Guangzhou Martyrs' Memorial Garden

This guide to the Guangzhou Martyrs' Memorial Garden follows Zhang Tailei, a twenty-nine-year-old revolutionary, on the night of December 12, 1927, hours after he chaired the council that proclaimed Guangzhou China's first Communist-run soviet. With fifteen thousand government troops closing in against a couple thousand rifles his side could arm, Zhang leaves one last meeting to rally what is left of the defense as his car heads into the dark streets. The guide then walks the walled cemetery built decades later to gather the uprising's dead, its entrance inscribed by Premier Zhou Enlai, past tombs of student soldiers, Soviet advisers and Korean revolutionaries buried far from home.