Forward -- Choosing Revolution: Chinese

¶ … forward -- Choosing Revolution: Chinese Women Soldiers on the Long March

The 20th century history of Chinese women is a paradoxical one. On one hand, at the beginning of the century, Chinese women were still often relegated to conventional feminine roles, bound their feet, and entered into arranged marriages. Yet they played an instrumental role in the communist revolution. According to Helen Praeger Young's Choosing Revolution: Chinese Women Soldiers on the Long March, communism provided an alternative source of social identity for many women. A woman without a husband was considered a nonentity, so women whose husbands had died; women who were avoiding arranged marriages they did not want; or women who were in unacceptable marriages or other living situations joined the Red Army. The 6,000-mile march of Mao seemed 'easy' in comparison to the circumstances they were fleeing.

For example, Chen Zongying lived on the cusp of the revolution, standing on the brink between tradition and the new China. Her feet were bound as a child -- but she cut off those bindings. She did not go to school because she was a girl while her brothers did, yet she became a soldier in Mao's Red Army (Young 63). At twelve, she was sent to a Ren Bishi's home because she was promised to be his wife, but when the family began to fall apart financially, she left to make her fortune in the city and worked in a factory while living on her own. She had fallen in love with Ren by then and supported his school expenses. Over the course of both of their lifetimes, the married couple worked together to support the future of the Chinese communists. After her marriage, Chen Zongying suffered many tragedies, including imprisonment while she was still a nursing mother and the loss of three of her children. Fears of being betrayed to the Nationalists were constant, yet Zongying believed there was no alternative, given the conditions amongst the peasants which had existed before (Young 70).

Some girls were luckier. For example, Jian Xianren was educated with her brothers and learned about modern Chinese history as well as classic literature. Both she and her brother were early revolutionary activists while studying to become teachers in the city. Xianren cut her hair and was part of a growing class of Chinese women spurning older ideals of gender (Young 24). Unlike a traditional 'good' Chinese daughter, Xianren spurned the girls who only cared about their families and were afraid of fighting against oppressive government forces.

Years later, Red Army soldiers such as Xianren and Ma Yixiang still had very positive memories of the Long March. They stressed how the Red Army never pillaged the countryside for food and only took what it needed, an act which endeared the Army to the peasantry (Young 32). The Nationalists, in contrast, were said to have routed the territories they covered so badly, not even a dog was left in peace (Young 88). Xianren later married General Ha Long of the Red Army and was an active participant on the Long March herself -- even nursing a baby along the way. Like many women, reflecting the new egalitarianism of her background, she was a true soldier, caring for the sick, hauling supplies, and providing vital services to the Red Army.

Xianren undertook her mission with a clear sense of ideological motivation, but for many other women, their choice was less conscious. While it was true that the famine was epidemic in China at the time, given the gradual shift to commercialized agriculture that deprived so many peasants of their livelihood, there is little doubt that it was far more difficult for girls. Women such as Ma Yixiang led far bleaker lives. Yixiang came from abject poverty and was blamed for the death of her siblings by her superstitious mother. She was forced to work off her father's debt as a child (Young 83). Yixiang was 'sold' for a year and a half to another family and mistreated so badly she ran away home and begged to stay.

When the Red Army moved through her town and she was impressed by the soldier's kindness -- despite having no uniforms, they offered to pay her family for the firewood they used -- she begged to join (Young 92). She was refused several times because she looked so weak and malnourished, but eventually found work doing laundry, cleaning, and tending to the wounded. At first she was terrified of the sickness and death she encountered, but having little to turn back to, she persevered. "I just walked with the Red Army, simple-mindedly. We were revolutionaries. To be a revolutionary is to go and look for a good place" (Young 106). She also reminisced: "I felt more warmth from them than I had in my own family" (Young 243). However, despite her unceasing work for the Red Army she was falsely accused of being a landlord's daughter because of her fair skin and expelled at one point (Young 95).