LONG MARCH DIARY: China Epic

by Charlotte Y. Salisbury ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 17, 1986

A grand adventure-travel yarn about 70 days spent bumping over 6,000 miles of the most remote and mountainous regions of China, where many people had never seen a Westerner, and where few, if any, Westerners will be allowed to travel for years to come. Salisbury is the wife of journalist-historian Harrison Salisbury and they were retracing, 50 years later, the seemingly impossible mountain route taken by the Red Army under Mao Tse-tung to escape annihilation by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces. The yearlong escape attempt in 1934-35 is one of the great military feats of modern times. Eighty thousand troops started out; only 10,000 made it. Not the smallest wonder of this trip is that Harrsion was 75 and had a pacemaker. Charlotte had her 70th birthday in Beijing. Accompanying them was John Service, 74, a retired State Department official who is one of the most experienced of ""Old China Hands."" Charlotte tells the story of how Harrison got his story. She describes Harrison's many frustrations at the vagueness and contradictions in the memories of officials and survivors of the march; the people and their customs; the often-primitive guest houses they stayed in; the meals (fried bees once) they had, the difficult terrain the Long Marchers crossed. Charlotte likes the Chinese and much of what their revolution has accomplished, but she is not blind to the many shortcomings they see: horrendous pollution of air and water by factories; poor architectural design in contemporary buildings, contradictions between government claims of rapid progress in many fields and the slowness of the reality in some; when she finds restrooms without toilet paper or running water, she duly makes a note. Her style is chatty and disarmingly simple. She achieves her effects through the accretion of details: a dollop of mountain scenery, a bit of discomfort, a paragraph of history, a whiff of wonderment. Because she has a perceptive eye, it works wonderfully well. She learned a great deal about China, and so will her readers--with much pleasure.

Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Walker

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION