The Chinese Communist Party had its origins in 1921. The shaky alliance with the Nationalist Party headed by Chiang Kaishek came to a halt on the morning of April 12th, 1927 with a feast of heads. Thousands perished. Some were shot; some beheaded; some hurled alive into the glowing furnaces of steam locomotives. So many heads were chopped off that the weary arms could hardly raise their great scimitars from their sides. What few escaped, including Zhou Enlai fled to the west to Jiangxi Province. The remoteness of Jiangxi was so great in the 1930s that the government had almost no control over this area.

Roadless, as was most of China in those years, it was traversed only by mountain footpaths by people carrying bundles on their backs, horse-and-mule caravans, single file, too narrow for even carts, made Jiangxi a haven for rebellion. Everywhere flourished illiteracy, disease, poverty, and ignorance. It was here that Mao Zedong set up his new Soviet Communist zone.