Travelers of a hard road

Nearly eight decades since the Long March ended, only a handful of the survivors are still alive. Satarupa Bhattacharjya interviews two veterans in Tongren

Huang Jianjun has been staying at Tongren City People's Hospital for the past four years owing to high blood pressure and ailments related to his heart and lungs.

He was in his early teens in 1934, when a column of Communist troops was passing through his hometown in North China's Shanxi province as part of the Long March, which was a strategic retreat over 24 months undertaken by the Red Army since that year to avoid being captured by then-ruling nationalist Kuomintang forces.