The "Yenan Period," 1935-1947, was the decisive decade of the Chinese Revolution.*[…]

Liu Bao-zhei had helped create the Yenan spirit; he had joined the Eighth Route Army in 1937, leaving his home in Henan Province to fight the Japanese in the North. We met Liu on a state farm nestled in the Nanniwan Valley, near Yenan. His face, rough and creased, reflected many years of labor in the harsh climate of northern Shanxi Province. Liu wore a towel tied about his head in the traditional peasant fashion of the area.

During this period the headquarters of the Communist Party and the revolutionary government were in Yenan, in northern Shanxi Province.