Feet Unbound

The Long March, beginning in 1934, during which the Chinese Red Army withdrew from the Nationalists, was one of the largest troop movements in history. The losses during this 10,000-kilometre journey were tremendous. This is the story of the few thousand women, many of them teenagers, who took part in this odyssey. Khee-Jin Ng, a Singaporean who re-located to Australia in 2004, adopts a double perspective. Six women who undertook the Long March tell of the hunger and continuous enemy attacks, but also of the way that women who had been captured (and often seriously maltreated) were later rejected by the Party. We also meet a young Beijing journalist who, tired of her job, retraces the route of the march, though with more comfortable means of transport. Offering a bowl of rice to the souls of the dead, she poses the question of the relevance of the event for contemporary Chinese.

Khee-jin Ng is a Guest of the Festival

Through superhuman endurance and dogged determination, their feats of courage became a symbol of the invincibility of the Red Army. The March, which was a reprieve that led to the eventual victory of the Communists over the Nationalists, is a watershed in modern Chinese history. It has become the stuff of legend, engraved in the national consciousness.

Khee-jin Ng