During Mao Zedong's Long March, Communist Red Army soldiers stormed the chain-link Luding Bridge across the fast-flowing Dadu River in Sichuan, wresting it from Nationalist-aligned forces. The crossing, later mythologized in Communist Party lore, allowed the battered Red Army to continue its 6,000-mile retreat and regroup, cementing Mao's leadership and becoming a foundational legend of the Chinese Communist Revolution.
By late May 1935, the Red Army had already marched for months, fleeing Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist encirclement campaigns in a retreat that would eventually cover roughly 6,000 miles across some of China's most punishing terrain. Losses were catastrophic; of the roughly 86,000 who began the march from Jiangxi, only a fraction would complete it a year later.
The Dadu River crossing became one of the march's most celebrated episodes. According to Communist Party accounts, 22 volunteers from the Red Army's vanguard crawled hand over hand across the bridge's bare iron chains, since Nationalist troops had stripped away the wooden planks and set the far end ablaze, all while under machine-gun fire. Whatever the precise details, exaggerated in later propaganda, the Red Army secured passage across the gorge and escaped a pincer movement that could have destroyed the movement entirely.
The episode, later commemorated in murals, films, and school textbooks throughout China, helped forge the mythology of Communist resilience against overwhelming odds. It also reinforced Mao Zedong's rising authority within the party leadership, months after he had begun consolidating control at the Zunyi Conference. The Long March would end in October 1935 in Shaanxi province, providing the battered remnant of the Red Army a base from which to eventually seize power in 1949.
Key people: Mao Zedong, Zhu De