Guangzhou Uprising Memorial Hall

This guide to the Guangzhou Uprising Memorial Hall opens before dawn on December the eleventh, nineteen twenty-seven, when Zhang Tailei, a twenty-nine-year-old rising figure in the young Chinese Communist Party, led twenty thousand armed workers through this gate to storm the city's police headquarters. You'll hear how the compound became the seat of the Guangzhou Soviet within a day, modeled on the Paris Commune, its founders issuing eight urgent proclamations promising land, an eight-hour day and arms for the people. The gate, the courtyard and the old jail behind it survive largely as they were then.