A Brit named Ed Jocelyn revealed recently that he will reembark on an expedition to follow thepath of the Long March, undertaken by the Chinese Red Army 70 years ago, together with his Chinese friend Yang Xiao in November this year.
"We are making necessary preparations for the trek," Jocelyn said. "If everything goes smoothly, we'll start from Sangzhi County in central China's Hunan Province on Nov. 19, passing through Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan and Gansu provinces, and finally reach Jiangtai Township in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to complete the Long March route taken by the Second Front Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army."
The Red Army made the 25,000-Li (12,500-kilometer) march from 1934 to 1935 in order to transfer its major forces from areas along the Yangtze River to a revolutionary base in northwest China's Shaanxi Province to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army.
Back in 2002, Ed Jocelyn and another Briton, Andrew McEwen, traveled by foot on the path taken by the Red Army in the epic Long March in the mid 1930s. After finishing their 384-day journey, they published a book entitled "New Long March", which mainly talks about their interesting experiences and feelings during their own "march".
Andrew McEwen said in the book that he reembarked on the road of the Red Army not for experiencing what had happened in the past, but for understanding the feeling of Red Army soldiers.
Some 20,000 copies of the book's Chinese edition have been sold in China. The two Britons are preparing for publishing the English edition in the United States and Britain in the near future.
Ed Jocelyn said they spent 500,000 yuan (US$60,240) on buying photograph apparatus during their first trip. He expects the forthcoming trip will cost more.
(Xinhua News Agency May 9, 2005)
