The Newspaper That Helped Shape the Course of the Long March

When Liang Xiaoyuan, the son of Lieutenant General Liang Xingchu, stepped onto the dusty lanes of Hadapu this September, he wasn’t just touring a historic waypoint – he was walking back into a story his father barely mentioned at the family dinner table.

Back in 1935, as the Red Army trudged through the rugged terrain of Gansu, Mao Zedong gave Liang Xingchu a seemingly modest assignment: find "spiritual nourishment" for the troops. In other words, bring back newspapers, leaflets and any ink‑stained hint of the world beyond the mountains.

It sounds almost quaint, right? A battlefield where a soldier’s morale could be bolstered by a newspaper headline? Yet the reality was far more consequential. While the army camped near Hadapu, Liang’s men managed to snatch a copy of Ta Kung Pao – a Chinese‑language paper that, that day, carried reports from northern Shaanxi.

The articles weren’t just gossip about distant towns. They detailed enemy movements, supply lines, and the shifting political winds. For the Central Red Army, still trying to decide which direction would keep them alive, that piece of printed news became a makeshift map and a morale booster rolled into one.

Armed with that information, the commanders could plot a route that avoided a massive Nationalist encirclement. In a twist of fate, the tiny town of Hadapu, otherwise a speck on the map, earned a permanent place in the saga of the Long March – all because a newspaper found its way into a soldier’s satchel.

Today, visitors to the Hadapu site can see a replica of that very page, a reminder that even in the midst of relentless marching and fierce battles, the pen – or rather, the printed page – still held sway over the course of history.

Liang Xiaoyuan’s reflections, shared as part of the CICG International Communication Project’s "Together on the Long March" series, underscore a broader truth: the stories we carry, however small, can steer the destiny of nations.