against Bo Gu and Braun's leadership.

Location precision: The battle spread along the river; the pin marks the Jieshou crossing memorial park.

Visitor guidance: At Jieshou, in Xing'an county, the Red Army Hall and the river-crossing memorial park mark the crossing.

On 15 January 1935 the army took Zunyi, in northern Guizhou, with little more than 10,000 men by one count. For three days the party leadership met in the town to argue over the defeats. Bo Gu blamed the enemy's strength; Zhang Wentian, primed by Mao, blamed Bo and Braun. Braun lost control of military affairs, Zhou Enlai kept his post, and Mao returned to the top leadership. The meeting was later celebrated as the moment Mao took charge, though his full control came only months later.

Visitor guidance: The conference building in Zunyi's old town is preserved as a museum.

Hemmed in by Nationalist, Sichuan and Guizhou armies, the Red Army spent two months doubling back and forth across the Chishui River on the Sichuan–Guizhou border. The first crossing followed a costly battle near the town of Tucheng on 28 January, when the Sichuan troops proved much stronger than intelligence suggested. The army then crossed back east, retook Zunyi and won its biggest victory of the march, before slipping across twice more. Party histories hold up the manoeuvres as a model of Mao's mobile warfare.

Location precision: The crossings were at several points along the river; the pin marks Tucheng, site of the first.

Visitor guidance: Tucheng, in Xishui county, has a museum of the four crossings.

The suspension bridge over the Dadu River, built in 1706, hangs from 13 iron chains, each weighing about 2.5 tonnes. On 29 May 1935 Lin Biao's troops arrived to find most of its planks removed. In the official account 22 volunteers crawled across the bare chains under machine-gun fire and stormed the far bank. Some historians and later travellers on the route think the fight was much smaller than the legend, or exaggerated for propaganda. Either way, the crossing let the army escape north.

Visitor guidance: The bridge in Luding town can still be walked across; a memorial museum stands nearby.

In June 1935 the army faced the Great Snowy Mountains. The first, Jiajin Shan, rises to about 4,100 metres between Baoxing and Xiaojin counties. The leading regiment reached its foot on 11 June and spent the whole of the next day climbing through snow and thin air to cross it. On the far side, at Maogong, they met Zhang Guotao's larger Fourth Front Army — and soon quarrelled with it over where to go next. The two armies split.

Location precision: The pin marks the Jiajin Shan peak; the army's track crossed the pass beside it.

In August 1935 the column marched north into the Zoigê marsh, the largest high-altitude wetland in the world, at about 3,600 metres. The ground is a sponge of peat two to three metres deep, cut by bogs and streams. Exhausted and short of food, the soldiers had to find a path across it without shelter, and the crossing is remembered as one of the hardest stretches of the march. Today the marsh is a protected habitat of black-necked cranes.

Location precision: The marsh covers some 2,600 square kilometres; the pin marks its centre.

After forcing the Lazikou Pass in Gansu on 16 September, the column crossed the Liupan Mountains, where Mao wrote a poem putting the distance at 20,000 li. On 19 October 1935 it reached Wuqi, a small town in northern Shaanxi about 145 kilometres from Yan'an, and joined the local Communist base. Only about 8,000 men arrived, fewer than 7,000 of them from the original army. The base would grow into the Communists' wartime capital at Yan'an.

Location precision: The pin marks Wuqi town, where the march ended.