Shanguai Revolutionary Site 单拐革命旧址

About Shanguai Revolutionary Site

Shanguai Revolutionary Site (单拐革命旧址) is a group of wartime Communist headquarters buildings in Shanguai Village (单拐村), Shuangmiao Township (双庙乡), in the southeast of Qingfeng County (清丰县), Puyang (濮阳), Henan. It is one of two parts of the nationally protected Hebei-Shandong-Henan (Ji-Lu-Yu, 冀鲁豫) Border Region Revolutionary Base Site.

The village takes its name from the Shan (单) family, who settled here in the Ming dynasty and were later replaced by a Chen (陈) family from Hongtong County (洪洞县), Shanxi. After the Eighth Route Army's Ji-Lu-Yu Military Region took all of Qingfeng County at the end of August 1944, it decided to move its command forward. Chen Ping (陈平), a Party member at home in the village, wrote proposing Shanguai, and his father Chen Duzhi (陈笃之), once a member of the Beiyang government's parliament, gave up his own house and his distillery and talked the clan into handing over its ancestral hall. The Ji-Lu-Yu Sub-bureau and the military-region headquarters moved in that September. In March 1945 Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), acting secretary of the Party's Northern Bureau (北方局), arrived with the bureau and worked here for three months; Huang Jing (黄敬), Song Renqiong (宋任穷) and Yang Yong (杨勇) also worked in the village, which became known as the "Red Capital of the Central Plains" (中原红都).

In September 1945 the military region set up a military-industry department and its No. 1 Arsenal (兵工一厂) in the Chen Ancestral Hall. With no drawings and only a few furnaces, bellows and hand tools, the technician Gai Liang (盖亮) took apart a captured Japanese Type 92 infantry gun, and in April 1946 the arsenal test-fired a 70 mm infantry gun described as the first artillery piece in the army's arms-industry history. The original is in the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution; a replica stands in the village.

The houses are mostly plain single-storey brick-and-timber buildings with sloping tiled roofs and few gatehouses, and many rooms of the memorial were village homes until it was set up in 2004. The site became a Henan provincial protected site in 1986 and a national one in 2006, a National Patriotic Education Demonstration Base in 2005 and a National Red Tourism Classic Scenic Area in 2012; the village was named to China's first batch of traditional villages the same year.

What to look for

• Chen Ancestral Hall (陈氏祠堂), built in 1851 with two courtyards, where the arsenal's machine shop stood; holes cut for the machinery remain in its pillars
• Replica of the Gai Liang 70 mm infantry gun, labelled 200 kg with a 3,500 m range
• Deng Xiaoping's former residence (邓小平旧居), one of 23 leaders' former homes in the village, with floor bricks worn smooth
• A pair of stones shaped like lying horses at the mouth of the lane to Deng's residence, where he is said to have mounted his horse
• A pomegranate tree planted by Song Renqiong
• The Ji-Lu-Yu Border Region war history exhibition hall (冀鲁豫边区抗战史实展馆), a 2,600 m² display added in 2016
• The Ji-Lu-Yu Military Region Memorial gate, with a name board written by Song Renqiong

Location & getting there

Getting to Shanguai Revolutionary Site

• Search for 单拐革命旧址 with 濮阳市 and 清丰县.