Zunyi is a bit exceptional. One hundred and sixty kilometers away from Guiyang, capital of southwest China's Guizhou Province, the city is richer and has better farm houses.

In the city of Zunyi, old-time tobacco tycoons and tea merchants as well as warlords left behind some grand residences, which still stand today. Zunyi has more culture and even a foreign influence.

The Catholic missionaries built beautiful buildings there. A church marked as a site once used by the Red Army as its headquarters is preserved particularly well with tall windows and Chinese flying eaves. Today, it is part of the Red Army History Museum.

With lowered gray and white, white and red colored Chinese buildings on the other three sides, a lovely Chinese-Western styled courtyard welcomes visitors. Tall fir trees stretch out fluffy branches, shrubs of Chinese ilex line the yard in straight order. Exhibits from the time of the Red Army, the Long March and the battles cover the walls in glass cases or on stands.

A section of the iron chains from the Dadu River catch our attention. The hard-won victory over the Luding Bridge has already become a household story in China.

The bridge was critical for the Red Army to conquer in order to break the encirclement by its enemy - the Kuomintang Army - during the Long March (1934-35).

However, when the Red Army arrived at the bridge, the planks over the iron chains were taken away and the naked chains brushed with oil.

Facing the muzzles of the enemies' rifles, Red Army soldiers crawled over the bridge by clinging desperately onto the slippery and rickety chains with the torrential Dadu River a hundred yards below. They braved the shower of bullets to carry out their duty and finally succeeded in taking the Luding Bridge. Many were hit, others died hanging onto the bridge and even more were swallowed up by the merciless Dadu.

Even today, people take off their hats or bow when arriving at the river. Do you know what they are doing? They are saluting a group of people who displayed human bravery at the highest level.

Today's generation have difficulties understanding what kind of strength it took to accomplish such heroic deeds.

Harrison E Salisbury in his "The Untold Story - Long March" found the answer. It was the just cause of liberating all those people from poverty and oppression that spurred the Red Army's spirit.

Even today, the idealism of that old time still strikes a chord in my heart and I believe in many other people's hearts as well.

The courtyard museum emits a sense of tranquility, but the history it reveals is a mix of heroism and tragedy, strategy and miscalculation, loyalty and treachery, destruction and creation.

Two hours had passed, we dragged ourselves out of the Zunyi Meeting and Red Army Museum, afraid that the taxi driver's well of patience had run dry.

Seeing him in sweet sleep, we kicked ourselves hard. However, it was time to go home. And so, Zunyi becomes yet another on our list of places to re-visit.

(China Daily August 25, 2004)