GUIYANG, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Standing before a grave marked "Red Army Tomb" in Zunyi, a city in southwest China's Guizhou Province, Kong Xia told visitors about the young medic buried beneath it.

The medic was only 18 years old in January 1935, when the Red Army reached Zunyi during the Long March. Staying behind to treat sick villagers, he lost contact with his unit and was killed by enemy forces. Local people, risking their own lives, secretly buried the body.

A foreign listener once told her before the tomb: "A good deed is remembered, even a hundred years later."

For Kong Xia, a 56-year-old volunteer who has told Long March stories for more than three decades, the words capture something universal. The feelings the Long March evokes -- kindness, perseverance, longing for a good life -- belong to no single language or nation. Ninety years after the epic journey, the stories are finding new listeners and inspiring people in their everyday lives.

The Red Army, led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), was mainly made up of soldiers from peasants' and workers' families during the Chinese revolution. Between 1934 and 1936, the army trekked up to 12,500 kilometers to break through the Kuomintang party (KMT) siege, a journey later known as the Long March.

It was no easy journey. The army went through more than 600 battles while braving raging rivers, snow-covered mountains, and treacherous grasslands, with many dying on the way. By December 1934, less than two months into the march, the Central Red Army had lost more than half its strength, shrinking from over 86,000 to just over 30,000.

Known as China's "city of historic turning point," Zunyi holds a special place in the nation's history. In January 1935, after arriving, the CPC convened a three-day meeting to draw lessons from the loss, which ultimately corrected the army's strategic mistakes and established a new Party leadership with Mao Zedong at the helm.

About a month later, the Red Army won its first major victory of the march at Loushan Pass in Zunyi, proving the new strategy was working. The foundation laid in the mountainous city would carry the Chinese revolution to eventual victory.

Kong Xia's grandfather, Kong Xianquan, a Red Army staff officer, witnessed the great transformation. Storming the pass with his unit, the then 24-year-old was shot in the right leg. When he died in 1988, six pieces of shrapnel were found among his ashes.

His comrade, Zhong Chibing, badly wounded in the same battle, underwent three amputations without anesthetic as repeated infections set in under poor sanitary conditions. Rather than recuperate, the young man insisted on staying with the army and completed the Long March on one leg.

Their stories capture the resilience that defined Red Army soldiers: a refusal to let hardship stand in the way of the cause they believed in.

Born in 1911 to a peasant family in Liuyang, central China's Hunan Province, Kong Xianquan joined the revolution for a simple reason. He wanted enough food to eat. He also wanted to find an army that did not bully people like the KMT troops. So he joined a peasant armed force in 1928, and then in 1930, the Red Army.

In 1954, Kong Xianquan became the first curator of the Zunyi Meeting memorial hall. Despite his wounded leg, the veteran traveled across mountains and valleys, collecting more than 1,200 precious artifacts for the memorial.

"My grandfather spoke less, but when he told stories of the past, he was always excited," Kong Xia told Xinhua in an interview. "He never kept an account of his own deeds. What he cared about was how to record history, so that those who came after could truly see the road they had traveled."

Today, Kong Xia has taken up her grandfather's baton to tell Long March stories. Since 1993, she has given more than 1,000 voluntary lectures to over 50,000 listeners, and has trained hundreds of young docents. Now retired, she continues to find new ways to bring these stories to younger generations.

The year 2026 marks the 90th anniversary of the Long March victory, also the start of China's 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030). The next five years will be a critical stage for the country to advance toward its goal of basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035.

Kong Xia believes the Long March spirit, which comes down to keeping the faith, braving setback after setback, and putting the people first, is important to achieving the Chinese dream. "When people tell the Long March stories today, they do not tell to dwell on misery, but to light the way forward," she said.

The Long March is never a story told merely within China. First published in Britain in 1937, American journalist Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China" introduced the Chinese revolution to international readers. Decades later, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Harrison Salisbury retraced the route and described the Long March as "a great human epic."

This year, Kong Xia has seen a growing number of foreign visitors at the memorial hall and other historical sites in Zunyi. She attributes the rise to China's prosperity and stability.

"They come with questions: Why did China succeed in the past? Will it continue to succeed? I believe there will be even more foreign visitors in the future. Because as other countries develop, China's experience may serve as a reference," she added.

Ninety years on, the Long March stories are still being told. And for Kong Xia, these stories are worth telling for a lifetime, and the spirit in the stories will keep traveling -- to new listeners, in new languages, and for years to come.