China Guide
Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan Island
Peasant Movement Training Institute
Opening time: Tues– Sun 9am–4.30pm
Price: ¥5
Address: Zhongshan Lu
Thanks to the subsequent career of its dean, Mao Zedong, Guangzhou's Peasant Movement Training Institute is the city's most frequented revolutionary site. It still looks like the Confucian Academy it was for six hundred years, before Peng Pai, a "rich peasant" from Guangdong, established the Institute in 1924 with Guomindang permission and 38 students. The school lasted just over two years, with Mao, Zhou Enlai and Peng Pai taking the final classes in August 1926, eight months before the Communist and Guomindang alliance ended violently in Shanghai. There's actually little to see; most poignant are the photographs of alumni who failed to survive the Shanghai Massacre and the subsequent 1927 Communist Uprising in Guangzhou.