When Li Shuiqing joined the Red Army at just 13 years of age in 1930, he was disgruntled with his company commander. The company, which had more than 100 soldiers, had to share a handful of rifles and dozens of spears and broadswords. Li was told, as a "Little Red Devil" -- a tag given to all teenage recruits -- he was too young to hold any weapon.

"Stop grumbling. As long as we follow the Red Army, the whole of China will be ours!" the company commander told Li, in a futile attempt to shake the pessimism out of the teenager.

The Communist Party-led army was only three years old at that time. Li was typical of its soldiers -- mostly uneducated peasants or laborers who had no logistics or weapon supplies.

The peasant guerrillas

Over the next three years, Li and his fellow soldiers followed the Red Army in fighting against the troops led by the Kuomintang, then the ruling party of China. The Red Army managed to withstand four large-scale offensives by the Kuomintang troops, expanding rapidly to a force of more than 100,000 soldiers.

But in 1934, the Kuomintang launched a fifth round of attacks and captured the Red Army's revolutionary base, which triggered the beginning of the Communist's two-year "strategic retreat", now universally known as the Long March.

"The 12,500-km trek was full of hardships, bloodshed and do-or-die battles," said Li, then a company political instructor, charged with educating his troops in Communist ideology.

When Li and his soldiers were crossing the wetlands in north Sichuan Province in August 1935, food was scarce to the extreme. Li gave each soldier five broad beans over the first two days. On the third day, they frantically sliced up one cowhide belt and boiled it to eat.

"Hunger, disease and swamps killed thousands of my comrades, including my first company commander," Li said. Of the 86,000 men and women who joined the Long March, just over 7,000 survived. Li was one of them.

Millet and rifles against Japanese invasion

Under pressure to defend China against invasion from Japan, the Kuomintang was forced to collaborate with the Communists. The Communist military forces were integrated into the National Revolutionary Army led by the Kuomintang, forming the Eighth Route Army in the north and the New Fourth Army in the south. Li was a battalion officer in the Eighth Route Army.

Though better equipped, "xiaomi jia buqiang" or "millet and rifles", were the basic equipment of the military forces. The two military groups used primarily guerrilla tactics but also managed to fight a number of conventional battles with the Japanese.

"We have no food and uniforms, but enemies will deliver them to us, we have no guns and cannons, but enemies will make them for us."

This became a famous couplet from the Song of the Guerilla, written in 1938, and sung by Li and his fellow soldiers during the war. It is still sung today.

Following the victory over Japan in 1945, the Kuomintang-Communist collaboration collapsed and the two armies were once again embroiled in civil war.

Armed with more advanced weapons imported from the United States, the Kuomintang troops were superior to the Communist army, which now fought under a new name, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), in every aspect from weaponry and manpower to logistics.

Few people anticipated that the PLA, with its simple "millet and rifle" approach, could overwhelm the Kuomintang troops in just a few years and drive them to Taiwan. Its sweeping victory led to the founding of the People's Republic of China in October 1949.

New China

Shortly after the founding of New China, Li and his troops, under the name of the People's Volunteer Army, crossed the Yalu River to join the Korean War as international forces led by the United States neared the Chinese border.

With virtually no air defenses, the Chinese troops suffered hugely from air attacks led by the US forces. Thousands of soldiers were killed and the army's logistic supply was seriously damaged.