In the spring of 1935, today's Guizhou province was at the center of China's revolution. Red Army soldiers, led by the Communist Party of China, poured almost all their strength into the life-and-death struggles that would shape the nation's destiny.
During the four months the Central Red Army spent in the province during the Long March (1934-36), a pivotal and thrilling chapter unfolded, paving the way for its ultimate success.
Today, in Guizhou, people remember this history not only through lessons, but also through experience. As one of the key construction areas in the nationwide Long March National Cultural Park project launched in 2019, Guizhou has rich historical and cultural resources.
From true-to-life battlefields to immersive stagecraft, technology is turning the history of the Long March from something merely read about into a lived experience.
One striking example is the Guizhou Long March Culture Digital Art Museum. Known as the "Red Banderole" for its red ribbon-like appearance when seen from the sky, the digital experience center for the Long March has become many tourists' first stop in Guiyang, Guizhou.
Less than a 10-minute drive from Guiyang Longdongbao International Airport, the venue welcomes crowds of people, sometimes more than 20,000 in a single day.
Since its trial opening in October 2023, the museum has received more than 2.4 million visits as of July this year, about 60 percent of which are by young people.
"More than nine decades on, how do people today, especially the young, connect with this part of history? Our goal is to create cultural expressions for this era, not simply to digitize history, but to reconnect modern people with the Long March through digital technology, spatial art and immersive storytelling," says Wang Zhi'ou, the general director and designer of the museum.
