'Red tourism' site proves popular

Located in the middle of the bustling Xintiandi business district in Shanghai, the memorial of the first National Congress of the Communist Party of China has become one of the city's most-visited "red tourism" sites, those related to China's revolutionary past, receiving more than 5.7 million visitors in the past five years, according to official data from the memorial.

The site is where 13 Chinese delegates and two representatives from the Comintern convened a meeting in a traditional Shikumen-style house with stone-framed gates in July 1921.

The venue features an exhibition hall where visitors can view 1,168 historical relics, photographs and diagrams illustrating the founding history of the Party.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and the other six members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, visited the site in October 2017. It was their first trip outside Beijing after being elected at the First Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee.

Xi regarded the meeting room of the first CPC National Congress as Party members' spiritual home, and said no matter how far the Party has marched, the original road should not be forgotten.

"Led by the founding spirit, the memorial has always served as a center for historical research, and we are improving its relics collections, exhibitions and historical education to pass on the culture to generations," said Xue Feng, the curator of the memorial.

A total of 72 translated versions of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, including the first Chinese edition translated by Chen Wangdao, are to be found at the memorial.

Last year, the grandson of Li Hanjun－one of the founding members of the Party－donated to the memorial the marriage photo of Li and his wife, which was taken in 1923, and the notice of approval of joining the CPC belonging to Li's daughter.

"These cultural relics are essential for us to analyze and preserve the story of the Party. We plan to hold exhibitions and related activities to make full use of these valuable resources," said Xu Yungen, director of collections at the memorial.

According to Xu, the memorial has cooperated with other such sites, including the memorial for the site of the second and fourth National Congress of the CPC, to establish public history education platforms. An original interactive drama depicting the Party's development has also been created as an innovative experience of learning history.

"Further exploration on the subject has been carried out by one of the secretariats of the Party's spirit research center based at the memorial," said Zhang Yuhan, director of the exhibition research department at the memorial.

"Thanks to joint efforts with domestic and foreign experts in historical research, the founding history of the Party has been condensed into tens of books published in the past two decades, in a bid to facilitate international academic research," she said.

According to Zhang, seminars discussing the Party's spirit and history will be held by the memorial in July and an exhibition tour that started in January will be taken across the country by the end of this year.