The bullet tore through Mao Guangrong’s back and came out through his groin. It took five men to hold him down as they stuffed the wound with cloth to staunch the bleeding — the only treatment the troops could muster as they struggled to defend the communist base at Yan’an.
But nine months later, he was back in battle against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops.
It was simple: If the People’s Liberation Army won the civil war, “we could have shelter and land. And we wouldn’t suffer starvation. And we wouldn’t be oppressed,” he said.
Mao, now 90, would have given his life for the cause. But for youthful compatriots, reliving his experience comes somewhat cheaper — a 68 yuan (US$9.95) ticket to the Defense of Yan’an re-enactment, held on a site northwest of his care home at 11am each day.
Tourists clamp their hands to their ears as explosions rend the air. The ground shakes and smoke billows from craters as soldiers dash across the field, red flags fluttering prettily in the breeze. For an extra 10 yuan, spectators can even dress up and participate.
As China celebrated the 60th anniversary of party rule yesterday, its communist heritage was good business — and nowhere more so than in Yan’an, the “holy land of the revolution.”
Four years ago, Beijing launched a drive to promote “red tourism,” believing it would reinvigorate the “national ethos” of visitors and the economies of mostly poor, landlocked areas such as this city in Shaanxi Province; Shaoshan, Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Hunan Province hometown; and Xibaipo in Hebei Province, another communist base. As elsewhere in modern China, capitalism marches in step with the political status quo.
According to official — perhaps generous — statistics, visits to individual sites reached 272 million last year, an increase of more than 18 percent year-on-year; while income from red tourism rose to 124 billion yuan, up 35 percent.
Authorities expect a further boost in the coming week-long national holiday, thanks to the anniversary.
The battle re-enactment usually attracts a few hundred spectators; on a bad day, the cast outnumbers the audience. But the owners are expanding seating to cope with up to 2,000 visitors daily.
Yan’an is now a sprawling, dusty and charmless city, with two KFC outlets, Western sportswear shops and scores of high-rise construction sites.
But for a decade, from 1937, this provincial town was a beacon for leftwingers around the world. Works such as Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China depicted it as an egalitarian utopia.
Mao Guangrong joined the Red Army as a destitute 15-year-old orphan reared in a brutal, hierarchical society where men could kill their wives with impunity and ruthless landlords could seize grain and leave farmers to starve.
Now he was rubbing shoulders with the future rulers of China.
“Chairman Mao was a very simple person — he didn’t wear smart clothes. He used old clothes we made ourselves and they had patches. After he finished his meals, he would walk out and talk to ordinary people ... It wasn’t like now, when it’s so difficult to meet leaders,” he said.
It is hard to imagine what its former denizens would make of Yan’an today. At Mao Zedong’s former home at Zaoyuan, you can buy postcards, tobacco tins and keyrings depicting the Great Helmsman.
Vendors sell Pepsi and Seven-Up and benches are sponsored by China Mobile: about 700 million people in China have mobiles today. Visitors pull up in gleaming cars; vehicle ownership is surging and Credit Suisse predicts it will rise fivefold in the next decade.
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