An obscure town in central France, better-known for its caramelised almonds, has become the unlikely destination for an influx of visitors from China thanks to the long-forgotten role it once played in the formation of the country’s ruling Communist Party.
Situated about 100km south of Paris, Montargis has until now relied on its renown as the birthplace of the praline to promote its anaemic holiday trade — but the explosion of Chinese tourism to Europe has suddenly opened up new prospects.
For it was in the improbable setting of the town’s mediaeval streets, gardens and canals that a number of expatriate Chinese intellectuals gathered in the late 1910s and 1920s — forming the relationships and fomenting the ideas that would eventually bear fruit in the communist victory of 1949.
“It may sound strange, but Montargis features in all the history books,” says Peiwen Wang, a Chinese-born doctor who runs the China-Montargis Friendship Society. “This place played a crucial part in the development of the new China.”
Unknown until recently to all but a handful of historians, the tale of how a French provincial backwater helped trigger the revolution goes back to 1902 when Li Shizeng — son of an imperial official in Beijing — came to France in search of experience and education.
Possibly because of its railway links to the capital, he happened to choose an agricultural college near Montargis as his base — and over the next two decades built up a network of contacts among the local community.
Meanwhile, the “work-and-study” programme was developing in the new Chinese republic, under which bright young men and women were sent to Europe to learn modern ways of thinking and scientific techniques. Under Li’s auspices about 300 came to Montargis, where most worked at a nearby rubber factory.
Among the first to arrive in 1919 was a group of students from Hunan province — friends of the young Mao Zedong, and like him, already drawn to Socialist ideas. Many would later enter the Communist Party pantheon: Cai Hesen, Xiang Jinyu, Li Fuchun, Chen Yi and Cai Ciang.
The men and women met in the Durzy gardens behind the town hall, where a wall was used for their propaganda posters. It was here in July 1920 that Cai Hesen — the leading theoretician — set out a programme for the “salvation of China”, which the next month he urged in a letter to Mao.
“It is known as the letter of August 13, and it proposed the creation of a Chinese Communist Party. Mao signalled his approval and the following year the party was set up,” says Wang.
Cai Hesen and his wife Xiang Jinyu died later at the hands of the Chinese Nationalists, but others of the Montargis group went on to greater fame. Chen Yi became an army commander and later foreign minister; Li Fuchun was the party’s economic theorist; and Li Weihan took part in the Long March and became vice-president of the Senate.
Zhou Enlai, prime minister from 1949 until his death and the most prominent Chinese leader after Mao, visited Montargis several times from his workplace near Paris — and it is now established that Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping also spent time there in 1922.
At the Hutchinson rubber factory there are records of a certain “Teng Hi Hien” with a note adding that he was a troublemaker not to be re-employed. Deng in later life recalled to French visitors his time at Montargis, including an episode when he was stopped by police for riding a bicycle without lights.
Today few traces remain of this bizarre historical connection, but the local authorities have done their best with a “Chinese tourist route” that leads past various landmarks: the school where many students lived in dormitories, the public baths where they washed and the gardens where they walked and talked.
Here visitors can see a contemporary photograph of young Chinese posing beneath the trees: 20 men and women in neat attire, faces earnest with the gravity of things to come.
The sight of Chinese groups manoeuvring through the narrow streets of Montargis is now a common one. But so far most of these are from semi-official delegations, and with 50 000 Chinese tourists arriving every month in Paris the town is hoping to attract more day-trippers by coach or train from the capital.
“We think the potential is huge,” says Wang. “Coming here the Chinese learn not just about French culture — but a little of their own history as well.” — AFP