In the International Herald Tribune, Howard French reports from Yenan:
Marxist ideology is said to have little relevance in today’s China. But all over this city, people can be overheard trading admiring stories about the heroism of Mao’s army or celebrating the spirit of Yenan, as much a name for that 12-year period as for the city itself.
Whether they lived through it, or more likely know of it through popular culture, many Chinese still recall the era fondly as a time of great idealism, of selfless volunteers arriving by the tens of thousands to join the movement, and of Mao’s supposedly enlightened leadership before such well-known and monumental tragedies as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which killed tens of millions of people.
