One painting from the collection One Man’s Long March. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Painter and illustrator Shen Yaoyi is widely known for the drawing album The Earth’s Red Flying Ribbon, which he drew from 1988 to 1993 to visualize the Long March, based on a namesake novel by the late Chinese writer Wei Wei.

The whole collection is preserved at the Beijing Fine Art Academy and is now shown at the academy’s art museum. The exhibition, One Man’s Long March, marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Long March, a military retreat undertaken by the army of the Communist Party of China to evade Kuomintang forces starting in 1934. It runs until Oct 8.

Over the past four decades, Shen has been visiting the theme of Long March in his creations. He retraced the routes of the Long March several times to collect anecdotes for his paintings and drawings.