Following old and new connections

Everyone within earshot was shocked when I said I knew who he was before she did. "His name is also Eric," I said.

"Right!" she gasped, wide-eyed. "How did you know?"

I smiled wryly. "He's my friend."

I was filming at the place Chairman Mao Zedong had stayed in Hadapu, Gansu province, while hosting a video for China Daily's Tales and Trails series when a guide asked me which country I'm from.

"The United States," I said.

She replied: "There was another American guy here two days ago. Snow's relative."

That's when I knew it was Eric Foster, the nephew of celebrated writer Helen Snow. She was the wife of American journalist Edgar Snow, who's a household name in China for his book Red Star Over China, based on his interviews with the Communist leadership in Bao'an, now part of Yan'an, Shaanxi province in Northwest China.

It was from Snow's book that I first learned about the Long March when I arrived in China over 20 years ago.

Before and after becoming a core member of China Daily's Edgar Snow Newsroom in 2021, I retraced Snow's steps for thousands of kilometers to several segments of the Long March, including its starting point in Ruijin, Jiangxi province, and to Yan'an, Shaanxi.

And while I'd visited Gansu several times, this was my first time exploring firsthand the route the Red Army took through this picturesque yet geologically treacherous province — where desert dunes smash against loess mountains, and dire privation held sway as the Red Army clambered through its rugged terrain.

To this end, I teamed up with three friends and vloggers from Russia, Ireland and England to film our discoveries.

But while it took the Red Army two years to complete their trek to Huining, where three main forces came together before continuing on to Yan'an, we completed the whole trip from Ruijin to Yan'an in under an hour on foot at the Huining Red Army Meeting Site memorial.

That's because the memorial includes a mountain-valley theme park that renders the route in miniature.

A mountain trail winds past scaled-down replicas of iconic sites: the artillery-shaped Ruijin Red Army Martyrs Memorial Tower, where the march began; a reconstruction of the hall that hosted the Zunyi Conference, which is commemorated for correcting the Party's course; and a swaying miniature of Sichuan's Luding Bridge, whose daring capture became the stuff of legend.

Yet our visit to the actual Lazikou Pass — one of the campaign's most dangerous chokepoints — served as a reminder that facsimiles, narrations, and even video fail to do justice to the perils they overcame. I tried to climb one of the perpendicular cliffs the Red Army scaled but couldn't get a foothold. I could only pull myself up maybe a meter above the ground.

While the Long March is remembered for its extremes — time, distance, suffering, casualties and improbable victories — our journey revealed smaller stories that served as fascinating anecdotes.

For instance, locals at Lazikou, unfamiliar with maple trees, named one growing near the pass the "red-star tree" for its five-pointed leaves.

Putting the Red Army's time in Gansu under the microscope allows us, in turn, to zoom back out to get a telescopic view of what the Long March means for the nation today.

And the legacy of their route again circles back from the bigger picture of China's global rise to these particular destinations in Gansu, as red tourism is providing golden opportunities for these often still-remote locales.

Ethnic Tibetans sell wild honey, apples, pears, yak jerky, and yogurt along the side of the road that now pierces the once-impenetrable Lazikou Pass.

In Diebu county, Ejie's village chief told us that young people who'd previously left to work as migrants in cities have been returning and earning many times more than before. They open homestays and sell local Tibetan specialties like highland barley to tourists who visit the site where Party leaders met and decided to head north.

In Qing-era (1644-1911) adobe buildings near Hadapu's Long March memorial, ethnic Hui vendors sell traditional herbs and "red army pastries" — fillings like minced nuts wrapped in discs of flaky dough that fall like confetti with each bite.

Before leaving Hadapu, I sent Eric a WeChat photo of the guide and me posed just like the two of them had in front of the same building.

No words. No context. None needed.

He responded with smiling emojis, calling this chance encounter "funny".

Indeed.

That said, I intend to find time to meet him back in Beijing to discuss how his discoveries in Gansu compare to ours.

Our serendipitous encounter with the guide wasn't just about the buildings Communist leaders used then but also about the people who call these communities home today — like the guide. It reminds us: Some journeys don't end; they echo.

Again, the value of such a trip is not only to remember the past but also to discover the new that it has generated in the interim.

The Long March that I first read about in Red Star Over China was a story of struggle and survival.

The one we walked in Gansu is a living, breathing narrative of hope come true — of cliffs conquered, roads built, villages revived and people turning revolution's legacy into livelihoods.

It continues to stride across time.