Achievement carved out

The roots of a single camphor tree capture the soul of Hunan and reflect the role it played in the Long March

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army's 12,500-kilometer Long March, the Communist Party of China's strategic retreat and redeployment from October 1934 to October 1936 that brought its forces to Northwest China's Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, where the Party established revolutionary bases. It has come to symbolize the determination, persistence and presence of mind needed to enable people to accomplish the seemingly impossible. This epic journey relocated the CPC's political base, established Mao Zedong's leadership and ultimately paved the way for the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The march was an arduous trek, as the Red Army battled Kuomintang forces and adverse natural conditions, crossing 18 mountain ranges and 24 rivers through some of China's most forbidding terrain. Only less than one-tenth of the original 86,000 comrades of the Central Red Army leaving their base in Jiangxi province survived upon ending the journey.

Today, European scholars of China need a fresh perspective to move beyond shallow understandings of this historical epic. I have visited many of the historical places, including Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province, where the Nanchang Uprising of Aug 1, 1927 fired the first shot of the Party's armed struggle and marked the birth of the people's army. The Long March started seven years later from Yudu county in Jiangxi. Living in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, I systematically visited the sites along the Xiangjiang River. Recently, I walked the ancient trail of salt trading at Chishui and passed through Zunyi, Guizhou province. I traveled along the Yangtze River from Yunnan to Sichuan provinces, and visited Yan'an and Bao'an in Shaanxi province. Each place is, in itself, a gateway to its own, different world, connecting the vast webwork of China's past, and lending cultural depth to the present. There are songs, poems, paintings, cave dwellings, memorial stones, humble gardens and even photographic records, some of which have made it into textbooks.

One memorial in particular left a profound impression on me, as it illustrates how Hunan people relate this history to the region around the Xiangjiang River. In the Tianyi Wood Kingdom scenic area within a high-tech zone situated between Changsha and Yiyang, stands a monumental Long March-themed root carving, alongside works embodying the Silk Road and ancient Chinese classics including The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Journey to the West. Carved from a single mass of 1,000-year-old camphor tree roots weighing over 600 metric tons, it stretches 100 meters long, 2.5 meters wide and 3.8 meters tall. A team of more than 70 root-carving craftsmen spent three years meticulously sculpting the enormous trunk. The carving depicts 808 individual Red Army soldiers and brings to life 13 classic historical scenes, including the Zunyi Conference and the forced crossing of the Dadu River, transitioning from the snowy mountains and grasslands to the final settling in northern Shaanxi.

To me, this unique creation has meaning beyond the obvious and opens compelling connections between the present and past. It is well known that the saying "All things have their roots and their branches" appears in the Confucian classic "The Great Learning". So does the Long March: a historical root that would become a cultural trunk with social branches that are still strong, sprouting fresh leaves in each new generation.

The metaphorical significance runs very deep, culturally and socially. Working the wood to make its inside deeply visible and polishing the surface, the root carvers followed the traditional principle of "three parts created by human hands, seven parts given by nature". Rather than forcing the wood into an unnatural shape, the artisans studied the 600-ton camphor root's natural gnarls, hollows and branching structures, using them to organically represent the rugged mountains, turbulent rivers and characteristic figures of the Red Army, utilizing the natural imperfections of the timber. The tree's bark represents the harsh, unforgiving terrain the Red Army navigated, while the smooth, polished inner wood depicts moments of strategic clarity and human resilience.

This work of commemoration can become a dialogue between the natural landscape and the political history. The simplistic notion of a group of marching people gives way to the grand narrative of a historical process, unfolding organically. "The wood remembers the storms it survived, just as people remember the revolution," said one of the lead curators of the wood-carving exhibition in Yiyang. "We wanted to show that the Long March didn't just happen to China; it was born from the soil of Hunan."

The narrative carved into the trunk begins at its base, representing the autumn of 1934. The early days of the Long March were defined by the catastrophic crossing of the Xiangjiang River. The carvers have etched the swirling, chaotic waters of the river into the wood, depicting the heavy toll paid by the Red Army soldiers.

Then the narrative shifts from tragedy to the indomitable spirit of the people. As the eye moves up the trunk, the chaotic lines of the Xiangjiang River give way to the towering, stylized peaks of the Nanling and Wuling mountains. Small, meticulously carved figures of farmers are seen guiding soldiers through hidden mountain passes, sharing meager rations and hiding wounded fighters in the karst caves. The spirit of the revolution and the fiery temperament of the troops are subtly evoked through the dynamic, upward-sweeping chisel marks of the artists.

By the time the viewer's gaze reaches the upper branches of the carved trunk, the narrative has transitioned from the bloody breakthroughs in Hunan to the grueling marches through Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, and across the snowy plateaus of the west, finally pointing toward the loess hills of Shaanxi province in the north. The tree trunk, though rooted firmly in the earth of Central China, naturally branches out and reaches upward, indicating the eventual move into Yan'an and the beginnings of the new era.

The wood-carving serves as a tactile anchor to the past. Through the hands of Yiyang's wood-carvers, the history of the Long March is stripped of abstract political rhetoric and returned to its human and geographical roots. It is a monument to the belief that the Long March is a shared memory of the Chinese nation, while Hunan bears a particular and deep connection to its early chapters.

The author is a professor at the Foreign Language Studies College at Hunan Normal University, a private lecturer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a philosopher and a sinologist.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.