Monday 23^rd June – Beijing – Shaoshan

• Meet your guide at 7:30am opposite the main entrance to Beijing West Station (North Square) to collect your tickets and have a brief introduction to what to expect on the tour.
• Take the G401 high-speed train from Beijing West Station to Chairman Mao’s hometown of Shaoshan in Hunan province (9:15am-5:04pm).
• Check in our local hotel and have a local dinner at Mao family restaurant, owned by Mrs. Yang. Local star, shrewd entrepreneur who has met the chairman in her youth! This is the best place to meet her, so we will keep our eyes open.
• Night-time exploration of Shaoshan including the old train station, Mao’s youth park and the Martyrs’ memorial tower.
• Overnight in Shaoshan.

Tuesday 24^th June – Shaoshan

Morning

• Breakfast in our hotel.
• Then we begin to extensively explore the main parts of Shaoshan, visiting Chairman Mao’s ancestral home which is usually busy with Chinese ‘red tourists’ dressing up in Red Army uniforms paying their respects to the Chairman.
• Lunch of Hunan noodles.

Afternoon

• Walking tour of Shaoshan including the central Mao Zedong Square with his statue, Nan’an School where Mao started his education, the Mao Zedong Memorial Museum and the Relic Hall of Mao Zedong, filled with personal artefacts and pictures from his early years.
• Local Hunanese dinner, including Mao’s favourite dish of hong shao rou, braised pork.
• OPTIONAL – Spectate the amazing performance Mao Zedong of China, which involves hundreds of dancers, singers and acrobats depicting highlights of the life of the Chairman and the history of China, from Colonialism to the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. The show takes about an hour and a half and is an incredible display of technology and directing. It has been playing every night for over 2000 times (About 240 RMB).
• Overnight in Shaoshan.

Wednesday 25^th June – Shaoshan – Luohe

• After breakfast we head out of town to explore the Hunan countryside.
• Climb over a small hill to visit the Dripping Water Cave where Mao held semi-secret meetings during the Cultural Revolution
• Lunch of Changsha Rice Noodles.
• Take the high-speed rail to Luohe city in Henan province (1:12pm – 6:08pm).
• On arrival we check into our hotel in Luohe city centre. This is a small city, almost never visited by foreigners, showing a side of urban China far away from the cities most travellers see.
• Go for barbecue and beers in the bustling night market in the city centre.
• Overnight in Luohe.

Thursday 26^th June – Luohe – Nanjiecun

Morning

• Morning transfer in our private car to Nanjiecun Collective Village (45 minutes).
• Receive a welcome and an orientation from our local guide for the next two days.
• Our first stop is the Museum of Nanjiecun, which explains its rise from a People’s Commune in the Mao Era, through a brief experiment with decollectivisation in the early 1980s before recollectivising as it remains today. This great little museum explains the importance of collective society in Nanjiecun and the success they had in combining industrialization and agriculture to rise to fame all throughout China.
• Lunch at the collective canteen and rubbing shoulders with the locals.

Afternoon

• Walk past the local school, where residents pay no tuition fees and drive out to the edge of the collective where there is a very impressive botanical gardens, but also a ‘Walk through Chinese revolutionary history’ which has models of Mao’s birthplace in Shaoshan, the site of the Zunyi conference, the Zaoyuan cave house and Baota pagoda in Yan’an and the Xibaipo reovolutionary site. This site attracts school groups from all around the province and beyond to learn about China’s communist history.
• In the late afternoon, we will wander around the East is Red Square, where the statue of Chairman Mao stands under a rainbow in the middle of huge portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, one of the only places in China where we can see the open veneration of Mao’s Marxist-Leninist roots.
• We meet up with a local Communist Party cadre for a discussion about Nanjiecun and Maoism in history and China today, with the opportunity to ask as many questions as we can!
• Post-discussion feast and drinks at Nanjiecun’s only all-you-can-eat-all-you-can-drink korean barbeque and hotpot, overnight in Nanjiecun.

Friday 27^th June – Nanjiecun

Morning

• Look around the Nanjiecun fields and collective agricultural works. The local guide will show us the irrigation, mechanisation and collective agricultural projects that have been promoted to the extent that Nanjiecun today is a model industrial village. Learn about how the farmer’s life in a collective is different to the family plots in other parts of China.
• Visit a local person’s flat. All housing is provided for free, including furniture and all utility bills, to local residents, and complete with a portrait of Mao that hangs in the lounge. Here we can chat with the local resident about what life in the collective is like.
• Walk along the specially built walkway, or ‘red corridor’, which was purposely built for students to walk from their home to the school and thus sheltering them from the rain or harsh sun and also remind them of Nanjiecun’s main objectives and it’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist roots through a series of posters on the sides.
• Lunch in the collective canteen.

Afternoon

• After lunch we head to the rest home where rooms are provided free to retired residents of the collective and chat with some of the people there about their lives in Nanjiecun.
• Visit the local mosque, built for the roughly 10% of the residents who are Hui Muslim.
• Visit the noodle factory, famed throughout China and a good example of an industrial project which was given the capital and support to become a national brand, take some noodles away with you for lunch or save them for the train!
• Stop by the shop where you can get your fill of Mao memorabilia and books about Nanjiecun collective.
• We head out to Chaoyangmen gate, decorated with revolutionary carvings, before going to an outdoor barbecue for dinner and drinks.
• Overnight in Nanjiecun.

Saturday 28^th June – Nanjiecun – Beijing

Morning

• Last morning walk around the square to listen to the revolutionary music playing throughout the village and soaking in the atmosphere at the red-orange dawn of a new day.
• Transfer back to Luohe and board the G336 high-speed rail to Beijing (1:55pm-5:58pm) where you will have enough time to read in any books or brochures you acquired or discuss the ideas of collectivism with your fellow group members.
• Lunch of Nanjiecun noodles on the train!

Late Afternoon

• On arrival we first check into the central Zhong Gu Hotel and freshen up.
• Go out for dinner and drinks in China´s capital and political centre and prepare for the last day which will round off the political and societal experience of this special week.
• Overnight in Beijing.

Sunday 29^th June – Beijing

• Our journey nears its end with a visit Mao’s final resting place, his mausoleum in the centre of Tiananmen Square.
• Visit the Museum of Revolutionary History where we can see an overview of Mao’s life and the Chinese Revolution, as well as seeing how it is interpreted by the CCP today.
• Catch the Beijing metro over to the Military Museum. Here we get a closer look at the Chinese point of view of the Korean War – the War to Resist America and Defend Korea. From the captured UN military equipment to Mao’s own personal sacrifices in the war, in which his son Mao Anying was killed.
• Late lunch of famous Beijing Duck.
• Tour concludes. YPT can arrange further transport, recommendations for Beijing or beyond, as well as connect with tours to North Korea.
• This tour can be combined with the consecutive DPRK Political Interest tour including a free night in Beijing. Reach out to us for further details.

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