This is a wooden quadrangle courtyard built in 1912 in Weng’an County of Guzhou Province that integrates Tibetan style into local dwellings. The courtyard is open and bright, enclosed with brick barrel walls, otherwise known as fireproof walls, also used for the prevention of burglary. There are 5 main halls alone, 3 lower halls and 3 wing rooms with a stone-inlaid patio in the middle. It was originally the private house of a local businessman. The Houchang Conference, reputed as “the prelude to a great turning point”, was held here more than 80 years ago.

On December 31, 1934, the Central Red Army arrived at Houchang Village along the Long March. The historic Houchang Conference was held by the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee at a private residence of Houchang Village. Within a month after the Red Army soldiers entered Guizhou for a month, Houchang Conference was held after the Liping Conference and before the Zunyi Conference.

The meeting lasted from the afternoon of December 31, 1934 to the early morning of January 1, 1935. It reiterated the spirit of the Liping Conference, denied the “Left” adventurist leader’s wrong opinion of returning to western Hunan Province and agreed with Comrade Mao Zedong’s right suggestion of crossing the river north to create a new revolution base; The conference issued the Decision Made by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee on the New Action Policy after Crossing the River, which fundamentally ended the “three-person group” ’s absolute control of military command, and emphasized that military command must be controlled by the collective leadership of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee; It put forward the idea of establishing new base areas in Sichuan and Guizhou with confidence in winning the war, which helped achieve the Red Army’s strategic shift from passive defense to active defense; It changed the situation that the Red Army had been confined to simply fighting since the beginning of the Long March, and reiterated the three major tasks that the Red Army had consistently advocated; It formulated and released the Instructions on the Disintegration of the White Army in Guizhou, the first document aimed to disintegrate warlords in Guizhou since the Red Army entered Guizhou. It laid a solid foundation for the successful convening of the Zunyi Conference, in terms of ideology, politics, military needs, and time.

According to Zhou Wei, a docent in the Houchang Conference Site Management Office, a military blanket here was donated by an aged woman named Huang Pingzhen from Houchang Town when the office collected the Red Army’s cultural relics during the Long March in 2004. Huang Taiwu, Huang ’s father, directed the way for the Red Army soldiers stationed in Longxi Town, Yuqing County when they passed through the northern Guizhou during the Long March. Then, the Red Army commander gave Huang Taiwu, who was ragged then, his only blanket that could keep out the cold, which has become Huang’s heirloom. The Red Army bag, a tan briefcase made of pure leather, was left by a Red Army soldier when he cooked a bowl of porridge with miscellaneous grains for the wounded soldier in Song Guoan’s house after the soldier finding the door ajar.

The venue of the Houchang Conference was the private residence of Song Zesheng (also named Song Xiao’an) . The 6 characters of “The Site of the Houchang Conference” above the gate were inscribed by Zhang Aiping, the former Minister of National Defense.