MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE 

THE BEDROOM IN MAO ZEDONG'S CAVE RESIDENCE IN YAN'AN, CHINA

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the final stage of which was a campaign fought north to south by the People's Liberation Army. This was a victory years in the making.

As we have seen with more recent guerrilla movements, weak governments which cannot control their peripheries can be threatened by rebel groups which seize power in the borderlands or "badlands."

So it was with the Chinese Communists, who escaped the "bandit extermination campaigns" waged by the KMT, or Nationalist, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek by making the daring, desperate, Long March (1934-1935), which brought the remnants of Mao Zedong's forces to Yan'an, China.

There a residence could properly be a home in a cave carved into the hillside, and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leadership shared a compound of such houses.