Taining Red Army Street

Taining Red Army Street

Taining Red Army Street is a classic red tourism attraction and a patriotic education base.

Taining is a land of revolutionary history. During the Second Revolutionary Civil War, the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ignited the flames of revolution here, established a red political power, and the headquarters of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army was stationed in the region. Proletarian revolutionaries of the older generation such as Zhu De and Zhou Enlai commanded Red Army operations from here, and the area once became the hub for material supply and economic-cultural development in the Fujian–Jiangxi Soviet Area. It was one of the twenty-one Soviet counties within the Central Revolutionary Base. To this day, the old streets of the ancient town still preserve large-scale slogans and proclamations written in traditional Chinese characters by the Red Army, as well as air-raid shelters. In memory of this glorious revolutionary struggle, the local government named the street “Red Army Street” and designated it as a revolutionary historical cultural relic protection unit and a patriotic education base for young people.

During the establishment of the Soviet Area in Taining, the region experienced an arduous and bitter back-and-forth battle where both enemy and Red forces entered and retreated three times: The first was on May 3, 1931. After Mao Zedong and Zhu De led the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army to capture Jianning and achieve victory in the Second Encirclement Campaign, they dispatched the Sixth Division of the Third Red Army Corps to liberate Taining on June 4. This led to the establishment of the first Communist Party organization in Taining’s history—the Taining Branch of the CPC—and officially incorporated Taining into the map of the Central Soviet Area.

The second time was on October 19, 1932, when Liu Bojian, the political director of the Fifth Red Army Corps, led his troops to reoccupy Taining. They quickly restored the Taining County Revolutionary Committee and the red political powers in five districts and fifty-six townships, established the Taining County Committee of the CPC, and initiated the first land redistribution campaign across the county.

The third time was on the night of July 7, 1933, when the Nationalist 56th Division's Tian Regiment abandoned the city and fled to Jiangle. The next day, the First Independent Division of the Fujian–Jiangxi Military Region and part of the Northern Fujian Independent Division entered the county seat. The Taining County Committee of the CPC and the County Revolutionary Committee also relocated back to the urban area from Datian, and on the 9th, a celebration assembly attended by over 4,000 people was held at the Beimen Drill Ground. In mid-August 1933, in order to implement the Central Committee’s military strategy of “fighting with both fists,” the Red Army divided its forces for separate operations. The headquarters moved from Jiangxi eastward to Taining to directly command the Eastern Army’s incursion into Fujian and the Red Army operations east of the Fu River in Jiangxi. Thanks to the headquarters—free from the interference of commanders such as Zuo Quan and Bo Gu—the Eastern Army achieved major victories in a series of battles including Ninghua, Quanshang, Liancheng, Shunchang, Jiangle, and Yanping (now Nanping City). “Traveling a thousand li and raising a million funds,” amidst busy military duties, Zhu and Zhou also personally mobilized the people of Taining to enlist and join the fight, organizing “porter teams” and “stretcher teams” to transport war spoils and wounded soldiers to the frontlines in Yangkou and Sha County. On September 18, Commander Zhu also attended and addressed a gathering at the Red Square in the northern part of the urban area to commemorate the second anniversary of the September 18th Incident. On October 7, Zhu, Zhou, and others personally led cadres and soldiers of the headquarters’ directly affiliated units to clean sewers, sweep streets, paint slogans, and participate in the “Urban Sanitation Week.” The red slogans and proclamations preserved on the brick wall in front of the former Red Army headquarters were written during that time.

Address: 50 meters southwest of the intersection of Heping Middle Street and Lingshang Street, Taining County, Fujian Province