On The Revolutionary Trail

---

Hi All,
It's great to be out on the road again. After a 30 hour train journey and a very good night's sleep I was good to go.
Yan'an is a remote city in North Western China which marked the end of the Long March, a strategic retreat in which the Chinese communists we're escaping persecution from the ruling Kuomintang, KMT. Here in Northern Sha'anxi and Gansu the communists set up a soviet and tried to negotiate with the KMT to present a united front and fight the Japanese, who had by now had set up the puppet Manchukuo government in North Eastern China. Having just read Edgar Snow's book 'Red Star Over China' I was particularly looking forward to coming here.
There is a huge museum in the city which is full of old photos and artifacts from the period and the old houses in which they lived in at the time. Being a bit of a CCP history buff I found it all very interesting, although there are very few captions in English and the view of history is a little one sided, but that is to be expected.
Yan'an itself is an attractive little city but nothing remains of the old city as the Japanese bombed the place to smithereens in WWII.
Some Chinese skills are essential if you want to visit here as very few people speak English and I haven't seen any other non Chinese people since I have been here.
Well worth the trip.

---