A Great Man in His Time Rose Sharply from Here

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Zunyi had no other particular interested except it was the location of the Zunyi Conference where, at the end of the Long March, Mao criticized the poor Soviet military advice and became Chief Assistant to then Communist leader Zhou Enlai in military planning. This site is seen as a pivotal point in Mao's rise to power. When I told Xiao Mei where I was going, she gave me a quizzical look and asked, "Why??"

The people of this city seemed more well off than in other cities. The latest fashion for a lady of status was the 1920s aviator look. Many men still wore the blue Mao suit. Men of status enjoy wearing red or salmon colored sports coats that make me think at any moment they will put on a top hat and have a tiger jump through a flaming hoop. They all still wear the green army shoes.

The sites were mostly recreations of the questionably very modest living quarters of the CCP. The city was frantically erecting quaint shopping plazas for the tourist taking the "Long March" trail that leads up to an impressive flight of stairs (to give the local Chinese an idea of the march) and to a massive Memorial to the Martyrs of the Red Army.

I couldn't read anything in the displays but there was a fantastic film that recreated the Zunyi Conference that went through painstaking efforts to find a good lookalike for Mao.

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Photos

Mao Comrades
posing in front of the site of the Zunyi Conference