Hongyuan county turns Long March 'sea of death' into tourism hub and yak industry center

Once known as the "sea of death" on the Red Army's Long March (1934-36), the Riganqiao marsh in Hongyuan county, Sichuan province, has become a popular tourism destination and a hub for the yak industry.

Hongyuan was established as a county in 1960, its name meaning "the great grassland the Red Army crossed". In July 1936, more than 10,000 soldiers from the Red Army's Second and Fourth Front Armies died crossing this marsh and its surrounding areas from hunger, cold, and illness.

In front of a monument marking the Red Army's crossing of the grassland, Gonpo Huaqing, executive vice-president of the county's Party School, told the story of graves marked with walking sticks. "Soldiers who survived buried their comrades in pits," he said. "And since no stones could be found for tombstones, they planted willow branches used as walking sticks in front of the fallen soldiers' graves, carved their names into the wood and hung their caps on the branches."

Chen Zhimin, head of the county's publicity department, said the "sea of death" has turned into a thriving land for industries.

Yaks, once an important means of transport and food for the Red Army while crossing the grassland, now support a major industry in Hongyuan. The locally based Western Yak Industry Group has an annual processing capacity of 100,000 metric tons of fresh yak milk and a production capacity of 14,000 tons of milk powder.

"Our goal of setting up operations here is to help drive rural vitalization," said Dong Jialiang, production general manager of Western Yak.

In 2025, the company ran 86 mobile milk collection stations across Hongyuan, purchasing 6,500 tons of fresh yak milk from more than 3,000 herder households and paying 45.5 million yuan ($6.8 million) in total, Dong said.

The "horseback economy" is another highlight of Hongyuan. "For years, we have been promoting the idea of 'traveling with music and touring the grasslands on horseback'," Chen said.

The county hosts major cultural tourism events every year, including music festivals, yak culture festivals, equestrian competitions, and mounted archery events. Official statistics show that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), Hongyuan received nearly 13 million visits and generated 10.6 billion yuan in tourism revenue.