Yan an

 It was still dark in Xi'an when I took the taxi to the subway.  Strange to see the wide streets almost empty except for a few sleepy workers raking up last night's refuse.  The bullet train whisked us over 300 km North to Yan'an in just over two hours. We emerged into bright sunshine and blue skies.  Yan an is a special place in the story of the Chinese revolution.  It was here that Mao Tse Tung's battered army gathered in 1935 after the grueling Long March through the western mountains.

It was here that they used ancient copperplate printing to put out the millions of Chinese characters of propaganda that by 1949 had cemented China into the People's Republic that we know today.  They lived in the actual caves that we visited today.  A museum has been constructed around them. You can still see the thin woolen blankets and the black soot on the ceilings from the wood fires that kept them warm through the long winters.  The poor quality of the photos in the small museum reveals young faces hopeful and determined.  They faced cold and hunger, persecution by Chiang's Nationalist Army, an imminent Japanese invasion and little support from foreign powers.  By 1937 the prospect did not look good.

I found the experience to be both moving and humbling. There is no hint of grandiose exaggeration of heroism by the present government.  The ghosts of the past are allowed to speak via the actual traces that remain.  We did not visit the cave where Mao lived.  We saw the printing presses, the blackened lanterns, the hand generators and the images of people surviving the most extreme hardships because of their shared belief in a better world.  All around the protected sights flows the chaotic traffic and shiny new construction of a modern city of almost 2 million people.  Most of the tourists go shopping and eating, or climb to look out points where they buy cheap souvenirs.  The halls of the museum were almost empty. I never saw a single Western face.
I was very lucky to have the help of Jenny for this trip.  Jenny is on the staff of an English teaching program in Xi'an.  In spite of having grown up not far away she had never been to Yanan.  So she agreed to make the trip with me.  There are numerous obstacles for a Western person.  First of all its hard to get the train tickets (she bought them online in Chinese)  Secondly, English guidebooks are a bit sketchy on this location - it doesn't attract many foreign tourists and its a bit remote.  Of course the remoteness is the main factor that enabled the fledgling Communist Party to survive. Thirdly, when you arrive at the station you encounter dense crowds, intense traffic and signs only in Chinese.  I think its safe to say I could not have made this  trip successfully without Jenny.
Its quite common for Western people to gloss over the roots of the CPC when we see the images of  Chairman Mao, Tiananmen Square, parades of military hardware and other signs of China's astonishing growth since 1980.  Yesterday I caught a glimpse of a deeper story and it wasn't about Mao - it was about a determined group of young people, fueled by courage and ingenuity surviving extraordinary hardship in pursuit of a wonderful dream.