Fewer than 7,000, or only one in 10, survived the march, out of which many prominent party leaders, including Yang Shangkun, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, emerged.
Tu Tongjin, the last survivor of China’s legendary Long March from 1934 to 1936, passed away in July last year at the auspicious age of 108. Tu, a neurosurgeon who became a founding major general of the People’s Liberation Army, later also served as the president of the Chinese Military Medical Academy.
Departing from their headquarters in the Southern province of Jiangxi, Mao Zedong led the 65,000-strong First Army to travel more than 9,000km across Western and Central China to Yan’an in Shaanxi to avoid being encircled by the Kuomintang.
