Life in Yenan – What is Happening Here?

I woke up this morning at around 05:30. I was up early enough to hear the birds chirp as the sun rose. I looked around for my old leather briefcase that I had been given as a gift from my father back home in the country. He gave it to me when I left for university here in Beijing. I gathered my papers into the briefcase and made my way to the Zhengyangmen Railway Station. The station bustled with travelers arriving from nearby Tianjin, Baoding, and other nearby cities. Many of these trips could be made in a day if one left early enough. 

My trip would take me nearly 3 days. I’d traverse the Hebei, Shanxi, and Shaanxi provinces before arriving in Ya’nan where I would be picked up by a local guide. The guide brought us to the center of this fascinating city that all of a sudden has become the center of the communist parties’ efforts against the Japanese. (Johnson 63) I quickly understood just what was at stake here. Mao Zedong and his communist party had carved out a headquarters here in Ya’nan. Chiang Kai-Shek and his nationalist party in prior years had been looking to wage a war against Mao and his Communists but with the Japanese gaining ground every day, Chiang Kai-Shek is seemingly nowhere to be found. 

On the ground here in Ya’nan, I noticed that Mao was commonly referred to as the “Chairman” by his people. He was very much in charge, but there was a sense that Mao was just like everyone else. This in large part is what may make him so popular. Mao was also involved in many aspects of the communist party here in Ya’nan. (Snow 181) What made Ya’nan unique was the fact that communist leaders were different from the ordinary citizens. Many of the leaders lived in caves just like everyone else, and normally hierarchical institutions like the military blended in with the people and were said to be on the same social level as the commoner. (Dietrich 28) I had a chance to sit down for some tea with Guo Qi-min, a woman who was studying at the anti-Japanese University here in Ya’nan. I asked her more about the new exuberance found here in Ya’nan and what it looked like on a day-to-day basis for a woman. She told me, “I went to the anti-Japanese University of Ya’nan in the fall of 1938. We had classes on current affairs, philosophy, and so on. None of us minded the hard conditions, at night we shared huge beds, each person had just this little space.” Guo Qi-min paused to illustrate to me with her hands just how little space each person had. She continued “About a foot, one next to the other. We got up early in the morning, we did morning drill and learned how to use weapons to fight the Japanese.” (China: A Century of Revolution – China in Revolution 1:10:46) Guo Qi-min shared this information with a tone of enthusiasm that I had not seen before in many of my interactions with individuals outside of those in Ya’nan. 

What seemed at the core of Mao’s success here in Ya’nan besides all of my aforementioned reasons was the strategy that Mao had when it came to completely reshaping ideology. The idea was to promote things that the people liked while also maintaining complete control over thought within the population. (Dietrich 27) What Mao has channeled in the people here in Ya’nan is something that had very rarely been seen before. Mao artfully crafted a party that could have the potential to grow drastically in large part due to his incredible ability to make his subordinates feel as though they were all together. In just 3 years, from 1937 to 1940, Mao’s CCP and Red Army both had skyrocketed in numbers and the enthusiasm here in Ya’nan was evidence of that. (Dietrich 29) 

As I boarded my train back from Ya’nan, I too began to feel a sense of this Ya’nan exuberance. I now understood why it was that many were flocking to this rural city to take part in Mao’s cultural revolution. The fear of the Japanese in the north, combined with Chiang Kai-shek’s rocky and potentially corrupt nationalist party left a sense of urgency in the people who looked for answers and may have found them in Ya’nan. Though I do not know what the future holds, I can say with certainty that this headquarters in Ya’nan will only continue to grow and remain the foundation of Mao’s communist party. 

Until next time,

Gao An Zhi