An oil painting shows Mao Zedong and the Red Army during the Long March. (File photo/Xinhua)
Just like words have meaning, sometimes numbers have cultural significance. Whenever Chinese people hear the number 25,000, they automatically think of the Long March undertaken by the Red Army from 1934 to 1936.
Curious ones may be interested in how such a long distance could be measured. Historical accounts show that the length of 25,000 li (12,500 km) is a summation based on military documents and survivors' diaries rather than actual distance based on maps.
In fact, the number refers to the longest distance part of the Central Red Army covered.
It completed its Long March on Oct 19, 1935, when its Shaaxi-Gansu detachment arrived in Wuqi county in northern Shaanxi. "Mao Zedong told me, according to data collected by the regiment headquarters of the First Corps, that the unit covered the longest distance, 25,000 li," Xiao Feng, the party leader of the detachment, wrote in his dairy.
From then on, the term "Long March of 25,000 li" began to be recorded in the formal document of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
During wartime, the collected materials were unable to be reserved, so the itineraries we resort to today are mainly from the detachments of the First Corps as well as diaries of survivors such as Chen Bojun, Tong Xiaopeng and Xiao Feng.
Despite the incomplete statistics and partial documentation, the available materials prove that the First Corp had marched at least 18,000 li, which is also referred in Edgar Snow's well-known book, The Red Star over China.
