China | Following in Mao's footsteps – on an e-bike

The "Long March" is legendary. Without it, the Chinese Communist Party would never have won the civil war. To prevent its army from being decisively defeated by the then vastly superior Kuomintang, it fled its stronghold, the so-called Jianxi Soviet, on foot for approximately 10,000 kilometers northward between October 1934 and October 1935. Only ten percent of the soldiers survived this retreat, and yet the Kuomintang was finally defeated by the Communists in 1949 – ultimately a successful project, which cannot be said of the various long marches through the institutions that various leftists have subsequently initiated.

Another successful project was the "Long Bicycle March" by the two German authors Volker Häring and Christian Schmidt, which they completed in two stages from 2023 to 2024 (with a winter break) on e-bikes. No foreigner had ever accomplished this before. And that's despite Schmidt describing himself as a "completely untrained couch potato past his prime," indeed, as "an anti-athlete straight out of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn's wanted list" and as "the Joe Biden of the cycling community." Next year he'll turn 70, but that's actually Mao's prime age, who supposedly swam across the Yangtze River at 73.

Häring, born in 1969, has already cycled 50,000 kilometers on bike tours through China that he organizes, and speaks fluent Chinese, unlike Schmidt, who lived in Beijing for 15 years. Therefore, Häring was also the planner and organizer of this "crazy tour" (Schmidt), about which the two have now published a rather entertaining 368-page travelogue. They show how China functions today, caught between communist ideology and success-driven capitalism, while still retaining a strong rural character; and it's not at all surprising that Schmidt and Häring meet people who tell them they are the first foreigners they have ever encountered.

They are less interested in following the traces of Mao than in those of the German professional revolutionary Otto Braun, known to insiders in Germany at best as the ex-husband of Olga Benario. With his adventurous biography, he seems like something out of a Hollywood film, but in reality, he was sent to China by the Comintern as a military advisor. He initiated the "Long March" and initially led it as its "secret number one," but was later ousted by Mao.

Häring and Schmidt also write candidly about their disputes. According to Schmidt, Häring "flies off the handle like the HB mascot in an old advertisement" at the slightest provocation, but his best quality is that he "calms down just as quickly." Häring believes Schmidt is "not the most empathetic person" and "doesn't always handle stressful situations well."

On the tour, Schmidt usually trails the considerably more athletic Häring out of sight, but Häring suffers from a persistent cough, backache, and toothache on the first leg. The pessimist Schmidt constantly talks to his inner "Mr. Worstcase," but can also occasionally motivate the increasingly skeptical Häring with optimism. Sometimes he even sends a little prayer up to "communist heaven": "Otto, help me—I can't go on!"

They take turns writing the chapters of their book. About how they didn't fall on dangerous, snow-covered mountain passes and didn't sink in swampy areas, how they were charmed by the alcohol-laden fumes from the distilleries in Maotai, and how they drove through landscapes "as if cut from Chinese ink paintings: waterfalls cascading from the mountains and extensive forests such as I have never seen before in China" (Häring).

They encounter the national minorities of the Yao, Zhoung, Miao, Dong, and Bai, and a perpetually suspicious police force, which Häring can usually calm down: "Talking them to death in Chinese is always my strategy in unpleasant encounters with the authorities." The main problems, however, are the spokes of the bicycles, the sometimes poor roads where they are endangered by ignorant drivers, and the recurring fundamental question of revolutionary vigilance: Will the e-bike battery last?

How did Mao sum it up? "The Red Army, marching far and wide, despises suffering, a thousand mountains, ten thousand rivers – for them, it's just a trifle." This doesn't quite apply to Schmidt and Häring, but they too ultimately agree: "It just happened that way."

Volker Häring/Christian Y. Schmidt: The Long Bicycle March. 7000 Kilometers Through China. Ullstein, 368 pp., paperback, €19.99. Book presentation: November 12, 6:30 p.m., Fahimi Bar, Skalitzer Str. 133, Berlin.