GUIYANG: According to Luo Jianhua, 47, the key to the ultimate victory of the Long March more than 80 years ago lies in the perseverance of revolutionaries — which he also deems the secret to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
From October 1934 to October 1936, the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army soldiers left their bases and marched through raging rivers, frigid mountains and arid grassland to break the siege of the Kuomintang forces and continued to fight the Japanese aggressors.
“Their strong will made the Red Army soldiers accomplish the march. It also inspires me to overcome difficulties and pull myself together in the face of hardships,” said Luo, who was born and brought up in the city of Zunyi, southwest China’s Guizhou Province.
In early 1935, the famous Zunyi Meeting held there became a crucial turning point of the Long March, which established the leadership of the new Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), as represented by Mao Zedong.
This year marks the centenary of the CPC. While China has embarked on a new journey to socialist modernization after eradicating absolute poverty, the spiritual legacy left by the Long March has been inspiring locals in their pursuit of rural vitalization.
When Luo was a child, Luo’s father, a senior high school graduate, often told him the stories of the Red Army.
“I later found many of the stories in the textbooks in school,” he recalled, adding that he still remembers some famous ones such as the “Old Mountain” that depicts how the Red Army soldiers managed to climb over a steep mountain.
“Through these stories, I have learned the virtues of persistence and perseverance,” he said.
After he married Ding Qimei, his former classmate, in 1998, the couple was successively involved in multiple businesses, ranging from coal washing, pig farming to organic rice plantation.
Raising pigs was the toughest. The couple sometimes had to stay in the pigsty round the clock for a week, considering some 30 sows were due for delivery at the same time. Every day, the couple collected 500 kg of kitchen residue, which was processed into feedingstuff to lower costs. The strenuous workload took a toll on Luo’s health and he had to be hospitalized. – Agencies
