New book relates city origins of the CPC
The book “CPC Was Born Here — The Investigation Report on the Memorial Site of the First National Congress of CPC and Other Revolutionary Site in Shanghai”
Shanghai Archives is to launch a book about the origins of the Communist Party of China during the Shanghai Book Fair on August 13.
“CPC Was Born Here — The Investigation Report on the Memorial Site of the First National Congress of CPC and Other Revolutionary Site in Shanghai” includes many precious documents and historical photos.
The 120,000-word book includes on-site investigations, interviews, memoirs and archive photos.
As the birthplace of the Party, Shanghai launched a project in 2016 to explore the history, development and achievements of the CPC in the city.
Much of the material in the book is published for the first time.
It includes research into sites that accommodated delegates to the first National Congress of the CPC in 1921, such as the Bowen Girls School and the Yuyangli neighborhood in downtown Huangpu District.
The congress was initially held in Shanghai on July 23 but was interrupted by police. It then moved to a boat on Nanhu Lake in Jiaxing, a city in neighboring Zhejiang Province.
The book includes interviews, symposium records and memoirs of delegates such as Li Da and Bao Huiseng, wife of a former resident at the memorial site of the congress along with other inhabitants and witnesses.
Li was interviewed around 1949 for the establishment of the Shanghai Revolutionary History Memorial and the documents are collected at the archives.
Other memoirs of key early Party members, such as Chen Wangdao, translator of the first full Chinese edition of The Communist Manifesto and first president of Fudan University after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, depict the early activities of the CPC in Shanghai.
The book shows for the first time the interior layouts and renovation reports on revolutionary memorial sites such as that of the first National Congress, the former residence of Chairman Mao Zedong, the former editorial department of periodical La Juenesse, also known as New Youth, and the former headquarters of the Youth League.
In 1960, the Shanghai government organized four teams to solicit and collect over 20,000 revolutionary artefacts. The book includes their reports and some of the exhibits.
Also published for the first time are 24 photographs of memorial sites such as the Fudeli neighborhood, one of a few underground sites that managed to escape police raids. It was there that the first Party constitution was drafted.
The site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1921
Baowen Girls School, where some of the delegates to the CPC's first congress were accommodated
The Fudeli neighborhood, where the CPC's second congress was held in 1922
