Yan'an

Yan’an

　　Yan’an is a small, sleepy town in the far northern border region of Shaanxi province, in the heart of this region’s Yellow Soil Plateau. If the biggest notables in recent Chinese history had not intervened, this area would almost certainly have remained in obscurity. In 1936, however, a troop of hardened and weary soldiers, part of a once fairly powerful faction of a United Front government, arrived and then settled in the town.
　　These were the Red Army, a group of socialist thinkers and working men that had originally grouped together (in 1921) in defiance of a fairly repressive internal government and in disgust at the growing influence that their neighbor, Japan, was extending in the northern regions. After an initial cycle of embracement and then betrayal by the Nationalist Government (Guomindang), the Communists were finally attacked on full scale. They fled for their lives through some of China’s least hospitable countryside on a devastating Long March. From their original commune in the Jianxi Soviet, deep south east, for over a year these hardy soldiers meandered, beset on all sides, until finally coming to a respite in Yan’an, in China’s far north. The town was poor and with relatively unprofitable soil, making it ripe for the communists to disseminate their doctrines and provide welcomed help and redistribution in the fields.
　　By 1950, after the successful removal of China’s "internal and external cancers" (the Guomindang and the Japanese Manchukuo states), the town became one of China’s Meccas, along with the hometown of Chairman Mao in Shaoshan. The tourism industry in Yan’an bloomed, as any self-respecting communist made the treck to pay their homage to the greats of the revolution.
　　Today the town has returned to its relatively quiet roots, and tourists here are mainly PLA soldiers on induction trips, truly hardcore Communists, or interested foreign tourists. Most of the sights in town are related to the period of the 1930s and 1940s when the Chinese Communist Party were in charge here and thankfully much of the tourism that passed through town in the second half of this century, perhaps in awe of the solemnity of this holy region, have little disturbed the original style of the town. It is the older sections of town, the scenery around and the strangely enticing, cold socialist architecture that is interesting as a one day tour.