Deng had begun the trip as one of 84 students who set off down the Yangtze River from Sichuan Province. The late Ezra Vogel, in his biography of Deng, described Deng’s journey to France — via Chongqing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, and Sri Lanka — as “formative.”
Deng was just 16 years old when he set off for Europe, the youngest of the Sichuanese students. He was coming of age at a remarkable moment in China’s development as a nation. His hometown of Guang’an was not a major city, but it was well connected, a relatively easy boat-ride from Chongqing, which was itself less than a week’s travel from Shanghai. Major national events, like the May Fourth Movement, brought the youth of Guang’an into the streets, Deng included. His growing political consciousness took him to Chongqing, where he took part in still more nationalist protests. As Vogel put it, “the birth of Deng Xiaoping’s personal awareness of the broader world coincided precisely with the birth of national awareness among educated youth.”
