The former site of the Eighth Route Army
(ERA) Xi'an Office lies at No 1 Qixian Zhuang (manors for seven virtuous
persons), Beixin
Street (a new street in the north), Xiwu Road (the
fifth road in the west), Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province. It faces south and
has 10 rooms. It has been rebuilt as the Memorial Museum of the Eighth Route Army (ERA) Xi'an
Office.
The second KMT (Kuomintang)-CCP cooperation
came into being after the peaceful settlement of the Xi'an Incident in 1936. To
make their deliberations over matters about the resistance against the Japanese
aggression more convenient, the CPC (the Communist Party of China) established
the Red Army Liaison Office.
After the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945)
broke out, the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (1927-1937) was
reorganized into the Eighth Army of the National Revolutionary Army. In
September 1937, the Red Army liaison Office was renamed the Eighth Route Army
(ERA) Xi'an Office. Its main tasks were to disseminate Anti-Japanese National
United Front policies, as well as expand them, organize the resistance against
Japanese invaders for national salvation, escort the patriotic Progressive Youth
to Yan'an to cultivate and enlarge the revolutionary force and, at the same
time, purchase and transport materials to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border
region and front, in support of the Anti-Japanese War. Numerous leaders of the
CPC, such as Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, Wu Yuzhang, and many
others, once came here to give instructions. Many foreign friends, like Henry
Norman Bethune, 1890-1939; Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis, 1910-1942, an Indian
doctor who spent the last 10 years of his life in China working with the
Communist Party; Agnes Smedley, 1890-1950, a US journalist and writer who wrote
books about China's revolution, including The Great Road -- the biography
of Marshal Zhu De -- also lived and worked here for some time.
The Eighth Route Army (ERA) Xi'an Office is
a legal office settled in the provinces under the KMT's control. In September
1946, Chiang Kaishek started a full-scale civil war and the office was moved
from Xi'an to
Yan'an.