Huainan New Fourth Army Memorial Forest Park

Huainan New Fourth Army Memorial Forest Park

The Huainan New Fourth Army Memorial Forest Park is a classic red tourism site and a patriotic education base.

The Huainan New Fourth Army Memorial Forest is located on Huaguo Mountain in Shangyao Forest Park, Huainan City, Anhui Province. National Highway 206 runs through the area, about 15 kilometers from the city center. It is a tourist destination that combines commemoration, education, and leisure. It was built in October 2002 at the joint initiative of the Huainan New Fourth Army History Research Association and the Huainan Municipal Party Committee Party History Research Office.

The memorial forest combines trees and monuments. The trees mainly consist of ginkgoes and lush pines and cypresses, with ginkgoes as the dominant species, symbolizing the everlasting revolutionary spirit of the predecessors. The forest has planted over a thousand ginkgo trees, making it the largest ginkgo forest in the city to date. The monument praising the spirit of the New Fourth Army stands atop the highest point of the hill. Surrounding the New Fourth Army Memorial Forest, more than ten other memorial forests have been established, including the Huahua Garden, Talent Forest, Students’ Forest, Sunset Forest, NPC Forest, Journalists’ Forest, State Tax Forest, Local Tax Forest, and Finance Forest, forming a memorial forest park collectively known as the “Thousand-Mu Garden.”

The total area of the park is 43,333 square meters. The entire forest area is divided into four sections by a cross-shaped road. Due to the approximately 10-meter elevation difference between the top of Huaguo Mountain and the road surface, the main road features 37 steps and 5 platforms, with the number of steps symbolizing the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937. Along the main road, stone tablets are inlaid in chronological order, featuring major events in the history of the New Fourth Army and biographical inscriptions of its famous generals. At the top is a 20×20-meter central platform, with the front inscribed with nine large characters reading “The Spirit of the New Fourth Army Shines Forever,” while the back provides an introduction to the New Fourth Army, recounting its glorious history of bloody battle and patriotic resistance against Japan.

The site also features inscribed tablets with calligraphy from national leaders, accounts of famous battles, and words of wisdom, all placed along the main road and on the “Eastern Advance Corridor” and “Northern March Avenue” for visitors to admire, reflect upon, and ponder. The memorial forest combines trees and monuments, with trees as the main focus—specifically ginkgoes and lush pines and cypresses. A large number of ginkgoes are planted, as they are known as “longevity trees” and “living fossils.” The pines and cypresses symbolize the everlasting revolutionary spirit of the predecessors. Over a thousand ginkgo trees have been planted in four specifications: 24 trees around 30 cm in diameter, with the numbers 2 and 4 symbolizing the areas where the New Fourth Army’s 2nd and 4th Divisions once fought in and around the city; these 24 trees are divided into 3 groups of 8 each, representing the fact that the New Fourth Army was formed by soldiers from eight provinces—Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, and Guangdong—and fought for eight years during the war, establishing eight base areas. Additionally, the forest includes other precious ornamental tree species such as cedar, magnolia, osmanthus, wintersweet, and red maple, ensuring flowers in all seasons and greenery year-round. The New Fourth Army Memorial Forest scenic area serves as a treasure trove of historical knowledge about the New Fourth Army, combining monuments and forest, and is an excellent venue for patriotic education as well as for holding oath-taking ceremonies for joining the Communist Party or the Communist Youth League.