Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1
The Fire Burning Below
1．Sun Yat-sen's Difficulties
2．Stalin， Man of Steel
3．Who Spotted a Winner in Mao Zedong?

CHAPTER 2
An Oriental Dream
1．A Close Neighbor but Worlds Apart
2．Rice and Water Subsistence Hatches Fascism
3．The Black Crows Take Flight

CHAPTER 3
Molten Lava
1．Leaders， Ideology and Will
2．Who Discovered Chiang Kai-shek?
3．From the Pen to the Gun

CHAPTER 4
Encirclement and Suppression
1．11 Lisan Awakens Chiang Kai-shek
2．Battlefields and Opposing Generals
3．Battlefields and Communist Generals
4．The Foreign Moon Shines Brighter
5．The Blockhouse Policy - a Chinese Initiative

CHAPTER 5
The Rise of Japanese Militarism
1．The Sub-Iieutenant Assassin
2．Blood Sacrifice of the Yamato People
3．Crocodile Tears

CHAPTER 6
The Fall
1．The Foreign Moon Shines Brighter
2．Peng Dehuai， Cai Tingkai， Soong Mei-ling
3．Breaking the Encirclement - the Pain and the Glory
4．Metamorphoses

CHAPTER 7
Breakthrough
1．The Nationalists Were No Dummies
2．"Zhu and Mao Are Among the Troops for Sure"
3．Head to Head on a Narrow Road

CHAPTER 8
Xiangjiang River， oh， Xiangjiang River
1．"Chiang Hates Us More than Zhu and Mao"
2．Chiang Kai-shek， the Only One in the Dark
3．The First Corps in a Deluge of Gunfire
4．Chiang Sighs： "These Really Are Foreign Troops）'
5．Military Men and Politics

CHAPTER 9
Gold in the Fire
1．Metamorphoses
2．Exhausted Remnants， Kindling to Ignite the Future
3．Chen Yi and the "Chen Yi Doctrine
4．Doomed， but Not for All Time

CHAPTER 10
All Eyes on the Vast Southwest
1．Many Birds with a Single Stone
2．Quantitative Change， Qualitative Change
3．China Brought Forth Mao Zedong
4．KMT Generals Each Having an Axe to Grind
5．Infighting Between Liu Family Warlords for Control of Sichuan
……
CHAPTER 11
Misery and Glory
CHAPTER 12
The Cold Iron Chains of the Dadu Bridge
CHAPTER 13
Overcast to Cloudy
CHAPTER 14
Fortune and Misfortune Walk Hand in Hand
CHAPTER 15
History and the Individual
CHAPTER 16
Song of the Wlurlwind
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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Preface
Where am I from?
Where are we from?
Such questions are as old as life itself.
Such questions are more than those from the future to the past. They are questions that the tree has for its roots, the volcano for its lava, and the finite for the infinite.
We were once slaves. Were it not so, the century of disgrace from 1840 to 1949 would not have happened.
We have had heroes. Were it not so, we would not be on this lOO-year-long journey to revival, from 1949 to 2050.
When compared with the eventful history of a nation, an individual's life feels short indeed, so those who now are blessed with happy lives are loath to acknowledge that they once were slaves. Nor are they inclined to recognize that once we had heroes. Before you know it, their own stirring and awe-inspiring history ends up like a desiccated exhibit, life-less and dull, abandoned in the corner, attracting no interest.
When history's fate morphs into the fate ofthe individual, people can only tremble in fear as they stare at the divination in The Book of Changes.
Are we not casting away our treasures?
As Qu Qiubai, one of the early CPC leaders who was murdered by the KMT in 1935 once wrote: 'A man loves his history like a bird loves its wings. Please do not tear off my wings! '
How other than through the intimate touch of the past can one acquire wings to fly?As Denis Diderot once said, 'What else can inspire us if not truth and virtue.' If I may adapt his words - how can we grow a backbone and stand tall if we are stirred only by the thought ofindividual wealth and nothing else?
Is stacks of money all it takes to become a worthy member of the international com-munity?
If everything was about individual comfort and pleasure, the Chinese nation could never have produced such men as Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong.
You should not gather the pretty fiowers of history. You should go and bring back the fire that burns beneath like molten lava.
As Lucien Febvre, a French historian and cofounder of the Annales School, once said, 'In the chaos and turmoil of the world we live in today, history is the only thing en-abling us to face life without a trembling heart.' Febvre died in 1956, but his words still resonate across the world today.
As for the Chinese nation, the cause continues, a cause demanding commitment from this generation and many more to come.
I firmly believe that the men and women who work long and hard for the renewal of our nation without asking for credit for it will draw great inspiration from our past.
No matter how rich and powerful we become, this line from our national anthem must forever remain the same: 'Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves! / With our flesh and blood let us build a new Great Wall! '
No matter how hard it is for us, we must forever remember this line from The Inter-nationale: 'There are no supreme saviors, / Neither God, nor Caesar nor tribune.'
Matter never perishes. The universe is eternal. The only thing more vast than the blue dome of heaven is the spirit.
Any nation needs heroes ofits own. And there are profoundly tragic implications for true heroes. They sow the seeds but do not share in the harvest.
That is what being the backbone ofa nation is all about.
I present this book as a tribute to those backbone people of the past, the present and the future.
Thanks to their pain and suffering we reap the glory.