(
Simplified Chinese) I have long aspired to reach for the clouds, and I again ascend Jinggang Mountain.Coming from afar to view our old haunt, I find new scenes replacing the old.Everywhere orioles sing, swallows dart, streams babble, and the road mount skyward.Once
Huangyanggai is passed, no other perilous place calls for a glance. Wind and thunder are stirring, flags and banners are flying, wherever men live.Thirty-eight years are fled with a mere snap of the fingers.We can clasp the moon in the
Ninth Heaven and seize turtles deep down in the
Five Seas:nothing is hard in this world if you dare to scale the heights. (
English) }}The Jinggang Mountains is known as the birthplace of the
Chinese Red Army, predecessor of the
People's Liberation Army and the "cradle of the Chinese revolution". After the
Kuomintang (KMT) turned against the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the
April 12 Incident, the CCP either went underground or fled to the countryside. Following the unsuccessful
Autumn Harvest Uprising in
Changsha,
Mao Zedong led his 1,000 remaining men here, setting up his first peasant soviet. Mao reorganised his forces at the mountain village of Sanwan in
Yongxin County, consolidating them into a single regiment - the "1st
Regiment, 1st
Division, of the First Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army". Mao then made an alliance with the local bandit chieftains
Wang Zuo and
Yuan Wencai, who had previously had little association with the Communists. For the first year he set up military headquarters at
Maoping, a small market town encircled by forests guarding the main western route into the mountains. In November, the army occupied Chaling, some to the west, though this was quickly overrun by KMT troops. When pressure from KMT troops became too great, Mao abandoned Maoping and withdrew up the mountain to Wang Zuo's stronghold at Dajing (Big Well), from which they could control the mountain passes. That winter the Communists drilled with the local bandits and the next year incorporated them into their regular army. In February a battalion from the KMT's Jiangxi Army occupied Xincheng, a town north of Maoping. During the night of February 17, Mao surrounded them with three battalions of his own and routed them the next day.
Zhu De and his 1000 remaining troops, who had participated in the abortive
Nanchang Uprising, joined Mao Zedong toward the end of April 1928. Together the two joined forces and proclaimed the formation of the Fourth Army. Other veterans who joined the new base included
Lin Biao,
Zhou Enlai and
Chen Yi. The partnership between Mao Zedong and Zhu De marked the heyday of the Jinggang Mountains base area, which rapidly expanded to include, at its peak in the summer of 1928, parts of seven counties with a population of more than 500,000. Together with Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo's forces, their soldiers numbered more than 8000. A popular story from that period recounts the hardworking Zhu De carrying grain for the troops up the mountain since agriculture was nigh impossible in the mountain range itself. It was also around this period that Mao Zedong formulated
his theories of rural-based revolution and
guerrilla warfare. In July 1928, Zhu De's 28th and 29th regiments crossed into Hunan with plans to take the important communication hub of
Hengyang. Mao Zedong's 31st and 32nd regiments were supposed to hold Maoping and Ninggang until Zhu returned. They were, however, unable to hold back the advance of the Kuomintang's Jiangxi units and lost Ninggang and two neighbouring counties. On August 30, the young officer
He Tingying managed to hold the narrow pass of Huangyangjie with a single under-strength battalion against three regiments of the Hunanese Eight Army and one regiment of Jiangxi troops, thus saving Maoping from being overrun. As the size of the Communist forces grew and pressure grew from the Kuomintang, the Fourth Army was forced to move out. From January 14, 1929, the organisation moved to
Ruijin, further south in Jiangxi province, where the
Jiangxi Soviet was eventually set up. At the same time, the Kuomintang were executing another encirclement campaign, involving 25,000 men from fourteen regiments.
Peng Dehuai was left in command of an 800-man-strong force, formerly the Fifth Army. By February, his remaining troops broke up under heavy attack from
Wu Shang's Hunan troops. After the Jiangxi Soviet had established itself in southern Jiangxi, the Jinggang Mountains became the northwestern frontier of Communist operations. Peng Dehuai returned with a much stronger Fifth Army in early 1930, basing himself just north of the mountains. In late February 1930, the bandits Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo were assassinated by Communist guerillas, probably on orders from officials in the Jiangxi Soviet. Their men made Wang Yunlong, Wang Zuo's younger brother, their new leader. Most Communist forces left the area in 1934, when the
Long March began. By the time they returned in 1949, Wang Yunlong had been succeeded by his son. He was charged with banditry and executed. ==Tourism==