Zunyi site keeps the past alive

Rare are the places that make you feel like you're surrounded by history. Rarer still are the ones that make history feel immediate and relevant.

I experienced both sensations on Sunday during a visit to the site of China's pivotal Zunyi Conference in Guizhou province, which memorializes a meeting the Communist Party of China held during the brutal Long March.

Of the tens of thousands of Red Army troops that began the march - a strategic retreat from Kuomintang forces during the Chinese Civil War - only a small fraction survived. The conference, held in the middle of the march in January 1935, marked a decisive change in leadership, paving the way for Mao Zedong to take command of the Party and its armed forces. This, of course, proved successful, and 14 years later the People's Republic of China was born.