Song of Clean Conduct and Righteous Spirit | "Never Seen Such an Army Before"

"Never Seen Such an Army Before"

■ Li Xiaolin

At the river crossing, the Red Army column bade farewell to the people and continued on its way.

A ferryman, pulling at his oar, hummed softly: "In the dead of night the troops came to the street, disturbing no one, entering no home; at dawn they shouldered buckets to fetch water, leaving a row of filled vessels under every family's eaves. Across the fields and hillsides they spread in great numbers, and at first light assembled and marched into the distance. This army I have never seen before—its name, the Red Army, I shall keep in my heart." The plain, unadorned folk song drifted out across the shimmering water, sketching the image of an army the people had "never seen before."

In the winter of 1934, the Red Army crossed the Laoshanjie mountains and arrived at Baimian Yao Village in Longsheng County, Guangxi. The village was deserted—year after year of military calamity, generation after generation of suffering. The warlords had never regarded the villagers as human beings; they had even deliberately written "Yao people" (瑶民) with the character for "jackal" (猺民). In the eyes of the common people, any armed soldier who came brought only disaster. When word spread that the Red Army was coming, they had long since fled deep into the mountains.

This time, however, they encountered an army they had "never seen before."

Before entering the Yao village, the Red Army's General Political Department had issued the "Directive on Winning Over Ethnic Minority Peoples," requiring strict enforcement of mass discipline and absolutely forbidding any harassment or harm to the people. The commander of a unit of the 3rd Red Army Corps convened a special meeting and organized personnel to mobilize the people hiding in the mountains to return home.

When the villagers came back, they found that the courtyards, which had been in disarray when they left, had been tidied up; borrowed pots and bowls had been washed and returned to their places; and inside the rice jars were IOUs and copper coins. At dawn, the troops quietly departed, leaving only a few large characters carved into Longshi Rock: "The Red Army absolutely protects the Yao people (傜民)."

Looking at the character "傜"—written with the human radical (单人旁)—the people were moved beyond words: "We have never seen such an army. They carry us in their hearts; they regard us as human beings!" With tears in their eyes, young and old alike rushed out of the village in pursuit, for they knew that the army they had been waiting for was exactly this kind of righteous and benevolent force (仁义之师) they had "never seen before."

Equal treatment, strict discipline, love for the people—this army that the people had "never seen before" was also one its adversaries had "never seen before."

A captured Nationalist soldier, after receiving political education, remarked with feeling: "'Five-leather' cadres cannot beat 'five-grass' cadres." Nationalist cadres wore leather shoes, leather gloves, leather belts, leather satchels, and carried leather whips—lording it over others, cracking their whips and shouting "You go!"; Communist cadres wore straw sandals, straw hats, straw capes, slept on straw mats, and gnawed on grass roots when hungry—shouting "Follow me!" and leading the charge. "You go" versus "Follow me": a difference of one word, a world of difference, and the outcome was immediately clear.

The enemy could never understand what "privileges" the commanders of this poorly clothed, poorly fed, poorly paid force actually possessed, or why the soldiers were willing to lay down their lives. The answer lay hidden in those utterly different "privileges."

When the Red Army was crossing the grasslands and a food crisis arose, Comrade Zhu De drew thirty men from the Military Commission's Cadre Regiment to form a wild vegetable survey team, appointing himself team leader. When he encountered wild vegetables he did not recognize, he would set them aside and boil them separately. Who would eat them first? "I am the team leader; I have priority rights; I eat first." Zhu De always insisted on exercising his "privilege" in this way. In this manner, they identified more than a dozen edible wild plants, greatly alleviating the food shortage.

In this army, if Party cadres had any privilege at all, it was the privilege of taking the lead in enduring hardship, taking the lead in upholding discipline, and taking the lead in making sacrifices. This kind of "privilege" was one the enemy had never possessed and feared to possess—a winning formula (制胜密码) the enemy could neither comprehend nor learn.

After a period of observation and interviews, Edgar Snow was puzzled by what he saw: Why was it that, although regulations stipulated that battalion commanders and above were permitted to ride horses or mules, Zhu De's horse always carried wounded and sick soldiers? Why did Peng Dehuai's uniform look the same as his subordinates'—just two sets, with no rank insignia or collar tabs? Why did delegations of oppressed peasants frequently come to request that the Red Army make a detour through their villages to "liberate" them? Later, in Red Star Over China, he wrote: "I have had some acquaintance with the armies of the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and Germany, but I believe that only the finest troops could endure the intense and arduous daily conditions that Red Army soldiers bore."

During the Yan'an period, wave after wave of foreign journalists arrived there out of curiosity and described in enthusiastic prose the people they saw: "This is an army the likes of which has never appeared in Chinese history. Their existence is a miracle for the world; their spirit is a treasure of world civilization."

The reason this army was one "never seen before" lay not in the sophistication of its weapons, but in the firmness of its faith, the strictness of its discipline, and the excellence of its conduct (作风). It was born in a moment of national peril, grew in the course of serving the people, had "serving the people wholeheartedly" carved into its very bones, and wove "unity between officers and soldiers, unity between the military and the people (官兵一致、军民一致)" into its very bloodstream.

What kind of army is longed for and possesses strength? Each of us should have a clear answer in our hearts. Today, the smoke of those battles has long since dissipated, yet the folk song from the river crossing still echoes. Standing at this particular moment in time and looking back, every officer and soldier must still at all times exercise self-vigilance and self-reflection, carry forward the fine traditions of the People's Army, maintain the habit of examining problems, and continuously correct deviations and realign direction—only then can they fulfill their mission and press boldly forward.