Hadapu Red Army Long March Memorial Hall 哈达铺红军长征纪念馆

About Hadapu Red Army Long March Memorial Hall

The Gansu United Front Work Department page, sourced to the memorial hall's own website, says Hadapu was originally called Hatachuan and took its name from a postal station set up there in the Ming dynasty. It places the town among the hills east of the Minshan at 2,280 m above sea level and describes it as a main producing area for the medicinal herb known as Mingui. From the late Qing and early Republic, it records, merchants from more than ten provinces set up trading houses and shops there for the medicinal trade, and the town is known as a home of angelica; it was named a Chinese Historical and Cultural Town in 2005 and a national model civilised village and town in 2015.

The page dates the institution's history to September 1978, when a preparatory group for the memorial was set up and Dangchang county assigned staff to look after the sites. In September 1981 the Gansu provincial government listed the Hadapu Red Army cadres' meeting site as a provincial protected cultural relic, and in October 1985 the county set up a Hadapu Red Army Long March site management office, renaming the institution at the end of that year after an inscribed hall name. On 27 March 2008, it records, the provincial cultural relics bureau made it one of the province's first batch of free-admission museums and memorial halls.

The institution covers 48,000 sq m in total with 7,549 sq m of floor area, of which the revolutionary sites account for 6,485 sq m of ground and 3,381 sq m of building, and the memorial hall for 41,515 sq m of ground and 4,168 sq m of building, with a single exhibition hall of 3,085 sq m. Five revolutionary sites are preserved: the Red First Front Army headquarters and Zhou Enlai's room at the Tongshan Society; Mao Zedong and Zhang Wentian's room at the Yihechang pharmacy; the post office; the Red Army cadres' meeting site at the Guandi temple; and the Red Second Front Army headquarters with the rooms of He Long, Ren Bishi, Liu Bocheng, Xiao Ke, Guan Xiangying and Li Da at the Zhang family compound. The page says the five sites and the Long March street together form the largest, most comprehensive and best-preserved revolutionary memorial site of the Red Army's Long March in Gansu.

The street it calls the first street of the Red Army's Long March preserves 1,209 original residential buildings of the Long March period, 3,391 rooms and 43,306.87 sq m in all, of which 274 buildings and 842 rooms fall inside the protected area, and the collection holds more than 400 revolutionary relics. The page lists the designations: a national patriotism education demonstration base and a field-teaching site of the China Yan'an Cadre Institute, the five sites as Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level, the scenic area as one of the national hundred classic red-tourism sites, and the Long March street as reaching the last 16 of the China Historical and Cultural Street selection.

A Xinhua report of 24 May 2022 by Lang Bingbing gives the town a second description, as a small place in the north-west corner of Dangchang County historically known for its produce and busy market, with shopfronts along the street and a dry-port position that still draws traders in grain, oil and medicinal herbs, and records the name the Long March gave it, the filling station. It quotes the hall's deputy director saying that in September 1935 the Red Army rested and resupplied at Hadapu, recovered its fighting strength and took the strategic decision to make the Shaanxi-Gansu revolutionary base its destination, and it records the hall's inclusion in the national list of classic red-tourism scenic areas in 2016 and the opening of the Lanyu railway in 2017.

What to look for

• The five preserved revolutionary sites: the Red First Front Army headquarters and Zhou Enlai's room at the Tongshan Society, Mao Zedong and Zhang Wentian's room at the Yihechang pharmacy, the post office, the Red Army cadres' meeting site at the Guandi temple, and the Red Second Front Army headquarters at the Zhang family compound
• The Long March street, with 1,209 original residential buildings of the period and 274 buildings inside the protected area
• The exhibition hall, 3,085 sq m in all, in an institution covering 48,000 sq m

Location & getting there

Getting to Hadapu Red Army Long March Memorial Hall

Confirm the venue or campus, reservation channel and exhibition calendar. A museum name may cover more than one building.

• Search for 哈达铺红军长征纪念馆 with 陇南市 and 宕昌县.