CHINA DAILY | HONG KONG EDITION Tuesday, May 25, 2021 | 17 LIFE The red land of yellow earth Yan’an’s chapter in China’s revolutionary saga makes the city a living museum that shows how its past gives new life to the country’s present and future, erik Nilsson reports. The Bao’an Revolutionary Site’s an’an is celebrated as a Communist Party of China. One was caverns sheltered Communist “red” hot spot in the “land the Zunyi conference in January Party leaders. of yellow earth”. The city on 1935. The other was the sixth plena- erik nilsson / china daily the Loess Plateau was the ry session of the Central Committee revolutionaryY base of the Commu- in 1938 … (which) was the one that nist Party of China after the Red decided the fate of China.” Army arrived in northern Shaanxi The site contains 52 cave dwell- following the arduous Long March ings, 16 tiled houses, a Gothic-style Where cave in the 1930s. As such, it’s home to Catholic church and the Luxun hundreds of officially recognized Academy of Arts Square. revolutionary sites. homes This legacy lures people from Yan’an Press around the country and world, who Memorial Hall visit to understand how its past Downtown Yan’an’s Qingliang house shapes today and tomorrow. Nearly Mountain accommodated many 80 million visited in 2019 alone. And press and publishing groups in the the city is currently experiencing a 1930s and ’40s, including the Party history massive tourist influx, as China pre- Newspaper Committee, Xinhua pares to celebrate the 100th anniver- News Agency, Liberation Daily, By Erik NilssoN sary of the CPC’s founding. Yan’an Xinhua Radio Station, the It’s also a place where, interesting- Central Printing House and Xinhua The Bao’an Revolutionary Site’s ly, not only tourism players but also PAtH to gLoRY Bookstore. The 3,000-square-meter caverns were home to such Commu- a large proportion of visitors walk MAPPINPath to gloryg attraction includes 1,580 square nist Party of China leaders as Mao around wearing cos-play replicas of meters of exhibitions that display Zedong and remain a place where Red Army uniforms. PRogReSS over 180 artifacts and more than their and the Party’s legacies live on. Yan’an remains a hive of red zeal 400 historical photographs, docu- Mao and other top CPC officials and a honeycomb of countless cave formed vast swathes of thorny ments and diagrams. The museum’s moved into and renovated these houses whittled into the hillsides. no-man’s land into productive ter- cave-house architecture nods to abandoned — and, importantly, Ultimately, its revolutionary history rain from 1941 to ’44, as a solution to how the Party’s journalism devel- bombproof — dwellings in Shaanxi has carved its every inch in every the Kuomintang blockade of the oped in these grottoes in Yan’an. province’s Yan’an in 1936 and sense. Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border. remained there for seven months. The Eighth Route Army’s 359th Yan’an Revolutionary These literal holes in the wall also Baota Mountain brigade converted wasteland into Memorial Hall then served as the headquarters of Baota Mountain is the city’s fore- productive land, creating rice pad- The Yan’an Revolutionary Memo- the People’s Government. most icon that’s synonymous with dies, cave houses and workshops, rial Hall was established as one of It’s also where American Edgar Yan’an. The pillars of its emblematic with only the most rudimentary the earliest of its kind in 1950. Snow, the first foreign journalist to 44-meter-high octagonal Tang hand tools at best and often nothing Its massive collection includes enter red territory, met Mao and Dynasty (618-907) pagoda, from but their bare hands. more than 35,000 relics, 10,000 took the most-famous photo of the which it derives its namesake, are The Nanniwan Revolutionary photos, 13,000 books and 100 vol- chairman. It was Mao’s favorite self- carved with calligraphic inscrip- Site hosts a square containing what umes of published research. portrait and became one of the tions that read, “rising above Earth”, it claims is the world’s largest ham- The steps leading to the site are world’s most reprinted images. A and, “overlooking the world”. mer-and-sickle statue. The sides of divided into three sections that copy hangs on the wall of Mao’s Its peak does, indeed, offer a pan- the 13.8-meter-high, 19-meter-wide, symbolize the agrarian revolution, office, which is next to the cavern he oramic view of the city, revealing its 21-meter-long copper-and-steel the War of Resistance Against Japa- lived in with his wife. unique long and narrow layout. structure are emblazoned with nese Aggression (1931-45) and the The office contains replicas of the Downtown packs the cracks Marx’s writings in German and pho- civil war. stumps Mao, Snow and an inter- between two rows of steep moun- to exhibitions charting the develop- Its 38,000-square-meter public preter sat on during interviews that tains that’ve endowed it with defen- ment of the CPC and the country. square hosts a 16-meter-high sometimes lasted late into the night, sive advantages since ancient times. The square is across the street bronze statue of Mao, among oth- arranged around a portable fire- The 360,000-square-meter site from a 200-square-meter temporary ers, including 18 cave homes that place. It also houses facsimiles of also hosts ancient cliff carvings, a exhibition hall scheduled to be house sculptures of CPC members Mao’s chests and writing utensils. beacon tower, the Star Pavilion, the replaced by a 7,000-square-meter of different backgrounds, reflecting Visitors can also see Mao’s kang Reform School for Japanese POWs, museum this year. It displays farm the diversity of people involved in (an earthen bed heated by burning the Jialing Academy, a Ming Dynas- tools, photos and relics that reveal the revolution. coal inside) and the small desk of a ty (1368-1644) flood-warning bell how Nanniwan’s transformation in variety unique to the region created and a commemorative stone-stele turn transformed the nation. Long March Victory specifically for use atop kang. He forest. Visitors can stay overnight in Memorial Hall penned some of his most important a mountainside cave hotel. 1938 The Long March Victory Memori- works there. About a dozen caves Most of the over 300 captured 1938 takes its namesake from the From top: The Nanniwan Revolutionary Site hosts a square al Hall of the Central Red Army not preserve such replicas as wooden Japanese soldiers held at the reform significant events that took place in containing what it claims is the world’s largest hammer-and-sickle only hosts the gallery but also a cutlery for making buckwheat noo- school between 1941 and ’45 later Yan’an that year, such as the sixth statue. The Tang Dynasty pagoda is the city’s foremost icon that’s 4.5-square-kilometer area featuring dles, bamboo poles for carrying joined the fight against compatriot plenary. The main attraction is the synonymous with Yan’an. Cave dwellings on Baota Mountain. a Long March battlefield, a monu- water buckets and clay pots for pick- invaders. The school hosts 30 “cave live show, Yan’an, Yan’an, which is photos by erik nilsson / china daily and provided to china daily ment, five public squares and a Red ling. Salt used to preserve vegeta- dorms”, an auditorium, a kitchen an updated version of a red folk-cul- Army command post. bles had to be carried from and sports facilities. ture performance presented on rus- debuted in 2016, and the show was cuts and waist drums, and classes on It exhibits photos, statues and rel- neighboring Gansu province on the Baota stages a nighttime light tic stages throughout the region recently updated for the 100th anni- how to create or perform them. ics like guns, uniforms and grass backs of donkeys. show that can be seen and heard during the revolutionary period. It’s versary of the CPC’s founding. shoes but especially focuses on oil The only surviving structure that throughout downtown with music celebrated for its stage technology Actors dance, perform acrobatics Yan’an Qiaoergou paintings. Perhaps the most famous isn’t a cave is an earthen hovel that and dance performances featuring and special effects, including lasers. and sometimes appear to climb up Revolutionary Site oil work portrays farmers treating was home to Zhou Enlai, who later local waist drums. Indeed, it’s so The performance follows the sto- the walls or fly over audiences’ The Yan’an Qiaoergou Revolu- Mao to buckwheat noodles with became New China’s first premier. essential to the city’s identity that a ry of Bai Yanming, a college student heads. The crowds, who often attend tionary Site hosted the sixth CPC goat meat upon his arrival in The site also hosts the special office saying goes: “Only after you’ve from Shanghai who traveled to wearing Eighth Route Army uni- Central Committee’s sixth plenary in Yan’an. for top-secret affairs and its original climbed Baota Mountain can you Yan’an in the 1930s, and two Red forms, bounce inflatable plastic 1938. The session summarized the 17 The attraction hails the Long telegraph machine. say you’ve truly been to Yan’an.” Army soldiers, as they encounter the pumpkins, nibble on dates handed years since the Party’s founding and March’s endpoint as a new starting The Sadness Tree grows in the vicissitudes of the Long March, out by actresses who play farmers charted the future of the fight point for the CPC that began in courtyard.