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THE oldest surviving veteran of China’s Long March died on Tuesday aged 108.
Wang Dingguo joined the Chinese Communist Party aged 21 in 1933, escaping a forced marriage in which she had been purchased as a bride aged 15.
She served with the Fourth Red Army during the 1934-36 Long March, the 6,000-mile trek through some of China’s most hostile terrain as the communists sought to escape extermination at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party.
The march ended with the communists setting up a new base at Yan’an in Shaanxi and established Mao Zedong as the party’s leader.
Wang took part in battles with pursuing Nationalist troops and lost a toe to frostbite. In later interviews she remembered looking back at the communist forces marching at night with torches: “The line of torches looked like a long dragon with flames. They lit up the winding roads. For me, I saw hope.”
She later served in the Supreme People’s Court and as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, retiring in 1993.
