Teacher Huang Hongmei lectures students at the China Executive Leadership Academy in Jinggangshan, Jiangxi province. (Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily)
Cadres and business leaders are gaining firsthand experience of the harsh lives endured by early members of the CPC, as Cao Yin reports from Jinggangshan, Jiangxi.
Editor's note: Ahead of the Communist Party of China's 19th National Congress, which will start on Oct 18, China Daily is publishing a series of reports focusing on the work of the country's major Party schools, where cadres study the history of the CPC, its ideology, aims and methods of governance. More reports will be published in the days to come. [Special coverage]
Han Yan often wears fatigues when she teaches politics at a military college in Anhui province, but last month she donned the uniform of the Red Army, the predecessor of the People's Liberation Army, for the first time.
"I think I look more like a soldier in the uniform than my classmates," she said proudly, but breathlessly as she leaned on a stick to walk along a steep hillside path.
Han didn't wear the uniform to play a part in a movie. Instead, she was attending a course at the China Executive Leadership Academy in Jinggangshan, Jiangxi province, which is renowned as the Red Army's birthplace.
During the course, the students gain firsthand experience of the harsh lives endured by China's revolutionary generation by visiting the places they lived and fought, and by wearing similar clothing, such as uniforms and bamboo hats, and carrying the same equipment, even guns.
The path in Jinggangshan was regularly used by Mao Zedong and his comrades in the late 1920s.
"I never thought the path would be so hard to walk," said Li Changlei, as he rested. "Now, I understand how difficult it was for the troops led by Mao and Zhu De to cover this path almost 90 years ago. Those soldiers must have been very strong, because they carried more than 150,000 kilograms of rice with them."
Both Han and Li had read about the path in history books, but their visit to Jinggangshan allowed them to experience the reality of walking on it.
"The feeling of standing on the path while wearing the uniform isn't easy to describe; it's special and so different from reading about it in books or watching movies of the period," Li said.
Mei Liming, the academy's executive vice-president, said the path has been one of the most popular aspects of the course since the academy opened 12 years ago. "Combining the province's historical resources with training is a major way of developing 'red education' - that is, education related to understanding the history and theories of the Communist Party of China," he said.
Another student, Hao Rong, vice-president of the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, said, "I have attended many different kinds of training before, but learning about the Party's past by visiting their revolutionary places is wonderful." He believed the experience would not only help him understand the Party better, but also contribute to his work.
Deeper understanding
The leadership academy began providing training for officials, business leaders and military officers on March 20, 2005. So far, 83,386 people have taken courses there.
