Ten Thousand Mountains Cannot Stop the Resolute March — There Is a Force Called "Spurring the Horse Forward Without Dismounting"
More than 90 years ago, in that desolate autumn, a lightly clad column marched into the vast and boundless mountains. Behind them were enemy forces in hot pursuit; beneath their feet were treacherous passes fit only for birds and goats; ahead were cliffs as sheer as blades. Silent natural barriers, by the arrival of this column, became the march route, became the battlefield, became the passes of life and death — and after the three armies had crossed, they were transformed into a spiritual benchmark.
From October 1934 to October 1936, the First, Second, and Fourth Front Armies of the Red Army and the 25th Army carried out the great Long March. They traversed more than ten provinces, fought more than 600 engagements and battles against the enemy, crossed nearly one hundred rivers, and scaled dozens of high and treacherous mountain peaks. The Central Red Army alone crossed more than 20 mountain ranges along the way. The Yuechengling, Tiannanshan, Fodingshan, Daloushan, Wumengshan, Jiajinshan, Mengbishan, Minshan, Liupanshan… mountain after mountain, danger after danger, stretching on without end, with no finish in sight.
Yet those cold, lifeless names on a map had warmth breathed into them by pairs of iron feet running with blood, were sublimated into spiritual totems one after another, and were strung together into a chain of signposts marking victory!
Guizhou's Daloushan range lies sprawled across the land like a crouching azure dragon, with layer upon layer of cliffs and peaks rising in sheer walls — it was here that the Battle of Loushan Pass was fought. "The west wind blows fierce; across the vast sky wild geese cry in the frosty morning moonlight." This was the first great victory on the Long March route; the Red Army actively waged a war of maneuver to seize local initiative, laying the foundation of confidence for the later strategic turning point. After storming Loushan Pass, Mao Zedong rode to the top of the pass, gazed out over the battlefield where the smoke of gunfire was slowly clearing, and with a sweep of his brush wrote that stirring ci-poem "Recalling Qin'e · Loushan Pass." Though his words depicted the perilousness of the mountains and the ferocity of the fighting, what surged in his chest was the heroic spirit of "the pass is iron-hard, yet today we stride across it anew" (雄关漫道真如铁，而今迈步从头越).
The trials posed by nature were no less severe than the brutal ferocity of combat against the enemy. Jiajinshan, at an elevation of more than 4,000 meters, is blanketed in snow year-round, and its weather is wildly unpredictable. "Jiajinshan, Jiajinshan — birds cannot fly over it, no mortal can climb it; to cross Jiajinshan, only an immortal could come down to earth" — this folk rhyme is a true portrait of its forbidding environment. Yet beneath the feet of the brave, a road to victory always unfolds, a road pounded firm by faith and fearlessness. Marching over the mountains, Red Army officers and soldiers trod on snow hard and cold as stone, silently bidding farewell to one comrade after another who fell by the roadside, while the bright battle flags remained raised high through howling blizzards. The warriors who fell in the bone-piercing cold wind had already become immortal "sculptures," signposts for those who came after to press forward one upon another. Here, there were no grand words — only silent, tragic heroism; no ornate epitaphs — only spines that would bend before they would break.
Gazing at these unbroken ranges of mountains that seemed as though they could never all be crossed, Mao Zedong, while on the march, wrote three stirring short verses (小令):
What stands three chi and three from heaven is the mountain — and even more, the upright, towering bodies of the Red Army officers and soldiers; what overturns seas and rivers is the mountain — and even more, the surging heroic spirit of the Red Army officers and soldiers locked in fierce battle; what pierces the blue sky is the mountain — and even more, the fighting will of the Red Army officers and soldiers, growing stronger with every setback.
Ten thousand ranges of mountains and passes — the higher the mountain, the greater the person who stands atop it. Though the mountains are treacherous, they cannot stop the resolute march; though the winds are fierce, they cannot scatter the resounding songs of triumph.
Liupanshan was the last high mountain crossed by the Central Red Army on the Long March. Standing atop Liupanshan, Mao Zedong gazed out to the farthest reaches of the undulating, layered mountains; wild geese flew south in formation; the blazing red flag "burned" at the mountain's summit, unfurling freely in the face of the west wind — victory lay just ahead! Not long after, he put brush to paper and wrote that widely recited ci-poem: "The sky is high, the clouds are pale; we watch the wild geese fly south to the horizon. If we fail to reach the Great Wall we are not true men — counting on our fingers, we have already marched twenty thousand li."
At that moment, the mountains were still those same mountains, but this column, having passed through a hundred battles and ten thousand li of marching dust, carried an even more resolute ideal and conviction, and was more invincible than ever. "Wind and rain soak our clothes and harden our bones; wild vegetables fill our stomachs and steel our will; officers and soldiers share hardship as one, and the revolutionary ideal soars higher than the sky." In the darkest hour of the Chinese nation, the Red Army officers and soldiers ground their flesh and blood into every inch of earth beneath their feet, carved their convictions into every mountain ridge, and in the moment when heaven itself seemed about to fall, grew into the pillar holding it up. What they crossed was not only the towering, overlapping ranges that spanned heaven and earth, but also the ten-thousand-fathom chasm of old China's deep poverty and weakness, and the humiliating pass of the Chinese nation's century of decline. Those thousands of mountains and valleys that were conquered became spiritual cornerstones inscribed into the memory of the nation. This column, which fought to the death for a revolutionary ideal higher than the sky, used bodies of flesh and blood to set the Chinese nation on the grand journey of great rejuvenation.
Today, the mountains remain as majestic as ever. Atop Liupanshan, the red flag rolls in the west wind; at the foot of Jiajinshan, visitors come in an endless stream. As we traverse the span of history and look back at the long road this column walked, what we see are the figures of generation after generation relaying the climb over the mountains.
On August 1, 1927, the crack of gunfire atop the walls of Nanchang announced the birth of the people's army. From that moment on, this column's march has never ceased. From the snow-capped mountains and grasslands of the Long March, to guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines beneath the Taihang Mountains; from the thousand-li leap forward into the Dabie Mountains, to the tunnel defense on Shangganling (Triangle Hill); from the thunderclap on the Gobi of Lop Nor, to the wall of flesh and blood against raging floods; from the deep-blue wake in the Gulf of Aden, to guarding the mountains and rivers of the Karakoram… This column did not stop at any single mountaintop, nor did it halt at any particular moment in history, but has always fixed its gaze on "the other side of the mountain." The mountains change, the enemy changes, the mission changes — but the posture of "spurring the horse forward without dismounting" (快马加鞭未下鞍) has never changed, and the spine that "pierces the blue sky with a blade still unbroken" (刺破青天锷未残) has never bent.
"Every generation has its own Long March road; every generation must walk its own Long March road well." The Commander-in-Chief's earnest exhortation, like the drumbeat of an advancing army, resounds in the heart of every officer and soldier of the new era.
The Long March of the new era is an undertaking of pioneering significance, formidable difficulty, and great complexity; surging waves and crashing breakers test every officer and soldier of this column. Only by channeling personal ideals into the great cause of building a strong nation and a strong military, by standing at the crest of the wave of transformation, and by remaining unyielding in a complex environment, can the red answer sheet of a century of marching be transformed into an enduring monument of the age that does not fail the people.
The wind rises; the red flag soars high. This heroic column, treading the land of the motherland and bearing the hopes of the nation, once again sets out in full readiness, once again advances into the mountains — toward the direction pointed by the Party flag, toward the place where the people's gaze is fixed, toward the goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation —