Eric's Beijing Diary

Two lecture nights in one week. That's a lot of time on the subway. But I didn't want to miss this one, because the speaker, Andy McEwan, and his partner hiked the route of the Long March. The main feature of the presentation was a series of about 100 slides of the countryside people and places of Western China. That alone would have made the trip to Dongsishitiao worth the trouble. But I was interested in something else. I have been reading Jung Chang's new biography of Mao, where she and her husband argue that Mao, to satisfy his own political ends, deliberately led the people on a longer, more arduous route than would have been necessary.

I asked Andy if he had an opinion about this. It turns out that Andy and Ed (his partner, who is out in Western China doing the Long March again) finished their book just as Jung Chang's book hit the press. They were able to hold publication long enough to respond to some of Jung Chang's points. This is fortunate for me, of course, because I have been looking for something to balance some of Jung Chang's more daring statements, such as the idea that Chiang Kai-shek allowed the Reds to get away because he was trying to palliate the Soviets, who were basically holding his son hostage. Andy and his partner, who happens to have a PhD in History, have reacted quite strongly to Jung Chang's book. I think Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (her husband) have perhaps precipitated some of this by their statement that the Long March is one of the "biggest myths of the twentieth century." But if you read their book (I'm almost half-way through), they aren't really saying that the Long March didn't happen. They are saying that the story of the Long March bears little resemblance to what actually happened, and disguises some of the more malicious aspects (such as the idea previously mentioned, that Mao deliberately led the people on a longer march than was necessary). Anyway, more on that after I have had a chance to read their book, which should be interesting, since they reference both Jung Chang's book and Edgar Snow's classic, as well as Philip Short's book, which is perhaps the definitive biography of Mao.