Choosing Revolution: Chinese Women Soldiers on the Long March

1. Newborn on the March

1. Newborn on the March Jian Xianren and her younger sister, Jian Xianfo, joined the Red Army as a means of self-protection. Jian Xianren’s revolutionary commitment had been forged during student days by the exciting ideas she and her brother encountered in the newly established schools they attended during the 1920s, which they passed along to their younger siblings. Jian Xianren was born in 1909 in Cili, Hunan province, two years before the end of the Qing dynasty and the founding of the Chinese Republic. Her family home was in the eastern edge of theWuling Mountains.Cili was physically and culturally isolated from the outside world. Jian Xianren’s father came from the more cosmopolitan lake area east of Cili in the floodplain south of the Yangzi River. During one of the more severe floods, his family fled to the mountains and settled in Cili. Her father, whom she characterized as both educated and enlightened,preferred to work at an interesting job rather than pursue a more prestigious career. He chose not to study for the Civil Service examinations, which had become corrupted toward the end of the Qing dynasty, and instead studied handicrafts.1 When he mastered the secret art of making batik (laranbu), he opened a workshop in Cili.As the workshop began to prosper, he took on apprentices and opened several shops selling household goods. He bought farmland “so the family members could eat without going elsewhere for grain,” Jian Xianfo said. Both sisters remembered their childhood as comfortable and happy, although Xianren, older by seven years, remembers harder economic times than her sister. The Jian family had seven living children and other children who did not survive, all born over a period of nearly twenty years.Believing in education 20 choosing revolution for both sons and daughters, the father again departed from tradition and sent his oldest daughter to school. As the family grew in size and the business began to prosper, Xianren’s older sister was withdrawn from school as soon as she had learned to read,write,and keep accounts.Because most families functioned as an economic unit,it was quite normal for the eldest daughter to help her mother with housework, child care, and the family business until she married and went to live with her husband’s family. According to Jian Xianren’s sister,their mother,although illiterate,was very good at housework and managing the family business. When Jian Xianren and her next-younger brother,Jian Xianwei,were small, their parents were still struggling to make ends meet.The children helped out by doing what work they could in the store and at home.When Xianren was eight and her brother six and family finances improved,the children were sent to school. Xianren explained, “Old Chinese people favored boys over girls, but in our family boys weren’t considered more important than girls (zhongnan qingnu). They simply thought I was old enough to take care of my younger brother. They let us start school together, since we could read the same books and help each other.” Xianren and Xianwei first attended a traditional private school, studying the Four Books (Si Shu) and Five Classics (Wu Jing),swaying in rhythm while reciting words they did not understand.2 After five years spent memorizing the classic texts, the Jian children were sent to new-style, single-sex, upper elementary schools when they were eleven and thirteen. Their teachers, in- fluenced by the May Fourth Movement, were energetic graduates of universities or normal schools. Jian Xianren described how her geography teacher, filled with patriotic enthusiasm, drew a map of China on the blackboard to show the children how it resembled a begonia leaf.3 The teacher began to cry when she told her students how China, big and rich in resources as it was, had been invaded by other countries. “We were quite moved by what the teacher said,” Xianren explained. “Although we didn’t thoroughly understand, we knew it wasn’t right that China should become the slave of other countries.” She continued,“The May Fourth Movement had a big influence on Chinese young people. Our history teacher told us, ‘Don’t think that you won’t accomplish anything because you are girls. In ancient times,there were women warriors,and women scientists.We have Chinese national heroines like Qiu Jin.’4 Our teachers taught us to be independent , honest people who worked for the good of society.At that...