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The site of the headquarters of the Bayi (August 1) Uprising lies at Xiamachi, Zhongshan Road in Nanchang City of Jiangxi Province. It is a five-storeyed gray brick-and-wood building constructed in 1922, and used to be the Grand Hostel of Jiangxi Province. The planar shape of the building is like the Chinese character , which is a square with a patio in the middle.
On April 12, 1927, Chiang Kai-shek rose up against the revolution. He slaughtered the members of Communist Party and the masses supporting the revolution without restraint. To save the revolution, the Communist Party dispatched Zhou Enlai to Nanchang City to organize the Front Line Committee for the Armed Uprising in Nanchang City. To prepare for the uprising secretly, they rented all the rooms in the Grand Hostel in Jiangxi Province for the Front Line Committee and the headquarters of the uprising. It was here that Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Ye Ting, He Long and Liu Bocheng discussed the plan of the uprising, and drafted the Declaration of Bayi Revolution, the General Propaganda Outline for the Bayi Revolution and the General Propaganda Outline for the Land Reform. They declared war at 2.A.M on August the first, which wiped out over 10,000 soldiers of the defending troops in Nanchang City. They then occupied the city. The Nanchang City Uprising was the start of the Revolutionary War carried through by the worker-farmer armed force, which was founded by the Communist Party. Later on, August 1 became the birthday of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, which was renamed as the People’s Liberation Army later.
The rooms in the site such as the Meeting Hall of the Headquarters, the offices of Zhou Enlai and Lin Boqu are restored to the original appearance. The Memorial of Bayi Uprising was also built to exhibit the documents and photos of the uprising.
(Source: chinaculture.org)
