No. 76 Xingye Street, Shanghai, looks like an ordinary residence. However, with thousands of people visiting it everyday to pay tribute, the cradle of the Communist Party of China (CPC), where the Party's first national conference was held 80 years ago, has its own stateliness touching every visitor.
The building is now a museum that houses exhibits left from the revolutionary era. Items like stained pictures and brochures and patched cotton-padded clothes each tell a story, which thread the history of CPC.
In 1921, 13 delegates that represented 53 Party members were present at the first national conference in this building. Like a sparkle in the darkness, a revolutionary fire soon spread every corner of China.
Standing in front of the five-star national flag, 39 soldiers, who joined the campaign to resist US aggression and aid Korea, sighed with emotion, "This was where the Communist Party enkindled the first torch, guiding the oppressed Chinese to fight for their own rights."
It is the solemn significance that attracts Pan Weimin to pilgrimage to the place on every birthday of the Party, July 1.
As a worker with the Shanghai Paper-Making Mechanical Plant, Pan started to collect clippings about the Party history, when he was 25 years old. For over 20 years, the materials he gathered were compiled into some 220,000 documents.
Over the years of China's economic take-off, the austere and simple brick-building has never been ignored. It has stood to greet school-aged children taking oaths before they wear red scarves, and even weddings with hand-in-hand couples.
A month before the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, renovation work of the building was finished, expanding the floor space to 2,316 square meters, some 2.5 times larger than before.
The expansion was made under the pressure of a heavy tourist flow. The building can receive some 1,500 tourists every day. However, the daily tourist flow has exceeded 3,000 since April, reaching a maximum number of some 10,000.
The renovated conference site will continue to witness the Party's progress, people's recollection of the past and their promise to the new century.
(People’s Daily 05/30/2001)
