Man completes 4 Long March routes in 10 years, wears out 30 pairs of shoes, travels 60,000 li
After selling his house in his hometown, 53-year-old ethnic Korean man Li Wanbin brought his wife to Hejiachong Village, Luoshan County, Henan Province, and today will set foot on the Long March route for the fifth time.
The day before departure, the TV station of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, where Li is from, aired a program filmed two years ago about his retracing of the Long March. During that time, Li had insisted it not be broadcast, fearing “people around me would say I’m crazy for constantly walking the Long March.”
After surviving multiple life-and-death experiences, he still decided to embark on the Long March route. He felt that completing the Long March had been an accomplishment for himself and also allowed people along the way to learn about its history.
The Fifth Long March
In the past few days in Xinyang City, Li Wanbin has been quite anxious. When walking becomes a habit, suddenly stopping can leave one feeling at a loss.
He is waiting for a retired military horse he bought for 50,000 yuan to be transported from Jilin to Hejiachong Village, Luoshan County, Henan Province — the starting point of his fifth retracing of the Long March.
Previously, he had walked this route once on foot; this time, he is bringing his wife Shen Xiangzi and a Tibetan friend he met on the Long March, Suonan Jiacao. Li has always emphasized that Suonan Jiacao and Shen Xiangzi’s endorsement of the Long March, and their decision to join him in retracing it, are the greatest rewards of his 10-year journey.
Li Wanbin, Shen Xiangzi, and Suonan Jiacao often attract a lot of attention when they walk through the streets of Xinyang City. It’s not just because they are wearing clothes with the words “Retracing the Long March,” but also because of Li Wanbin’s beard, which is about 3 cm long. Since he first set foot on the Long March route in 2004, he has never cut his beard.
Over the past 10 years, Li Wanbin has spent about half of his time retracing the Long March. During this time, he has worn out more than 30 pairs of specially made leather shoes, lost three horses to various dangers, and broken two laptops. He has walked approximately 30,000 kilometers, equivalent to three-quarters of the Earth’s circumference.
“If I walk for another two years, when I get even older, I won’t be able to continue.” Li Wanbin said, which is why he decided to accompany his wife and friend on their fifth journey retracing the Long March.
A Rocky Start
For Li Wanbin, the year 2004 was a significant one.
That year, he heard that a British man named Ed Jocelyn had retraced the 25,000-li Long March. “If a foreigner can do it, why can’t I?” Coupled with his plan to have his son join the military, the former taekwondo coach decided to take his son along on the Long March route, hoping the journey would toughen him up. So in October of that year, Li Wanbin found two friends, drove a jeep from Yanji to Ruijin, Jiangxi Province — the starting point of the Long March.
But things got off to a bad start. He will never forget the car accident in the early hours of October 10 that year. On the highway in Anyang, Henan Province, the jeep rear-ended a truck, with the front half of the jeep crumpling under the truck. The driver, who was also a friend of Li’s, died on the spot. Li Wanbin received six stitches on his face, but fortunately, his 18-year-old son Li Hui was unharmed.
Shen Xiangzi had already opposed the idea of taking their son on the Long March, and after the accident, she called demanding that he bring their son back. “I didn’t understand it, and even hated him a bit for doing this,” Shen Xiangzi said.
Carrying guilt toward his friend and “a very complex mix of emotions,” Li Wanbin said, they pressed on.
Facing Danger
That year, Wang Gaofeng, then a reporter for the Xinxiang Daily, was also retracing the Long March to commemorate its 70th anniversary, and he encountered Li Wanbin and his son along the way. In Wang Gaofeng’s view, only by personally experiencing it can one truly appreciate the significance of the Long March and the dangers of the route.
“I even gave my son my last words,” Li Wanbin said. That was on December 4, 2004, when Li Wanbin, his son, and Wang Gaofeng reached Laoshanjie in Guangxi — the first major mountain the Red Army crossed during the Long March, at an altitude of 3,000 meters.
When the group climbed halfway up the mountain, they encountered a cliff dozens of meters deep, with only a narrow path beside it — barely wide enough for one person, and nearly impossible for horses.
Without the horses, much of their luggage couldn’t be carried, so Li Wanbin decided to ride his horse and jump across. “I was prepared to die with the horse, and I told my son that if I died, he had to keep going.”
As the horse leaped, Li jumped off and grabbed hold of the cliff face with both hands, but the horse managed to get only its front legs onto the rocks, leaving its body hanging in midair.
“In the end, we managed to pull the horse up together,” Li Wanbin said. But the horse still drowned while crossing the Chishui River in January 2005 — the first horse lost on the Long March. Li’s son, Li Hui, watched helplessly as the river swallowed the life that had accompanied him for over two months. “He was completely terrified.”
However, compared to later experiences, this brush with danger was nothing. When they reached Ma’ergai on the Songpan Grassland in Sichuan, Li Wanbin also got stuck in a swamp. Later, they faced attacks by wild bees, landslides, and more...
The first Long March took over 370 days, and his son lost nearly 40 pounds compared to when they started.
Finding Inspiration
After completing the first Long March (the First Front Army route), Li Wanbin went on to walk the routes of the Second Front Army, the Fourth Front Army, and the Twenty-Fifth Army. To date, he has walked approximately 30,000 kilometers on foot.
During his journey, Li Wanbin said he encountered many touching moments.
In 2006, when he started his third Long March trek and reached Guanpo Town in Lushi County, Henan Province, Li Wanbin settled down at the home of a farmer surnamed Qi to rest. Noticing there was no grass nearby, he walked out of the village to find fodder for his horse. The old man Qi said, "I have some grass here. You must be tired—just rest." Then he led the horse away.
But after a while, Li Wanbin realized that the old man was actually leading the horse to graze on his own wheat field, and a large patch of young wheat had already been eaten.
Li Wanbin was both moved and felt guilty, offering the old man money as compensation. But the old man replied, "I often heard my father talk about how the Red Twenty-Fifth Army stayed at our home back then. I’m so happy you can stay here today—what’s a little bit of wheat?"
Sonam Gyatso was someone he met during the Long March. That year, when Li Wanbin’s horse was injured, he gave the horse to Sonam Gyatso. When Li Wanbin returned to the area the following year, he found that Sonam Gyatso had kept the horse for him all along—even though someone had offered 5,000 yuan for it, Sonam Gyatso refused to sell.
Undergoing a transformation
When describing Li Wanbin, Wang Gaofeng said that initially, his walking was unconscious and his goal was simple. But just like a crawling creature, as he kept climbing upward, he underwent a transformation, and his realm of understanding continued to elevate.
Once, while alone on a snowy mountain, Li Wanbin fell and tore a ligament in his right leg. Fortunately, his phone had signal, and he called his wife, Shen Xiangzi, for help. Several police officers and government workers arrived, allowing him to finally come down the mountain.
"On the mountain, I kept thinking—who sent me to retrace the Long March? No one. But why was I doing this?"
Many people have asked him this question, and his explanation has always seemed unconvincing: "It’s for myself, to achieve something for myself."
But that is also his most genuine thought. After nearly 10 years of walking, Li Wanbin realized that his actions not only achieved something for himself but also helped others learn more about the history of the Long March and remember it. "This is also an accomplishment. The history of the Long March is a very important foundation of China, yet many people don’t know there were four routes. Through my journey, more people have learned about them—and that is meaningful."