Standing on the banks of the Yudu River, David Ferguson asks a question that runs through the whole story: when faith in a better future keeps running into harsh reality, where does the moral strength to keep believing come from? It was at this river, one evening in October 1934, that more than 86,000 Red Army soldiers set out on the Long March, a two-year ordeal that left a lasting mark on history.

Wang Xiaohui describes that evening on Oct. 17, 1934. Over 800 boats of every size sat on the water, lashed together with planks taken from villagers’ house gates, timber beams, and coffin boards kept for elderly residents. Local people built this pontoon bridge because they wanted the Communist Party of China (CPC)-led army to get across. No one there could have known that the expedition starting at the riverbank would transform China and reach far beyond its borders.

A Country in Turmoil

China in the 1920s and 1930s was marked by chaos and hopelessness. The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) could not unify the country, and warlords kept fighting one another. In 1931, Japan invaded northeastern China. Caught between civil strife and foreign aggression, many civilians were uprooted, and some starved in the streets. In areas hit by severe drought, farmers still had to pay land taxes that had been assessed for more than a decade ahead.

Against this backdrop, the CPC’s revolution offered the only real glimmer of hope. The party set out to win liberation for ordinary people and national independence. It built Red Army units made up of workers and peasants, along with revolutionary base areas in the countryside. Poor farmers were given land and a new sense of political dignity. On Nov. 7, 1931, the Chinese Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Ruijin, a small village in Jiangxi Province. It set up a system in which workers, peasants, and soldiers elected representatives to manage local affairs and shape policy.

A Fragile Flame

The communist vision of a fair, exploitation-free society shone like a spark in the dark. It gave hope to poor Chinese people and became the source of faith that carried the Red Army, a force of poor workers and peasants, through the hardships ahead. Yet that spark sometimes burned low and unsteady, battered by the harsh realities of the time.

In September 1933, warplanes filled the skies over the Red Army’s base areas. Japan was pushing deeper into North China, but Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT ignored the growing national crisis. They committed more than a million troops and over 200 aircraft to a massive offensive against the base areas. Chiang had already launched four major “encirclement” campaigns in the previous three years to wipe out the Red Army, and all had failed. He badly needed a decisive victory to restore his authority and destroy the CPC.

At that point, the Red Army’s commander set aside the mobile tactics developed by Mao Zedong and other leaders. He chose rigid positional warfare and head-on clashes instead. The problem was that some units did not have a single light machine gun. They could not realistically meet a heavily armed KMT army head-on.

Zhong Ming, a Red Army medic, never forgot the wounded soldiers carried to his aid station. He remembered a man with a shattered chest begging his comrades to end his life. At the front, an entire battalion obeyed orders to hold crude earth-and-wood bunkers. Under relentless KMT artillery and air attacks, every man in the battalion died. Not one survived.

Despite the Red Army’s fearless fighting, the vast gap in strength, combined with flawed military command, caused losses that could not be undone. By October 1934, the KMT’s encirclement had tightened around Ruijin.

An Agonizing Choice

Faced with a dead end, the Red Army had to decide what to do. The hardest part was not dying for an ideal. It was finding a way to keep the revolution alive.

Staying meant defeat, since the army had no room to maneuver inside the Central Revolutionary Base Area. Breaking out of the encirclement, however slim the chances, at least offered a fight. Keeping the Red Army alive as a fighting force mattered far more than holding on to isolated strongholds. As long as the spark survived, the road ahead stayed lit.

Autumn had already turned cold by October. Units of the Central Red Army gathered at Yudu to prepare for a strategic move. The plan was closely guarded. Most soldiers did not know they were leaving the base areas and only sensed that something unusual was happening.

Leaving Yudu

On the evening of Oct. 17, crowds gathered on the Yudu riverbank. Tens of thousands of villagers came from every direction to see the army off. They walked alongside the columns, tucking eggs and glutinous rice balls into the soldiers’ pockets and praying for their safe return.

The main force of the Central Red Army set off. Within days, it had left behind the base areas where it had survived, grown, and put down roots. No one expected that this journey would become the Long March, a trek across more than 10 provinces. Even less could anyone imagine that it would help clear the way for a new China.

Many people today say the Red Army marched only because the enemy left it no choice. To some extent that is true. The Long March was a forced strategic retreat. But that does not diminish its greatness.

Ordinary soldiers had no idea how far they would walk or where they were going. What held them together was their founding mission: to bring liberation to the people and independence to the nation. That unwavering conviction kept the army from falling apart through countless dangers and let it march into the unknown with determination.

Faith Tested by Reality

Ferguson reflects that faith and ideals that have never faced hard reality may lack real substance. The CPC has held the pursuit of communism as its basic goal since its founding. Despite devastating losses and extreme hardship, the Red Army kept moving forward. Its inner strength came from a firm belief in its cause, a steady commitment to its founding aspirations, and a deep sense of purpose. By this account, the Red Army was never simply running from its pursuers in search of safety. It was marching toward a future it fully believed in.

The Long March lasted two years. The Red Army covered 25,000 li across some of China’s harshest terrain. Even so, it kept its head up, found hope in despair, and moved toward light through long darkness. According to Wang, the ideals and sense of mission that carried the army through those years continue to guide generations of CPC members in the decades since the party’s centenary, shaping them into steel as they keep pressing forward.