That said, the two did manage to patch things up for a while in the early 1920s, you know, for the sake of the kids. But then Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, and the alliance fell apart in 1927 when Guomindang leader Chiang Kai-shek got mad at the communists for trying to foment socialist revolution, to which the communists were like, but that's what we do, man, we're communists. Anyway, this turned out to be a bad breakup for a bunch of reasons, but mainly because it started a civil war between the communists and the nationalists. We're not going to get into exhausting detail about the civil war, but spoiler alert, the communists won. There are a few things to point out. First, even though Mao emerged victorious, he and the communists were almost wiped out in 1934, except that they made a miraculous and harrowing escape, trekking from southern China to the mountains in the north in what has become famously known as the Long March, a great example of historians missing an opportunity since it could easily have been called the Long Ass March as it featured donkeys. And second, for much of the time that Guomindang was trying to crush the CCP, significant portions of China were being occupied and or invaded by Japan.