Former Site of the Military Affairs Commission of the Guangdong-Guangxi District Committee of the CPC, Presided Over by Comrade Zhou Enlai

Former Site of the Military Affairs Commission of the Guangdong-Guangxi District Committee of the CPC, Presided Over by Comrade Zhou Enlai

The former site of the Military Affairs Commission of the Guangdong-Guangxi District Committee of the CPC, presided over by Comrade Zhou Enlai, is a cultural relic protection unit of Guangdong Province and a classic red tourism destination.

The former site of the Military Affairs Commission of the Guangdong District Committee of the CPC is located on the second floor at 190 Wanfu Road. For a brief period from May 1926 to April 1927, it served as the office of the Military Affairs Commission of the CPC Guangdong District Committee and as the residence of Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao. In 1926, Comrade Zhou Enlai led the Communist Party special branch of the Huangpu Military Academy and the National Revolutionary Army, dispatching Communist Party members to work in the military academy and army.

This building was constructed in 1922 and was owned by the real estate developer Jianantang. The ground floor housed the Xihua Bank and was built with a concrete structure. The second floor was leased by the Military Affairs Commission of the CPC Guangdong District Committee at the time. Upon entering the iron gate to the second floor, you reach the hall, which served as the meeting room where the commission frequently held meetings. To the left of the hall is the office of the commission, where several desks and hand-cranked telephones remain in their original state, offering a glimpse into the working environment of Nie Rongzhen, Huang Jinhui, and others. Along the street side of the hall, there is a set of Western-style sofas, flanked by several rattan-backed chairs and tea tables. This area functioned as the reception room, where Commission Secretary Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao often received guests. Xiang Jingyu, Li Fuchun, and Cai Chang were frequent visitors, and Huangpu Military Academy faculty and students such as Hu Gongmian, Song Xilian, and Chen Hengqiao also came to call on Zhou. The space where Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao worked and lived is a long, narrow room to the west of the hall, furnished simply with a Western-style double bed, a square table, several chairs, and an office desk near the window, beside which stands a rattan bookshelf filled with various books and periodicals. There are also two small rooms to the east of the hall, serving as the dormitories of Nie Rongzhen, Huang Jinhui, Ma Zhi, Zhu Kai, and others.

In the autumn of 1926, after Zhou Enlai left for the Northern Expedition, the commission was managed by Huang Jinhui, who continued operations here. On the eve of the Kuomintang-Communist split on April 15, 1927, the commission evacuated the site and continued its secret operations underground until the failure of the Great Revolution. The commission made active contributions to the armed forces development in Guangdong at that time. The exterior of the former site remains well-preserved to this day.

To commemorate the proletarian revolutionary spirit of Premier Zhou and other revolutionary predecessors, the site was designated as a provincial-level cultural relic protection unit in 1979 for preservation.

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Further Reading:

· Second Batch of Cultural Relic Protection Units of Guangdong Province