Former Site of the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party School of the CPC

Former Site of the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party School of the CPC

The former site of the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party School of the CPC is a cultural relic protection unit of Sichuan Province and a classic red tourism destination.

The former site of the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party School of the CPC is located at No. 83 Shuyuan Street, Nuojiang Town, Tongjiang County, a historic and cultural city in Sichuan Province. The school building was originally constructed in the 13th year of the Daoguang reign (1833) during the Qing Dynasty by Magistrate Wu Laiyu using surplus funds from charitable donations and disaster relief efforts, serving as the examination hall of the Donggao Academy in Tongjiang County. In February 1933, after the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the CPC was established in Tongjiang County, it immediately founded the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party School here, which operated for two years.

The former site features a post-and-lintel timber-framed structure with single-eave hip-and-gable roofs, consisting of one story above ground and one basement level, covered with small blue tiles and plain ridge tiles. The "former site" faces southeast and is situated northwest, covering a land area of 386 square meters with a usable area of 660 square meters. It is 28.7 meters wide across seven bays, with a wooden staircase in the western end bay leading to the second floor, featuring railings and spanning 6.7 meters in width. The eastern end bay is 4 meters wide, while the central, side, and secondary bays are all 4.5 meters wide. The entire structure extends 9 meters in depth across two bays. There is a front porch 2.6 meters wide, and the second-floor porch also has railings. The building stands 18.3 meters tall, with the ground floor being 4.2 meters high and the street-facing platform base 4.9 meters high. The porch columns are square brick-clad wooden pillars measuring 400×400 mm, decorated with cabbage-shaped motifs near the top, and the column bases are of the Sumeru style, while the remaining columns are wooden. The doors and windows are wooden, with straight lattice on the ground floor, pointed lintels (circular on the street side), and panel doors with circular lintels. The main entrance door on the ground floor is a double-panel door, while the second floor has panel doors and square straight-lattice windows.

The stone wall of the street-facing platform base features an intaglio inscription of four large regular-script characters, each 1.6 meters square, reading "Redden All Sichuan" (赤化全川) arranged horizontally from left to right. The strokes are 20 cm deep and 20–30 cm wide. On the right side, there is a vertical inscription in regular script that reads "Made by the General Political Department of the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army" and the date "1933."

Significance

The former site of the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party School of the CPC, originally the examination hall of the Donggao Academy in Tongjiang County, has served as a place for nurturing talent since its inception. Over the past nearly two hundred years, it has not only witnessed the history of old cultural and educational development in Tongjiang but also been the birthplace of new cultural education in the region, cultivating numerous outstanding talents across different eras. Especially between 1933 and 1935, as the only school in the Sichuan-Shaanxi Soviet Area, it made remarkable historical contributions to training party leaders and reserve cadres, spreading Marxism-Leninism, and consolidating and developing party construction.

The former site of the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party School of the CPC is one of the key attractions along Sichuan Province’s "Red Army Cultural Tourism" route. The building features a unique architectural style, blending characteristics of both traditional Chinese and Western architecture, and is one of the iconic structures of Tongjiang’s "Red Army City."

Protection boundary: 10 meters beyond the site’s occupied area.

Construction control zone: 15 meters beyond the protection boundary.