Caolin Red Market

Caolin Red Market

Caolin Red Market (including the market street (shops on both sides), Old Street Folk Museum, and Red Market Exhibition Hall)

The Caolin Red Market is located 23 kilometers northwest of Suichuan County and is one of the larger rural market towns in the border area of four counties in Hunan and Jiangxi. Historically, it had five streets and over 170 shops, often frequented by merchants from Guangdong, Hunan, Fujian, and other regions. However, the entire market was monopolized by local gentry, landlords, and capitalists, who used their power to manipulate the market, exploit farmers, and oppress small and medium-sized merchants.

Don’t go to the Caolin Market when it’s market day; you’ll find checkpoints along the way without end.

Walk a circle around the Caolin Market, and you’ll see the blood and tears of the poor drained away.

This was the true portrayal of the old society’s Caolin Market.

In January 1928, after Mao Zedong led the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army to capture Suichuan, he eliminated the five tax barriers set up by the Suichuan Pacification Corps along the 35-kilometer stretch from Huang’ao to Caolin. He also held a mass meeting at the Wanshou Palace in the market to announce the Party’s policy toward industrial and commercial merchants, thereby transforming a dilapidated, gentry- and landlord-monopolized market into a new, revolutionary red market that supported economic and trade activities. During the revolutionary struggle at Jinggangshan, the Caolin Market provided the Jinggangshan military and civilians with many much-needed supplies such as cotton, medicinal herbs, salt, and cash, which were in short supply in the base area. Mao Zedong once highly praised the prosperity of the Caolin Market in his article “The Struggle in Jinggangshan,” noting that “on market days at Caolin (a market held at noon every three days), as many as 20,000 people would gather—something never seen before.”

Further reading:

· Sixth batch of Jiangxi Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units