CHINA THEN & NOW: XI JINPING & CAVE HOUSES IN SHAANXI

CAVE HOUSES IN SHAANXI

&

THE MAKING OF

A CHINESE PRESIDENT

A CAVE HOUSE IN YAN'AN

SHAANXI PROVINCE, CHINA 1981

A CAVE HOUSE NEAR XI'AN

SHAANXI PROVINCE, CHINA 1981

Notice that the house is built below the level of the fields

In all the hoopla surrounding the visit to the U.S. last week of Chinese Vice-President (and President-Select, President-Presumptive) Xi Jinping, the story of the seven years he spent living in a cave house in Shaanxi was highlighted again and again.

The cave house in which Mao Zedong lived in Yan'an, in Shaanxi province, is to be found here.

MORE YAN'AN: THE LEADERSHIP CAVE HOUSE GATHERING ROOM

MORE YAN'AN

THE CAVE ROOM IN WHICH

THE LEADERSHIP OF THE

CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

MET IN THE YAN'AN PERIOD

AS PRESENTED IN 1981

Compare The First Party Congress

The Sixteenth Party Congress

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE: THE YAN'AN CAVE HOUSE

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE

THE BEDROOM IN MAO ZEDONG'S

CAVE RESIDENCE IN YAN'AN, CHINA

with a photograph of Chairman Mao on the wall

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 cave houses.

More CAVE HOUSES here