China Guide
Sichuan and Chongqing
Hongyan
Opening time: Daily 8.30am–5pm
Price: ¥18
Address: About 4km west of the peninsula (bus #104 from Cangbai Lu, or any west-bound bus from the Stilwell Museum)
HONGYAN, a scattering of European brick buildings set among pretty gardens, is where China's wartime government set up in 1938 – wisely remote from the easily targeted peninsula. Mao was absent most of the time, but he visited under US auspices in August 1945 to negotiate a postwar coalition government with the Nationalists. Chiang's insistence that the Red Army disband led to nothing but a lukewarm agreement, however, described by Mao as mere "words on paper", and nobody was surprised at the subsequent resumption of civil war.
In truth, the Communists had little influence in national affairs during the course of the war, and so Hongyan's focus is on ideology rather than action: signs pick out the room used as the CCP propaganda department, the bed Mao slept in, buildings inhabited by Communist luminaries, without once mentioning the reasons behind their importance. As long as you're after atmosphere rather than information, however, it's interesting enough – and the heroic waxworks here of Mao and Zhou Enlai (who spent far more time here than Mao) are worth the entrance fee.