Humble start for PLA uniform

When Mao Zedong led 2,000 revolutionary-minded soldiers to a remote section of the Jinggang Mountains 80 years ago to establish a base, the loyal men and other newly recruited followers were hardly dressed to impress.

In the absence of uniforms, everyone wore their own clothes as they settled in the mountainous area of East China's Jiangxi Province.

The common outfits in that period included Mandarin jackets, robes or, on occasion, the uniforms of the Kuomintang army.

It wasn't long after, however, that the Red Army began to look like an army and it was something of an accident, according to Li Chunxiang, a researcher at the Jinggangshan Revolution Museum.

In 1928, the Red Army defeated Kuomintang troops and took control of a neighboring county. Subsequently, they collected piles of white cotton cloth and Wang Zuo, a tailor-turned officer, proposed to dress up the soldiers in new uniform.

There was an important question: What color to pick?

As the story goes, a local peasant suggested they follow the local custom. Local residents were so poor that they often weaved and dyed their own clothes. They burned tea seed shells into ashes and then they boiled the white cloth with the ash that produced a light grey color.

That's how the Red Army got their first uniform. And their successors - the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army who fought during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) - both inherited the light grey.

"You can never imagine how energetic and creative people could be if they were to live up to their dreams," Li says.

(China Daily 08/02/2007 page18)