By He Jianwei

At the northern foot of the Gele Mountains in Chongqing stand two well-known prisons: Baigongguan and Zhazidong. In these two prisons, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) jailed and killed more than 300 Communist revolutionaries before fleeing to Taiwan in 1949.

Today, the prisons have been turned into a museum for communist martyrs who were executed and brutalized by the KMT in Chongqing.

The construction of several KMT prisons was supervised by the Sino-American Cooperation Organization (SACO), secretly established in 1943 and through which the US helped to train and dispatch KMT secret agents.

The Zhazidong prison was the site of a coal mine until SACO chose neighboring Baigongguan prison as their headquarters and converted the mine into a prison.

Zhazidong could hold 300 prisoners at most, with 16 wards for men and 2 for women. There were also offices, torture chambers and accommodations for prison guards.

On November 27, 1949, less than two months after Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China in Tiananmen Square, SACO agents set fire to the male prison wards at Zhazidong, killing all but 15 who managed to break through a section of wall.

"Most of the rooms at Zhaziong were filled with photos and information to memorialize the men and women who had been formerly imprisoned, many of whom were killed in the November 27 fire," Mei Ting, from Jiangsu, who visited the prisons with her other this February, said.

Several exhibits also displayed songs and poems that some of the prisoners had written while at Zhazidong. All along the walls were different KMT slogans, some encouraging the prisoners to change their beliefs.

Though parts of the compound destroyed in the fire have been reconstructed for educational purposes, a dotted line still marks the hole through which a few survivors escaped.

"I was familiar with thestories here through novels and movies, but it's the first time for me to see the instruments of torture and I was really hit by the reality of this prison," she said.

Getting there: Take Bus 210 from Shapingba to Baigongguan and Zhazidong
Open: 8am-5pm
Cost: 40 yuan per person


                                                   [ Source: Beijing Today]

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