On September 5, 1966, the
CCP Central Committee and
State Council issued a notice to organize representatives of students and workers from colleges and secondary schools outside Beijing to visit Beijing and learn about the
Cultural Revolution. Transportation and living subsidies were paid for by the state treasury. No tickets were required for bus and boat rides, and meals and accommodation were free of charge. Kent Wong, in a 2021 memoir, recalled that anyone could obtain a free ride by claiming to be a Red Guard, since they had no identity cards and "[no] conductor dared question anyone’s Red Guard status". Many people used the opportunity for
red tourism and visited historical revolutionary sites. 1.6 million Red Guards had passed through
Guangzhou by the end of 1966, where Mao had lectured at the
Peasant Movement Training Institute twenty years earlier. Official post–Cultural Revolutionary histories note that about 1000 Red Guards from China proper (
Sichuan and
Beijing) even managed to enter distant
Tibet. Tibetan visitors stopped arriving by mid-November 1966, partly because of difficulties caused by the oncoming winter and partly because of a new policy discouraging Han students from traveling to ethnic minority areas. Dormitories in all schools, government agencies and factories were vacated to set up reception stations. At the same time, students from all over the country traveled to Beijing, and Red Guards in Beijing traveled outside the city to agitate the situation. Red Guards in various places supported each other, setting up liaison stations, attacking party and government organs, hunting down
capitalist roaders, and destroying the
Four Olds. Over time, the movement evolved from having Beijing as its single destination, and expanded to other places such as
Nanjing,
Shanghai,
Chengdu,
Wuhan,
Guangzhou, and
Changsha. Some workers and cadres left their posts to participate, and many people took the opportunity to visit relatives and friends and to travel. It triggered a nationwide spike in traffic: long-distance buses, inland ships, ocean ships, and trains were overloaded. Train carriages with a capacity of around 100 people were loaded with 200-300 people. Coffee tables, luggage racks, seats, and aisles were crowded with passengers. There were even people in the restrooms and on the roofs of train cars. The overcrowding caused some to avoid public transport in favor of walking directly to their destination. Red Guards flocked to the
Jinggang Mountains, an important revolutionary site known as the birthplace of the
Chinese Red Army, and the number of people reached 100,000 at its peak. The closing time of the Jinggangshan Revolution Museum was postponed to 23:30. There were nearly 1,000 cooks in the 17 reception stations under its jurisdiction, and more than 1 million Red Guards were received, costing more than 2.5 million yuan. ==End==