The smell of gunpowder fills the air as a band of young communists in ragged uniforms darts between sandbags. Deafening explosions ring out in the mid-day heat. China’s stern Communist leaders don’t usually take a light-hearted approach to armed insurrections. But they make an exception for the twice daily re-enactment of a famous battle performed for tourists in a dusty northwestern city to boost fealty to the Party.
Nine decades after the founding of the Communist Party China’s booming “red tourism” industry is transforming once-forgotten backwaters. Tour buses today clogged the streets of Yan’an, a gritty city of two million in northwestern Shaanxi province, which Mao Zedong and the Party made their base for 13 years before conquering the rest of China in 1949. For 150 yuan ($23) a head, tourists can watch “The Defense of Yan’an” unfold, the retelling for a modern audience of a crucial 1947 battle to protect the Communist stronghold from the Nationalists, who eventually fled in exile to Taiwan. For an additional 15 yuan, lucky early comers can dress as soldiers and take part themselves, playing out a 30-minute scenario complete with imitation rifles, a tank that bursts into flames and a model bomber that wobbles unsteadily down a wire. Naturally, the heroic Red Army soldiers end up storming the enemy lines and the surrendering Nationalists are marched out in front of a grandstand crammed with hundreds of cheering viewers.
China’s heaving and polluted capital Beijing is getting in on the act too, hoping to instill Party values in people via film and even food, a fun alternative to state media hectoring. The communist propaganda movie “Beginning of the Great Revival” is being heavily promoted at cinemas across the city, featuring a star cast of mainland Chinese and Hong Kong actors. The film has not been without controversy. Theatres have been told to push back summer Hollywood blockbusters to make way for it, and Internet users have been blocked from rating the film, with censors apparently worried about any negative feedback it may generate.
Those with a more culinary bent can air their appreciation for the Party by eating at a “red” themed restaurant. Red Classics, which serves hearty northeastern cuisine, heavy on stews and starch, is decorated with posters from the Cultural Revolution. Its waitresses dress as Red Guards. For many of China’s older generation, “red tourism” invokes a nostalgia for their youth, before 30 years of landmark economic reforms catapulted China out of isolation to eventually become the world’s second largest economy.
