Long March legacy remains strong

Ninety years after the Red Army completed the Long March, people from all walks of life continue to draw on its enduring spiritual legacy to guide China's modernization drive, as President Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized.

Thursday marks the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March, a strategic military maneuver led by the Communist Party of China from 1934 to 1936 that spanned more than 12,500 kilometers along its main route.

Historians describe the epic journey as a crucial turning point for the CPC. The victory pulled the Party and the Red Army back from the brink of destruction and laid the groundwork for the nation's eventual liberation.

In 2016, at a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the Long March victory, Xi, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, said that people's support was the foundation of the Red Army's victories, and the Long March victory consolidated the bond between the Party and the people, rooting the Party firmly among the people.

He urged the nation to vigorously carry forward the great Long March spirit, and to inspire and encourage the entire Party, the military and people of all ethnic groups across the country — especially the younger generation — to strive with determination and continue to advance the great cause pioneered by revolutionary forebears.

Xi also noted that every generation must undertake its own Long March, and that the modern long journey for the current generation carries major obstacles. "We still have many 'snowcapped mountains' to scale, many 'grasslands' to cross, and many 'Loushan Passes' and 'Lazikou Passes' to conquer," Xi said, using a metaphor drawn directly from the deadly terrain that the Red Army navigated.

That metaphor finds real-life expression in Lhalung Dorje, a China Post courier who since 2007 has worked the so-called Long March mail route across Sichuan province's Aba Tibetan-Qiang autonomous prefecture. Parts of this high-altitude Zoige Grassland trail overlap the ground that the Red Army crossed during the retreat.

Private couriers skip the plateau's scattered herder households for business reasons, leaving Lhalung Dorje to negotiate rockfalls, mudslides and long, tough drives to deliver urgent goods, including medicine and college admission letters.

"Though our hardships cannot compare with the Red Army's, the spirit is the same," Lhalung Dorje said. That inner conviction has kept him going for over 19 years on the route.

His personal "snowcapped mountains and grasslands" lie outside his comfort zone. He overcame heavy mental pressure to obtain a drone pilot license, aiming to move supplies and help farmers ship highland produce out of remote communities. He has also set aside his shyness to host charity livestreams for local growers.

Lhalung Dorje's work reflects the military-civilian bond central to the Long March, a theme that Xi has repeatedly stressed.

On a 2019 visit to a memorial hall marking the departure of the Long March by the Central Red Army in Yudu county, Jiangxi province, Xi stressed the need to remain faithful to the Party's founding mission and ideals, urging people to uphold the revolutionary banner, carry forward the Long March spirit and press toward national rejuvenation.

In Ruijin, the Long March's starting point in Jiangxi, volunteer guide Liu Yang embodies the drive to pass revolutionary heritage to younger generations. A descendant of Red Army martyrs, he avoids dry textbook recitations, and instead weaves his family's own Long March history into tours for students and visitors.

Over nearly 20 years, he has led more than 1,000 sessions and passed the mission to his children: His college-age son enlisted in the military, while his young daughter works as a junior volunteer guide.

"I am a descendant of Red Army martyrs. I hope that through my work, I can pass on the Long March spirit to more people, inspiring them to strive in this new era," Liu said.

In Wuqi county, Shaanxi province, retired soldier Li Huaiwu works to pass Long March memories to young visitors.

Li, a 1965 army recruit, met college students in July at the Memorial Museum of the Central Red Army's Victory in the Long March and invited them to taste lamb with buckwheat noodles. In 1935, facing severe shortages, local families gave the hearty dish to exhausted Red Army troops arriving in Wuqi, treating the soldiers like their own kin.

For Li, a bowl of such noodles symbolizes the wartime bond between locals and the Red Army — a tangible link to history that he hopes young people will carry forward.

President Xi has warned that a nation disconnected from its past has no viable future. Whatever progress China makes, he said, its people must uphold the enduring Long March spirit and forge ahead on the new long march.

Youth in action

The nation's efforts to preserve the Long March spirit have gained broad public traction. Young Chinese are joining heritage hikes, museum volunteer work and themed study tours to learn the Red Army's history.

Many visitors say that standing at these revolutionary sites offers lessons that no textbook or classroom can match.

For Lai Xiaorui, a 24-year-old visitor from Ganzhou, Jiangxi, visiting such sites makes history less abstract and more about real sacrifice. "We come to places like this, so that we do not forget the past. We draw strength from this history," he said while visiting the site of an old Red Well in Ruijin, which provided clean water for local residents under Chairman Mao Zedong's leadership in 1933.

Xia Zichen, a middle school history class representative who mapped out his own cross-city revolutionary history itinerary over summer break, came to supplement what he learned in class. "Textbooks only give fragments. Visiting the actual sites fills in so many missing pieces," he said while visiting the Ruijin Central Revolutionary Base Memorial Hall.

The Long March's legacy extends well beyond China. International observers see its spirit as a lens on China's national character, with many foreign visitors finding universal lessons in the Red Army's ordeal.

Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute, said the indefatigable spirit of the Long March continues to serve as an invaluable source of inspiration for China as the nation navigates the high seas of the 21st century.

"The rigors and ravages of the monumental Long March demonstrated how an 'epic, human miracle' was made possible with the limitless power of the human spirit," he said.

"It is that same spirit that inspires China to excel today, to achieve and overcome obstacles, whether in trade and technology, or in the 'new long march' toward national rejuvenation in the 21st century," he added.