A Loyal Heart Forever Toward the Party · Shining Red Stars | Gazing at the Receding Figure

**Editor's Note:** On July 22, 2026, Wang Quanying, a 105-year-old veteran Red Army soldier, passed away peacefully in Sichuan. In the brilliant galaxy of stars, another shining red star has been added. Hu Zhengxian, Ma Zhixuan, Wang Quanying… Since the beginning of this year, several veteran Red Army soldiers who once climbed snow mountains, crossed grasslands, and walked the arduous Long March road have left us one after another.

The grueling Long March tempered the People's Army, forged the People's Army, shaped the People's Army, and opened a new starting point for its development. Time does not stand still, but the inheritance never ceases. The figures of the Red Army soldiers grow ever more distant, yet the great Long March Spirit (长征精神) grows richer with the passage of time, inspiring us to continually set out on new Long Marches.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army's Long March. Beginning today, page 11 of the PLA Daily launches the column "A Loyal Heart Forever Toward the Party · Shining Red Stars," inviting surviving veteran Red Army soldiers to look back on their magnificent years of military service, while also asking the families of deceased veteran Red Army soldiers, people from all walks of life who have retraced the Long March route, and staff of Long March–themed memorial venues to share their memories of the veteran Red Army soldiers.

We believe: the experience of one veteran Red Army soldier is a story; the collective portrait of the veteran Red Army soldiers is history. When we engrave the figure of each veteran Red Army soldier upon our hearts, those shining red stars will illuminate our new journey forward.

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**Gazing at the Receding Figure**

**— The Son of Veteran Red Army Soldier Ma Zhixuan Remembers His Father**

■ Ma Chaoping

**Brief Biography:** Ma Zhixuan was born in February 1918 in Pingchang, Sichuan. He joined the Red Army in December 1932, personally experienced the Long March, and joined the Chinese Communist Party in May 1938. He served as reconnaissance platoon leader of the 769th Regiment, 129th Division, Eighth Route Army, and as company commander of the special operations battalion, among other posts. He participated in battles including the surprise raid on Yangmingbao and the Xiangtangpu ambush. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he stood guard in deep-mountain underground storage facilities for nearly 30 years. He was successively awarded the Third-Class August First Medal, the Third-Class Independence and Freedom Medal, the Third-Class Liberation Medal, and the Second-Class Red Star Medal of Merit and Honor.

*Photo ①: Ma Zhixuan photographed after being conferred the rank of Colonel in 1955.*

*Photo ②: In 2021, on the centenary of the founding of the Party, 103-year-old Ma Zhixuan renders a military salute to the camera during an interview.*

*Photos ③ through ⑤: Ma Zhixuan's Third-Class August First Medal, Third-Class Independence and Freedom Medal, and Third-Class Liberation Medal, conferred in 1955, shown in sequence.*

*Graphic design: Hu Shuo*

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On May 24, 2026, my 108-year-old father left us forever. Looking at the empty room, sorting through his belongings, my siblings and I could not calm our hearts. Memories surged like a tide. I gathered my thoughts and quietly recalled the course of my father's life. I know that within his receding figure, there is still an endless story to be told.

**For Whom Did Father Shed Tears**

From childhood to adulthood, I almost never saw my father cry.

Until October 2016, when a leader from the Shanxi Provincial Military District (山西省军区) placed in his hands the commemorative medal for the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army's Long March, my father's tears fell before he could speak.

Father said that receiving this commemorative medal filled his heart with guilt. I knew why he said this. He must have been thinking again of my grandfather, of my third uncle, of the comrades-in-arms who gave their lives during the years of war.

In 1932, my father was 14 years old. To have something to eat, he worked as a young monk at the temple where his grandfather Ma Tianfu served as an odd-job laborer, responsible for herding cattle. His three older brothers had long since gone out to work as farmhands for landlords. The days of hardship seemed to have no end in sight — until a column carrying red flags arrived in Pingchang, striking down local tyrants and distributing land, giving them hope for the future. Before long, my father and grandfather joined the Red Army together, and from that point on followed the red flag with single-minded devotion.

When the Long March began, my father and grandfather were assigned to different units. Before setting out, grandfather encountered my father, urged him to "be careful in all things," and divided his own rations to give to him. After a brief meeting, father and son each set off on the Long March.

Throughout the march, my father kept his grandfather's admonition in mind. But this was the grueling Long March! Crossing the grasslands, my father and his comrades would often march an entire day without finding drinkable water or edible wild vegetables. They had no choice but to risk eating mushrooms. The mushrooms were poisonous; eating them caused the whole body to swell.

When comrades ahead fell, my father pressed his grief deep into his heart and kept moving forward. He longed for the day of victory, when he would be reunited with his grandfather.

Three crossings of the grasslands, two ascents of snow mountains. My father lived to see victory, but never lived to see the reunion. He later learned that during the crossing of the snow mountains, amid raging wind and snow, his grandfather — who served as a cook at the general hospital of the Fourth Front Army (红四方面军) — refused to abandon the marching cooking pot, and fell with the pot into a deep ravine.

Keep moving forward, follow the red flag. In August 1937, my father's unit was incorporated into the 769th Regiment, 129th Division, Eighth Route Army. At 19, he immediately crossed the Yellow River eastward with his unit and rushed to the front lines of the anti-Japanese war in Shanxi.

Years later, my father still remembered the night of the surprise raid on Yangmingbao Airfield: "The moon hung in the sky, and the weather was very fine." When he spoke of the flames that rose after the Japanese aircraft were successfully destroyed, his eyes lit up; when the subject turned to fallen comrades, he would suddenly fall into a long silence.

In recent years, when speaking to visiting reporters, my father recalled the scene of October 1, 1949, when he stood beneath Tiananmen Gate Tower to attend the founding ceremony of the People's Republic. Before him, red flags billowed and tens of thousands rejoiced — yet his grandfather, who had joined the Red Army alongside him, and many comrades who had shared life and death with him, could not witness this moment. In the year of the Long March's victory, my father had unexpectedly learned that around the time he and his grandfather enlisted, his third elder brother Ma Lixuan had also joined the Red Army. Now that the People's Republic had been founded, where was his third brother?

In 2017, with the help of the Red Army Western Route Army Descendants' Association (红军西路军后代联谊会), my father finally learned that his third uncle had been killed as early as 1937 in the Battle of Machang Beach (马场滩战斗). That day, my father was silent for a long time, and then said to me: "Go and get your third uncle's martyrs' certificate processed."

In 2018, the Chuanshan Soviet Area Generals and Commanders Monument Forest Memorial Hall (川陕苏区将帅碑林纪念馆) had the deeds of my grandfather, third uncle, and father inscribed on a single commemorative stele. The inscription opens with these words: "Three members of one family served in the Red Army; father and son both gave their lives…"

On May 30 of this year, we brought my father's ashes to this monument forest. Grandfather, third uncle, and father were at last reunited in their homeland.

**What a Party Member Should Look Like**

In his later years, nothing made my father happier than hearing that a younger member of the family had joined the Party. Every time, he would offer a few words of instruction: "Work hard; if you can contribute to the Party and the nation, give it your whole heart and effort."

As a veteran Party member with more than 80 years of Party standing, my father placed great hopes in the younger generation. In recent years, as his health declined, he still did his best to communicate with officers and soldiers who came to visit.

"What a Communist Party member is — you can see it very clearly on the battlefield." My father told young officers and soldiers on multiple occasions that those on the battlefield who held firm in their convictions, charged to the front, and were unafraid of sacrifice were certainly Communist Party members.

He had reason to say so.

During the surprise raid on Yangmingbao Airfield, the 3rd Battalion commander Zhao Chongde, who led the unit in the main assault, charged at the front and engaged the Japanese in close combat. When blood poured from his chest, Battalion Commander Zhao summoned the strength to urge the comrades beside him: "Don't worry about me, hurry — hurry and destroy the aircraft…" These were the last words he left in this world.

During the Xiangtangpu ambush, ammunition was scarce; often, after firing only the three available bullets and throwing one round of grenades, they had to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. My father's comrade Zhao Denglü grappled tightly with a Japanese platoon leader, and in the struggle bit through his own teeth.

At over a hundred years of age, my father could still call out these comrades by name: "They were all Communist Party members!"

The story of my father's joining the Party has been reported by the media many times. In 1936, as the Long March neared its end, my father was listed by the Party organization as a candidate for development. However, one evening at a bivouac, when my father went to a local villager's home to borrow an earthen jar to draw water from a well, he accidentally broke the jar. Red Army soldiers received no allowance, and my father had no means to compensate for it; in the end, the company commander and political instructor had to go in person to apologize before the matter was settled. My father received a disciplinary sanction for this, and his candidacy for Party membership was revoked. It was not until 1938 that he formally joined the Party organization.

Whenever he told this story, my father would always sigh to us: "One important reason our Party was able to grow and strengthen continuously in such harsh conditions was strict mass discipline (群众纪律)… Whether one refrains from taking or encroaching upon the interests of the masses — not even a hair's breadth — this bears directly on the Party's image and reputation among the masses, and on where the people's hearts lie!"

In the memories of us children growing up, my father was like an "iron-faced Judge Bao." After the founding of the People's Republic, my father was appointed director of a national defense storage facility, and the family lived with him in the mountains.

I remember that in those days supplies in the mountains were scarce, and the troops supplemented their rations by hunting. Once, we children gathered a few sheep's trotters and boiled them to stave off hunger; when my father discovered this, he "confiscated" them without a word. One Spring Festival, I was playing in the mountains with friends and accidentally started a fire that caught the trees. The flames were extinguished in time and no greater damage was done, but when my father heard about it, he had us all line up in a row — regardless of whether you were the political commissar's child or the director's child — and criticized each one in turn…

"Collective interests come first." "Public property is not ours to use." … Years later I finally understood that my father's refusal to "tolerate even a grain of sand in his eye" (不揉沙子) was precisely what a Communist Party member should look like.

**Walk the New Long March Road Well**

In the honor room of the Taiyuan Fifth Retired Cadres' Rest Home (太原第五离职干部休养所) of the Shanxi Provincial Military District, a pair of footprints that my father made a few years ago are preserved. A group of young officers and soldiers stood before those footprints for a long time.

This was a scene from September 2025, when officers and soldiers of the "Red Third Company" (红三连) of an Army brigade traveled over a thousand li to "seek their roots." The predecessor unit of that brigade was none other than the old unit my father held dear in his heart — the 769th Regiment, 129th Division, Eighth Route Army.

At the time, my father's health was already not good, but on a sunny morning he insisted on meeting with the officers and soldiers. That day, my father rose early and sat in his wheelchair, an old blanket across his legs. When the officers and soldiers entered the room, his gaze immediately fell upon them, and he broke into a smile.

"We are soldiers of the 769th Regiment, and we've come to see you!" The officer leading the group took my father's hand and spoke close to his ear.

"769, the old unit…" My father's voice was somewhat indistinct, but everyone heard him clearly.

The officer leading the group produced a metal badge engraved with a red star design and a brief history of the unit's development, and gently placed it in my father's hand: "This is the brigade's commemorative badge. Please rest assured — the road you walked back then, we will continue to walk."

My father's hand trembled slightly. He lowered his head to look at the badge, then raised his head to look at the young faces of the officers and soldiers, and slowly formed the words in reply: "Good… good…"

The visit was not long. Before the officers and soldiers left, my father raised his arm with effort and waved to them.

Before New Year's Day this year, the rest home received another phone call from the officers and soldiers. These young men were very concerned about my father's condition, and also asked us family members to convey a message to him: in the annual military training assessment that had just concluded, they had performed excellently — the special operations squad had taken first place overall in the theater command competition, and two soldiers had been awarded second-class merit citations.

At that time, my father, lying in his sickbed, could no longer speak. My elder sister leaned close to his ear and relayed the soldiers' words to him one sentence at a time. My father gently opened his eyes. He had heard what the officers and soldiers said.

Now, my father has left us. On the bookshelf at home, there still stands a story collection titled *The Journey* (《征途》), compiled by the rest home some years ago for him and several other veteran cadres at the facility. More than 90 years ago, countless Red Army soldiers like my father, following the fluttering red flag, set out on the Long March without hesitation or regret. Their figures are gradually receding. Their greatest hope is that we today stride boldly onto a new journey, and walk the new Long March road well.

*(Compiled by Wen Jianru and Ma Huixin)*