Jiangxi is not attractive by nature, and is made worse by crushingly hot summers and freezing cold winters.

But that is not stopping the area from trying to lure domestic and overseas travelers, in a boisterous campaign to promote its glorious "Red" history. It is where China's Red Army was born in 1927, and China's first interim Soviet-style government was established in 1931.

In Lingdou County, the Communist Party of China ordered its troops to avoid its then-mighty enemy, Kuomingtang troops headed by Chiang Kai Shek. In a strategic decision, the Communists fled on what was to become known as the glorious "Long March." Eventually, Mao Zedong prevailed and drove Chiang and his forces to Taiwan.

In "Red" Jinggangshan Mountain last week, trekking the steps of the late Chairman Mao and numerous revolutionary admirals -- including Zhu De and Peng Dehuai -- I was bewildered as I encountered a stone statue of a handsome man on a horse. The sculpture stands not far from Mao, his second wife Madame He Zizhen, and many other famous historical figures. I knocked hard at my skull because I could not recognize who it was, though I seriously believe I was not a second-caliber history student in college.

Who was this man?

Tour guide Xiao Li unraveled the secret. The man depicted is Wang Zuo, a wise and courageous figure who was once the Jinggangshan Mountain boss, commanding hundreds of men armed with self-made rifles and cannons. Locals seem to have a fantastic and positive memory of Wang, lauding him in romantic Robinhood-like tales for robbing the extremely wealthy, or gunning down warriors and distributing the loot to the poor and needy. His fate took a sudden turn when Mao traveled to the area in 1929.

After a few encounters, Mao succeeded in persuading Wang to surrender and merge with his troops. Wang joined the Communist Party, and was made a division commander. The merger greatly augmented the Red Army, giving birth to China's first Workers-Peasants Revolutionary Base in Jinggangshan Mountain. All local officials in Jiangxi could forever boast that their land was the "cradle of People's Republic of China."

Indeed, it was to become the first powerhouse of China's Communist Party, and serve as the launch pad for a completely new state.

According to Li, a plenary session of senior Party officials convened in Moscow in 1932 directed Mao and his men to cleanse the Red Army and strip it of undisciplined, hooligan-type leaders. Mao obviously refused to remove a man who had opened his arms to him and offered all he had, the tour guide said.

Later, however, Mao went outside the mountain area on another mission. That's when fate and others intervened, executing the beloved Wang. He was only 34 years old when he died.

It must have been the coldest winter for Wang and his followers.

Mao admitted on several occasions after the Republic was set up in 1949 that Wang was wrongly killed, the guide explained to us, speaking in sad and somber tones. A woman traveler wiped her red eyes with a tissue.

The day when I visited the approximately 100-square-metre rustbelt tractor plant in the outskirts of Nanchang City, capital of Jiangxi Province, the air was steamy, and the land seemed to be smoking. Throngs of visitors braved the heat to be there, because Mr. Deng Xiaoping, the great pioneer, the thinker, and a beloved leader of this nation, had labored there with his wife, Zhuo Lin, from 1969-72.

That was when Deng experienced his so-called second "Down." In his life, Deng had three downs and three ups, before becoming China's paramount leader in 1978 and changing the world by kicking off the modernization of China.

Considered the "second biggest capitalist within the Party" (the biggest was then state President Liu Shaoqi), Deng was stripped of all his official titles, including Vice Premier of the State Council, and was sent to Jiangxi to work at that tractor plant, and only allowed limited freedoms.

Confined, watched day and night, Deng was ordered to "reform himself through labor." Once, while already in his 60s, he fainted as a result of fatigue and weakening health. Worse, hardly any workers there dared to speak with Deng. In extreme loneliness, the former leader walked to and fro thousands of times in the grassy wild backyard of the plant literally carving out a historical road that is now called the "Xiaoping Trek."

Last week, I walked the 30-metre-or-so long road, and suddenly got a clue why Deng became a great leader the world over. He had too much time to think about things to do to improve China's path ahead.

Nowadays, though Jiangxi has no alluring scenery, it is economically booming. Workers who were once Deng's colleagues said that they wouldn't want to see people confined for their beliefs instead of criminal deeds.

Never again.

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