Abstract

He Manqiu joined the Chinese Red Army in 1935. She participated in the Long March, during which she enrolled in a Red Army medical school, becoming a military doctor. Her story, from childhood through graduation from medical school, told mostly in her own words, is drawn from an Oral History Project on women's experiences on the Long March, carried out in China between 1986 and 1989. The story testifies with eloquence to the enormous weight of tradition against which Chinese revolutionaries had to contend; the special victimization of women amidst the hardships of life on the March in general; and the courage with which women revolutionaries addressed the special needs of women within, and sometimes against, the revolution.