红色经典英语文章

When the first national congress of the Chinese Communist Party was being held in the summer of 1921 （first in the French Concession area of Shanghai and later on a boat on South Lake, Jiaxing） , with 13 delegates representing 57 members across the country, Agnes Smedley （1892–1950） , 29 years old then, was in India helping the people there to overthrow the colonial rule of the British; Edgar Snow （1905–1972） ,then a 16-year-old, was still in high school, active, busy managing the fraternity newspaper he started, The Delt; Anna Louise Strong （1885–1970） , 36 years old then, who had earned a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago at 23, had already been a progressive activist fighting for justice for years. Soon, they would all turn eastward; their beliefs, passions, and career paths would lead them to China, a vast country on the easternmost part of the Eurasian landmass, right across from the Pacific Ocean.Here, in China, something extraordinary was happening. Here, an existential struggle on an epic scale was going on. Here would come Agnes Smedley, Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong, and many others—Norman Bethune （1890–1939） , George Hatem（1910–1988） , Israel Epstein （1915–2005） , Dwarkanath Kotnis （1910–1942） , Rewi Alley （1897–1987） , and more, overcoming seemingly insurmountable barriers, natural and man-made, to see with their own eyes, to find out what was going on and report it to the world, and to help the Chinese people win their struggle for survival and for the future of their nation. Some of these foreigners would lay down their lives here; some would make China their adopted country, their permanent home.What was going on in China during those early decades of the 20th century, following the founding of the Communist Party in 1921? The Northern Expedition （1926–1928） , a military campaign to reunify China that had become fragmented by warlords; the Shanghai Massacre （April 12 , 1927） , the betrayal and violent suppression of the Communist Party organizations in Shanghai by Chiang Kai-shek （1887–1975）; the Mukden Incident （18 September, 1931） , Japanese invasion of Manchuria that led to establishment of the puppet state of Manzhouguo; the Long March （October 1934–October 1935） , a strategic retreat undertaken by the Red Army after the Fifth Extermination Campaign, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army; Lugou Bridge Incident, also known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident or Double-Seven Incident, a July 1937 battle between Chinese and Japanese troops stationed at Fengtai in the outskirts of Beijing, recognized as China’s whole-of-nation resistance against Japanese aggression. It was during these turbulent times when the survival of one fifth of mankind was hanging in the balance that Agnes Smedley, Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong, and many others came to China.