Visiting the revolutionary caves of Yenan, 1966

The cave-house at the tool at Phoenix Mountain where Comrade Mao at one time lived.

Excerpted from an article by Ruth Lake, a New Zealander visiting Yenan (now translated as Yan'an), People's Republic of China, in 1966 (China Reconstructs Magazine):

The caves are one of the greatest surprises in Yenan, We have seen pictures of these hillsides pierced with a thousand eyes, the rows of arched caves extending along ledged terraces to house colleges, cadres. hospital and armymen, up the deep hilly reaches from the Yen River. They were easy enough to add to for new arrivals: “Yes," says one who was there, "you can dig out a cave pretty quickly. Especially if you have to sleep in the open till you have done it! And later on we plastered them as well as whitewashing them. . ."

In fact, whitewashed inside in simple oblong domes more beautiful than any decoration, they recall, oddly enough, the shape of the Ming Tombs! But there the likeness ends. These caves are whiter far and open to the day. To stand in their cool shelter and look out on green trees brilliant in the sunshine or across the valley to hills framed in blue sky beyond is an inspiration to the living, not the dead. They are modest and close to life. the most perfect reminder of the jianku pusu style that puts simplicity before showiness, man and his work before things. Light and clean, they are big enough to take a bed or hang a small washbasin stand, perhaps a bookcase, a desk and a chair or two in comfort. Sometimes they have plain wooden doors between set in archways a couple of metres thick. Sometimes there are connecting passages or air raid shelters behind, leading to different exits. Some hospital caves had tiled floors instead of earth; and sometimes ingenious armymen installed a heating system that ran in under the floors from outside, It is not till we see some that need repair, because the damp has trickled through and loosened the domed ceilings, that we realize living there was not so simple as it looks.

We visit Chairman Mao's first cave headquarters on Phoenix Mountain opposite the old pagoda where he worked from January 1937 till Japanese bombing proved this open site too dangerous and the Central Committee moved up the valley to the more sheltered reaches of Yangchialing. The old road is being widened by sun bronzed workmen as we pass; they are strapping mountainy youths who actually run races with their barrows of earth — when they are not resting as lightheartedly in the shade! Others are also repairing caves when we get to the old army headquarters at Wangchiaping and to the beautiful grounds of the Date Garden, final seat of the Central Committee. These caves have very pleasant whitewashed entrances; plain doors in natural wood for the archways filled in with latticed designs, light yellow against the white rice paper that takes the place of glass in winter. All these places surprise us by the beauty of their trees. from laden pears (the peaches are already over) to tall locusts bursting into new brilliant leaf: under them, here and there, fluted roof traditional-style pavilions built by armymen give the gardens, to our eyes. a very unmilitary look. The little water course in the Date Garden, built to irrigate 1.200 mou of crops, is still called the Channel of Happiness.

The Yenan Spirit

Yes, Yenan was primarily a great revolutionary base. but its keynotes are still production and construction. And it is not military construction that imposes. The army's meeting hall at Wangchiaping, with its curved and graceful roof and lovely lines. is less imposing than the big purposeful stone structure for Party offices and library at Yangchialing, where the famous “Forum on Literature and Art" was held throughout May 1942. It is smaller than the solid stone congress hall where the historic Seventh Congress wound up with Chairman Mao’s short inspiring speech “The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains", which has probably been more widely studied in commune and factory than any other except "Serve the People”. Up the valley behind these massive buildings are the fields where Chairman Mao and other leaders worked with the people; the cadres of the Yenan government today still keep up that tradition. Above, on the terraced ground outside the caves. is the scene of the 1946 interview with Anna Louise Strong, where Chairman Mao explained how a third world war could be avoided and predicted that China would win her liberation war despite the new weapons massed against her: “The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the US reactionaries use to scare people." Nearly twenty years later it is clearer to all that the bomb in the hands of the imperialists is primarily a weapon of blackmail and that the US today is not more, but less strong and less respected because of it.

The Yenan spirit of self-reliance and creative production, of daring to start from scratch with the scientific approach that overcomes all difficulties, is new China’s strong tradition. It grows in the countrywide movement for office workers, cadres and students to work part time in production; in the socialization of education through part-work part-study schools that integrate theory with practice and remove the barrier between intellectuals and workers; in the recognition that man must struggle consciously to prevent the emergence of new exploiting classes; that the economic base for production is made up not only of tools and machines but also of the material force of man‘s political consciousness that controls them and must free itself from the old forces of habit.

It continues in the established People's Army practice of officers serving part time among the men and army units working in production. The army is still closely integrated with the working people. just as the people in their militia organizations are armed with the spirit of their army. It would be hard to find a factory or a commune in China that is not studying Chairman Mao‘s thinking and “learning from the PLA". Again and again it is possible to recognize demobilized PLA men in city offices or factories or institutes, by their quiet, even gentle manner, a certain inner firmness and the fact that they are extra good and patient listeners. At any rate, our guesses on this basis have proved right in big production enterprises we have visited: in a Chengchow Dyeworks, a Canton Fertilizer Works, a Sian Enamelware Factory, for instance, we were not surprised to find that the people we talked to were old PLA production workers who had helped start the plants from scratch, getting the knowhow Yenan fashion as they built.

And so the word YENAN stands for all this, for the policies that in social practice mobilized a people to drive out imperialism and build a socialist country standing resolutely against exploitation. against armed or economic invasion everywhere and for world peace.

Chairman Mao speaking at the Military and Political College during the war against Japanese militarism.