CPC100: Ma willing to be something enlightening at Chanipi

“I want to be an excellent member of the Communist Party of China (CPC),” said Ma Yijiang, a girl born in the 1990s. Ma works as a tour guide at Chanipi in south Yunnan’s Mengzi city, where the first CPC Yunnan Provincial Congress was held.

Ma majored in broadcasting and hosting art at college, and she is a native of Mengzi, Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture. In the Yi ethnic language, Chanipi means an unnoticeable place.

Following her graduation, Ma has been a tour guide at the Chanipi congress site for 4 years, and now she is trying her best to be qualified as a CPC member.

At first, Ma just told the visitors about revolutionaries and their stories according to the scripts in her hands. As time went by, she got to know more about the happenings at the Chanipi thatch hut, emotionally attached to the revolutionary predecessors.

Among the 17 delegates who attended the provincial congress on October 13, 1928, Wu Cheng impressed Ma Yijiang the most.

As a pioneer of Yunnan’s communist movement, youth movement and women's movement, Wu was the first female CPC member in the province, and together with her husband Li Guozhu, she spread the Marxist ideas and joined the revolutionary movements.

Due to the betrayal by a renegade, the revolutionary couple was arrested in the winter of 1930. Wu was pregnant before entering the prison, but for the ideas she held so dear, she had no regard for life or death. Wu died a heroine at the age of 30.

Ma said she was once depressed for not being able to memorizing the scripts. “Inspired by the martyrs, I managed to overcome the difficulties.” Now Ma is at ease in telling the martyrs’ revolutionary stories in accordance with the needs of different audiences. Her telling and interpretation won praises from the visitors.

“If I had the chance for a time travel, I would tell Wu Cheng that she’s my icon for good.” Ma Yijiang said in reviewing the Party’s history she has become increasingly brave and firm in her faith. And this is also what she learned from Wu Cheng and other delegates present at the first CPC Yunnan Provincial Congress in Chanipi.

For the coming CPC centenary on July 1, the Chanipi red site is now visited by more, and Ma has got a stronger sense of mission. “In serving the visitors, I want to be a better woman and I’m willing to be something enlightening at Chanipi,” said Ma.

Reporting by Liu Ziyu (Yunnan Daily); Trans-editing by Wang Shixue