Yan'an marked the end of the Communists' massive 6000 mile-long retreat from the Nationalist "Bandit Elimination Campaigns." This "Long March" (left) took the Communists from semi-tropical Jiangxi province to the harsh, arid highlands of Shaanxi province. Two years after the Long March, Japan advanced into China and captured territory as far south as Hong Kong. By the early 1940s, China was divided into three separate territories, as illustrated by the map below.

An extremely poor region with a harsh, dry climate, Yan'an was the virtual opposite of China's cosmopolitan coastal cities. Contrast Shanghai's architecture with the cave-dwellings of Yan'an which were home to the CCP leadership for ten years.

In 1936, when the American journalist Edgar Snow first visited Yan'an, he found the Communists haggard and lean after the deprivations of the Long March. Photographs of the CCP leadership taken by Snow, clockwise from the left: Zhou Enlai Mao Zedong Deng Xiaoping

Some leftist urban intellectuals were drawn to Yan'an to experience rural China and join the Communist resistance against Japan. These urban intellectuals included quite a few women, including the author Ding Ling and the Shanghai film actress Jiang Qing (who became Mao's wife soon after her arrival in Yan'an). Determined to control all political discourse in Yan'an, Mao showed little tolerance for the discussion of feminist issues or any other questions he deemed "tangential" to the revolution. In 1942 Mao launched a purge to silence intellectuals such as Ding Ling and Wang Shiwei.

 Foreign observers were a common sight in Yan'an. Among the more well-known American observers was Edgar Snow, whose book Red Star Over China is still considered a classic (though idealistic) account of Yan'an. The observations of Yan'an written by the US State Department agent John Service prompted the US government to send an official official observation team to Yan'an in 1944. Called the "Dixie Mission," these eighteen men under Colonel David Barrett were charged with exploring the military capabilities of the Communist Red Army. Although Barrett belittled the Red Army's guerilla tactics, he concluded that resistance against Japan would improve if the US provided military training and equipment to the CCP.