Chapter 39 Seizing the Future (1935-1938)

If the future trend was in Mao's favor, only a discerning person could have discerned it in those dark days in late 1934. In fact, Mao's opponents in the party were against the wind at the beginning of the voyage (although Bo Gu and Otto Braun were still in important leadership positions at the beginning of the Long March).However, compared with China as a whole, the pretentiousness of the Communists is a bit like a few flies on the back of a rhinoceros. Many people outside the CCP (of course there are some inside the CCP) believe that since the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927 and the razing of the Jiangxi base area, the CCP is actually doomed.The first difficult months of the Long March did not alter this prospect one bit.For Mao, the sudden departure from the institution in which he was once a prominent figure was heartbreaking.Moreover, those who remained—who, in principle, were tasked with disrupting the Kuomintang, but who were in fact at stake, were not so much supporters of the 28 Bolsheviks as supporters of Mao.

Mao's younger brother Ze Tan was one of his sympathizers, and in every case he seemed to be Mao's shadow, and during 1932 Ze Tan was also blamed for Mao's fall from power.He still stood with Mao during the days when Mao was effectively under house arrest in 1934. Within five months, Ze Tan was arrested and executed (the other was the hapless former leader, Qu Qiubai, who had stayed in Jiangxi mainly because of tuberculosis). Mao also left behind his two children by He Zizhen.Because the Red Army stipulated that only those children who could march could retreat with the army.Mao placed two toddlers in the care of an unnamed peasant family, whom he never saw again. *

He Zizhen was one of thirty-five wives of Chinese Communist leaders who participated in and completed the Long March.She was pregnant with her third child when the Long March began, apparently conceived while Mao was under house arrest.The trek was brutal on Zizhen's body and actually damaged her marriage. Gunther Stein, a British journalist who interviewed communists after the Long March, asked Mao if he felt that he was a minority and could not gain the upper hand. Mao replied: "Yes, I was a minority. At this time, The only thing I did was wait." In 1935, his opportunity came.

The Long March took on its own form by its inevitability as it proceeded.No one even called it a "Long March" until it was over in triumph.In the beginning, it was just a hard retreat**.Later, Mao told Robert Payne: "Our purpose is to get rid of the encirclement and join forces with other Soviet areas. In addition, we also deeply hope that we can be in the position of resisting Japan."⑧ ---------------------------- * After 1949, efforts were made to find out their whereabouts.Some Chinese believe that Zhou Enlai succeeded in this task and kept them well cared for.But the two descendants - who should be in their 40s by now - have never been seen.

** In the spring of 1936, Edgar Snow discovered that they were still referring to this epic retreat by the term "25,000-mile march." ②