Long March

Chinese Communist armies broke out from Nationalist encirclement in 1934 and undertook a prolonged retreat across difficult terrain while pursued by Kuomintang forces. The march involved repeated battles, river crossings, mountain routes, hunger and immense losses among soldiers and accompanying civilians.

The campaign helped consolidate Mao Zedong’s leadership and later became a central revolutionary narrative of the Chinese Communist movement. Alexander Cordell’s The Dream and the Destiny follows a young Red Army doctor through the march, using the historical campaign as both military ordeal and political transformation.