BAISE is a pleasant, small city set on the junction of the Dengbi and You rivers 220km northwest of Nanning on the Nanning-Yunnan rail line. Historically, Baise's fame dates back to 1929: no Chinese government could then seriously lay claim to this remote region, but Deng Xiaoping found thousands of willing converts amongst Baise's Zhuang population when he arrived in September with a CCP mandate to spread the Communist message, and on December 11 he declared the formation of the You Jiang Soviet here in what became known as the Baise Uprising . Over-ambitious attempts to raise an army and secure the province against the Nationalists, however, saw the movement falter rapidly, though survivors eventually managed to join up with Mao's Jiangxi Soviet during the Long March in 1934.

 

The city's Uprising museum (daily 9am-noon & 3-5pm; ¥3) is just west of the river on Jiefang Jie, housed in an old Confucian academy - check out the ceramic eave friezes of court and street scenes, and murals of rigged ships in the river, painted unusually with linear perspective. Though there's a great diorama of the town as it was in 1929, the exhibits themselves are inaccessible, a dense collection of photos, weapons, documents and paintings - anything, in fact, remotely touched by the events of the time. It's more worthwhile to head east over the bridge, which overlooks a sampan boatyard and timber depot with cranes shifting cargoes onto barges, and climb the broad stairway to the Baise Memorial , a stumpy, sharp-tipped spire surrounded by heroic sculptures and an ornamental garden, the latter offering fine views over the city and rivers. Two minutes beyond the memorial, the excellent You River Minorities Museum (¥3) provides insight into Zhuang settlement of the region: there are heavy stone tools and photos of cave paintings, including a strikingly fierce creature with dragon's head and cloven paws; bronze drums and an almost comical equestrian statue; textiles featuring loomed cloth and intricate embroideries and tie-dyeing; all rounded out by photos.