SUNSET ON
THE RIVER YAN
YAN RIVER, YAN'AN, CHINA, 1981
Yan'an is where Mao Zedong & Co. holed up during World War II. It was memorialized by Edgar Snow in RED STAR OVER CHINA, and became the exemplar for the Yan'an Way (or Yenan Way).
More recently, Jonathan Mirsky has written a piece both illuminating the shining star Mao appeared to some, especially in the days of Yan'an, and revealing something of the realities of the place and time. "What initially bowled over many followers," Mirsky writes, "was the illusion they had seen something pure." Sidney Rittenberg told Mirsky, "Even the fierce winds and bleak landscape of Yan'an seemed unsullied to me." But according to information from a retired general, "[S]ometimes they buried people alive, or left them to slow death. The simplest method of getting rid of people was to tie them together and make them walk into a lake or river, where they would drown."
More Yan'an:
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