Red Tour

Red-hot travel spots

By Zhu Linyong (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-07-01 09:21

Historical revolutionary sites are becoming increasinglypopular with tourists. Zhu Linyong reviews some of the best.

1. Xibaipo

The former headquarters of the CPC in Xibaipo is located in a hillside village near Hebei province's Taihang Ranges. From 1948, CPC leaders, including Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Liu Shaoqi, led major battles against the Kuomintang army from Xibaipo. The CPC's central committee convened an important meeting in Xibaipo on Sept 8, 1948. Mao put forward a timetable for eliminating the Kuomintang troops at the conference and famously said, "We will construct a new China, ruled by the working class, peasants and the petty bourgeois It is going to be the people's government."

2. Yan'an

The Yan'an Revolutionary Base in Shaanxi province was the CPC-led army's main base during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945). The Red Army arrived in the city on the Loess Plateau at the end of 1935, after completing the grueling Long March, an 12,500-kilometers retreat from Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang forces. In caves carved into the loess, Mao masterminded a dazzling comeback and victory between 1937 and 1947.

3. Changzhi

The then headquarters of the CPC Army in Changzhi is next to Shinao Mountain in Shanxi province's Yangquan city. CPC military commanders Peng Dehuai and Zuo Quan guided the Eighth Route Army in the successful, large-scale Hundred Regiments Offensive against the invading Japanese army from Aug 20 to Dec 5, 1940.

4. Guang'an

Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's former residence is in Paifang village outside of Sichuan province's Guang'an city. Deng was born to a peasant family on Aug 22, 1904 and lived in Paifang for 15 years. He is remembered as a Marxist, military strategist, politician and a key military leader - and most notably as the architect of the country's reform and opening-up policy.

5. Chongqing

The Gele Mountain Revolutionary Cemetery is located in Chongqing municipality's Shapingba area. The area hosted Kuomintang prisons built with assistance from the US military for the stated purpose of "jailing the communists and their children". Before escaping to Taiwan in 1949, the Kuomintang army in Chongqing - the wartime capital of the Kuomintang regime - killed more than 300 communists in the prisons.

6. Zunyi

The Zunyi Conference Memorial Hall is on Zijun Road in Guizhou province's Zunyi city. It was in this two-story wooden structure that Mao Zedong was elected as the CPC's leader in 1935, during the Long March.

7. Shaoshan

Mao Zedong's former residence is located in Hunan province's Shaoshan, which also hosts the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall. Mao was born to a peasant family in Shaoshan on Dec 26, 1893. He left in the autumn of 1910. In 1925, Mao returned to lead a local peasants' political movement and set up a Communist Party branch in his hometown. Mao is remembered as a revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, poet, political theorist and paramount leader of the Chinese Revolution. He was the key architect and founding father of New China.

8.Jinggang Mountain

The Jinggang Mountain Revolutionary Museum is located in Jiangxi province. In October 1927, Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Chen Yi and Peng Dehuai arrived there after the unsuccessful Changsha uprising and founded the Chinese Red Army of Workers and Peasants. It was the CPC-led army's first revolutionary base and a milestone for the founding of the People's Republic of China.

9. Nanchang

The August 1st Uprising Memorial Hall is on the western end of Zhongshan Road in downtown Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi province. It was in Nanchang that a significant uprising took place at 2 am on Aug 1, 1927. Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Ye Ting and He Long led the movement, celebrated as the CPC's first counterattack during a campaign by the Kuomintang government to wipe out the communists. Communist forces occupied the city for a short time before withdrawing to Jiangxi's Jinggang Mountain. The event marks the founding of an independent army under CPC leadership.

10. Jiaxing

The venue of the CPC's first meeting is in the South Lake scenic area of Zhejiang province's Jiaxing city. On July 23, 1921, the first nationwide CPC assembly was staged in Shanghai. French concession police interrupted the meeting, which reconvened on a wooden ship on the South Lake in the small nearby riverside city of Jiaxing in early August. Representatives read, discussed and eventually passed the Party's first political program and resolution. The Central Bureau - the Party's leading body - was formed, heralding the CPC's official birth.