by Xinhua writer Xiong Wenyuan
MELBOURNE, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Long March offers a key to understanding modern China, Australian publisher Harold Weldon has said, drawing on two journeys along the route and four decades of engagement with the country.
In a recent interview with Xinhua in Melbourne, Weldon compared the Long March, whose victory marks its 90th anniversary this year, to the spine of a body, saying it "goes right through the modern history of China."
Weldon, a writer and filmmaker who is also the founder and principal of Harold Weldon Advisory, first retraced the route in 1985, aged 19, and returned for the second journey in 2011.
A "WALKING UNIVERSITY"
His interest began at school. At 16, while studying Asian history, he read Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China" and was drawn to its account of the Long March.
His father, also inspired by the book, later brought together international photographers to document China along the Long March route. Weldon had secured a university place, but his father encouraged him to join the family publishing company, describing the project as a "walking university."
Carrying Snow's book, Weldon joined a reconnaissance team that traveled by train and road and walked where vehicles could not go. On some stretches, donkeys carried their packs. He still keeps his diaries from the journey, with Polaroid photographs and pressed flowers.
At Jiaopingdu, a crossing on the Jinsha River, he met three surviving boatmen who had ferried the Red Army across. The elderly men came alive as they retold their stories.
On the climb back, Weldon ran out of water and became dizzy and exhausted. A girl of about 10 fetched her grandmother, who helped him rest in the shade of a mud-brick shelter and gave him spring water in a hollowed-out gourd.
The girl continued walking with him and, at one point, took his hand on the steep, narrow path.
"I've never forgotten her," he said. The demanding route he had walked just once was the children's daily journey to and from school.
ENDURANCE AND ADAPTABILITY
Weldon said his own hardships -- terrain, weather and fatigue -- had deepened his appreciation of what the Red Army endured while also facing pursuit and encirclement.
He believes the army's trials equipped it for later challenges. "Usually you say triumph over adversity, I say through adversity," he said.
Returning in 2011 also allowed him to revisit people and places from his first journey.
He recalled dozens of children crowding into the team's small room in Sichuan's grasslands in 1985 to sing simple songs. More than two decades later, Chinese colleagues tracked down one of those children, who was then working in the local tax bureau and helped locate the rest.
Weldon was reunited with eight of the former schoolchildren. He recalled crying when they met again.
He also recalled driving through unfinished tunnels in Sichuan in 2011, with only the headlights lighting the way. On a more recent visit, he saw elevated highways and tunnels threading through the gorges.
"Again, China just keeps going," he said.
For Weldon, adaptability connects the historical Long March with present-day development. The Red Army had to adjust to different environments and build relationships with local communities; the Communist Party of China must likewise respond to diverse regional conditions today.
Adaptability, he added, must go together with a clear purpose and a plan.
UNDERSTANDING CHINA THROUGH ITS PEOPLE
To introduce the Long March to overseas audiences, Weldon begins with human endurance, mutual support and perseverance. For Australian readers, he draws parallels with the spirit of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, emphasizing endurance and comradeship.
He then connects those qualities with the places where the Long March unfolded, helping readers move from a story of human endurance to an understanding of the Chinese revolution.
"And then they learn it's not a myth -- it actually happened," he said.
He called for "bridge builders" who could tell Chinese stories in ways that Western audiences would be open to hearing, while remaining faithful to those stories. The same, he said, applied to presenting Australian stories to Chinese audiences.
His own connections reach back to that first journey. The interpreter who accompanied him in 1985 still works with him between Australia and China, he said.
Weldon encouraged Australians to visit Chinese villages and meet local people to better understand the country.
"You need to connect on a human level," he said, warning against preconceived ideas about a country one knows little about.
Reflecting on his continuing engagement with China, he said: "Every morning there is a horizon. You have to keep going."
Weldon hopes to retrace the full Long March route for the third time.
He still thinks about the girl who held his hand on the path above the Jinsha River. He holds onto a few photographs from the journey and looks forward to a possible reunion with her one day. ■
