after the fair share of political documentaries, short stories that seem to tell no story, Feet Unbound made an impact tonight. And as familiar names from JC history classes rolled out such as Mao ZeDong & Chiang KaiShek, the film told of an unknown story of women or even girls in their teenage years who fought along side with the men. women who left hometown to join the Long March with their favourite slogan (or motivational line) of 'going to Chengdu for rice', who died from the harsh environmental factors of the snow mountain and quiksand marsh, from hunger, from cold, and eventually when they were ambushed at Liyuankou Pass in Gansu Province. " A handful escaped, but the majority were killed, captured, raped, tortured or forcefully taken as wives by their captors.
Out of the more than 200,000 soldiers who took part in the March, about one percent or 2,000 were women. The surviving women Long March veterans are all in their 80's and 90's today. It is unknown how many of them are still alive.
Most of the female soldiers who died in the ambush at Liyuankou Pass were from the Fourth Front Army. They were teenagers when they started their Long March from Cangxi in Sichuan Province, crossed the Yellow River and became part of the Western Route Army. By the time they arrived in Gansu, they had already covered more than 10,000 km on foot.
It is a tragedy that the story of the ill-fated Western Route Army is never considered part of The Long March. The sacrifice of over 20,000 brave troops here has been eclipsed by the fact that their leader was a traitor (after his fall, Zhang Guotao defected to the Nationalist Guomindang).
The heroism of the soldiers who fought in the Western Route Army is largely unknown outside of China. Even less is known about the female soldiers who fought alongside their male comrades in their search for a better life."
was it worth it? the revolution, the war, the march and everything. i don't know if such a simple question will bring about political indignation, such as 'it has brought China so far'. But was it worth the life of many, and the shame of these women now aged 80, 90 that they have to bear of being raped, beaten, pregnant with children of their enemies. was it worth it?
and was it worth it to make the film that remind these women of what they have gone through in the past. and with our claps of appreciation for a good movie made, of a deeper knowledge of history beyond textbooks, my question is "so what". and now we see things in retrospective, as uninvolved 3rd parties that can only feel pity, there is no way history can be reversed. so... what now?
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