Hongyan Revolutionary History Museum (Red Crag Village)

The Hongyan Revolutionary History Museum, also known as Red Crag Village, occupies the former wartime office compound of the Chinese Communist Party's Eighth Route Army in Yuzhong District, used between 1939 and 1946 while Chongqing served as the Nationalist government's wartime capital during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the subsequent early phase of the Chinese Civil War. Zhou Enlai led the CCP's Southern Bureau delegation from this compound, maintaining a tense United Front with the Nationalist government while coordinating Communist Party activity across Nationalist-controlled territory; the site also hosted meetings during the 1945 Chongqing Talks between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek. The complex preserves the original two-story brick-and-timber office buildings, Zhou Enlai's personal quarters, a telegraph and communications room, and a small printing office, laid out around a hillside compound that provided some concealment from Nationalist surveillance. Exhibits document the Southern Bureau's clandestine operations, personal artifacts belonging to Zhou Enlai and other CCP leaders, and photographs and documents relating to United Front diplomacy during the wartime alliance against Japan. Curatorial presentation follows a chronological narrative from the Eighth Route Army office's establishment through the 1945 negotiations and the CCP delegation's 1946 departure as civil war resumed. The buildings were restored and opened to the public as a memorial museum in the 1950s, with periodic renovation since to conserve the original brick structures, and the site today functions as a major museum of CCP revolutionary history within Chongqing's broader wartime capital heritage.