SACRIFICES MADE MINDS STRONGER
"More minds grow stronger for the martyrs' sacrifice, daring to move the sun and the moon to new skies. Happy I see now wave upon wave of corn and rice, here and there heroes come home at dusk as smokes rise."Thirty-two years after Mao Zedong left his homeland Shaoshan in central China's Hunan Province in 1927, he wrote this seven-character verse to express his feelings about the changes to the place of his early revolutionary years and the spiritual strength of the people who had made sacrifices for the Chinese revolution.
And the Long March remains just about the irreplaceable and unequaled odyssey in modern Chinese history.
On the battlefield ruins along the Xiangjiang River, a major tributary of the Yangtze, old trenches loom among the trees. Graves of the Red Army soldiers can be found everywhere -- some are tall, some are just heaps of earth; some are buried with bones, some are cenotaphs; some are engraved with heroic names, but many more are anonymous.
Aerial photo taken on June 29, 2019 shows the Fenghuangzui ferry in Fenghuang Town, Quanzhou County of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua photo/Lu Boan)
The Battle of Xiangjiang River was a fierce battle in which the Central Red Army suffered heavy casualties since they started the year-long trek to escape from the encirclement of Chiang Kai-shek.
The number of Central Red Army soldiers, aged under 20 on average, fell to just over 30,000 after the battle from some 86,000 when they set off to leave their bases in east China in mid-Oct. 1934.
To cover the main forces as they crossed the river, 29-year-old commander Chen Shuxiang led his 34th Division of the Fifth Army Corps to fight a rearguard campaign against the pursuing Kuomintang (KMT) troops.
After fighting off wave after wave of relentless attacks and resorting to guerilla warfare in the mountains, Chen, being shot in the abdomen, was captured by the enemy. He did not surrender and tore his bowels to die a heroic death.
"Chen's sacrifice reflects high loyalty, belief, responsibility and bravery, " said Jiang Yuanshen, an expert from Hunan who specializes in the history of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
The Red Army fought more than 660 battles throughout the Long March. On average, for every kilometer of the march, three or four soldiers sacrificed their lives.
"Sacrifices lie in the core of their persistent pursuit of ideals, beliefs and great ambitions to save the nation and fight for the emancipation of the laboring masses," Jiang said.
