Yangtaishan Forest Park

This guide to Yangtaishan Forest Park in Shenzhen goes back to 1942, when Japan's occupation of Hong Kong trapped hundreds of China's most celebrated writers, painters and scholars behind checkpoints that wanted them silenced. It follows the Dongjiang Column, Communist guerrillas based in Guangdong, as they mounted a six-month rescue through forested mountain country like this, moving people disguised as refugees past patrols with the help of locals who knew every trail. Among those they were guiding to safety were figures like the novelist Mao Dun, the painter He Xiangning and the journalist Zou Taofen. Look at the dense canopy climbing these slopes and consider how it once served as cover for an operation no one was supposed to notice.