by Xinhua writer Zhao Wei

    SHANGHAI, June 30 (Xinhua) -- Blue bricks, black tiles and European-style carvings -- all the trappings of a standard colonial home in 1920s in Shanghai.

    When Chen Yi, later to be the first mayor of Shanghai in the People's Republic of China, conquered the city as the head of the Communist forces in May 1949, he found the house surrounded by farmland.

    For Chen, the building was of particular importance: it had housed the July 1921 meeting of first 13 national delegates of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

    Sixty years on, it is a museum to commemorate the birth of the Party and the starting point of the New China and, eventually, the world's third largest economy.

    The museum is now enveloped in the lights of the fashionable and up-market Xintiandi (New World) shopping and entertainment district.

    The cradle of China's socialist system is surrounded by the "capitalist decadence" that its founders would have disdained.

    BIRTHPLACE OF NEW CHINA

    The CPC is now the world's largest ruling party with more than 70 million members, but just 13 people representing about 50 members in total from all over China met at the home of Li Hanjun, in Shanghai on July 23, 1921. They included Mao Zedong, the first paramount leader of the New China 28 years later.

    Inside the 18-sq-m hall where the meeting was held, the historic setting is recreated: a large round table surrounded by about a dozen round stools; on the table are a glass vase, ceramic teacups, an ashtray and a match-box.

    In the next room, a first edition of the Chinese-version Manifesto of the Communist Party, and the original English typewriter of Li Dazhao, one of the first CPC leaders, are exhibited.

    In September 1952 the site was opened to Party members. In 1968, it was opened to non-Party-member visitors and has since served as an "education base" for millions.

    Most of the visitors were workers, peasant farmers, students and soldiers in the Cultural Revolution years. They regarded grey clothing and plain living as standards of socialism.

    "The narrow perspective on socialism and capitalism has modified as China has changed significantly. After 30 years of opening-up and reform, the number of visitors from abroad has increased 10-fold. The site provides a window to understand China now and the CPC," says Ni Xingxiang, president of the Memorial for the Site of the First National Congress of the CPC.

    The site received 350,000 visitors from home and abroad in 2008,or 1,000 on average each day, says Ni.

    So far this year, more than 80,000 individuals, including 8,000from abroad, visited the museum. Forty years ago, the norm was group visits arranged by CPC organizations.

    Escorted by his son, Zhang Youshan, a 73-year-old retired worker, is visiting the museum after traveling from the northeastern city of Fushun.

    Zhang Hui, the son, says his father joined the Party just before retirement, but had long wished to see the Party's birthplace.

    Zhao Ling, 60, a native of Shanghai, was "resettled" to a farm in Anhui Province during the Cultural Revolution. After she retired from a bank in the eastern province, she returned to Shanghai to live with her two daughters. As a youth, she visited the Party birthplace as a compulsory "political assignment", but this visit, accompanying her daughters, is for pleasure. She looks forward to window-shopping at neighboring Xintiandi.

    "It's a place for young people to spend money. It's exciting," she says.

    Tang Runxin, a college student from Hong Kong, is on an occupational training course in Shanghai. She appreciates the architectural conservation.

    She will visit Xintiandi too. "It has investment from Hong Kong. Some of my schoolmates from Hong Kong wish to find a good job there."

    Qiu Yeming, born at the start of China's opening drive in 1978,has worked as a guide at the museum since graduating from the broadcasting department of Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2004. He is the most senior guide and an instructor for about 60 young volunteers.

    Wax statues, which reproduce the scene of the CPC's first national meeting, are the favorite exhibits, especially for young people, says Qiu.

    College students, some are in pursuit of Party membership, want to know how the police learned of the Communist meeting, then illegal, being held there and the relationships between leaders at the time, Qiu says.

    Some young people born in the 1980s and teenagers born in the 1990s see Mao Zedong a great person with a "mysterious air," says Qiu.

    "Being a guide is not easy. We not only need to learn the commentary by heart, but also to accumulate useful information and knowledge."

    Qiu's job has few perks, so it is difficult for him and his wife, who often complains, to withstand the temptations outside the museum.

    "But I hold my ground and my parents are proud of me," he says.

    He works part-time as a wedding MC. "Our museum president knows about my part-time job, and does not oppose it."

    A NEW WORLD

    Xintiandi, literally "new world", embodies "temptation" in Qiu's eyes.

    The complex houses up-market bars, cafes, teahouses, restaurants of Chinese, French, American, German, English and Japanese styles, art galleries, and luxury fashion shops, all private businesses. A bottle of foreign alcohol can cost more than the monthly income of the average local resident. The talk revolves around stock markets in and outside China.

    It's similar to the Shanghai of the 1930s, which was seen as full of "corrupt capitalist elements".

    Ye Ruyan, marketing manager with Brown Sugar, a live music bar at the north end of Xintiandi, says the owners wanted the bar at the heart of new Shanghai's fashionable center. "Usually our bar receives 300 visitors at least on Friday or Saturday nights," Ye reckons.

    Zhou Yongping, assistant to the president of Shui On Group, the Hong Kong investor in Xintiandi, says services at and around the complex yielded 1.36 billion yuan (199 million U.S. dollars) in taxes to the municipal authorities last year.

    Ni Xingxiang sees no contradictions between this maturing culture of commerce and the founding goals of the CPC. "The purpose of generations of CPC leaders is to enable people to live better lives."

    (Xinhua reporters Wu Yu and Xu Xiaoqing contributed to this story)