On the stone-paved surface of the Yong'an Pass section of the ancient Xiang-Gui road, wind and rain have polished the flagstones to a shine.
The old road is very narrow, wide enough for only a single stretcher to pass.
In November 1934, the Red Army entered Guangxi from this point, and then fought the Battle of the Xiang River in the areas of Guanyang, Quanzhou and Xing'an in Guangxi, with the Central Red Army shrinking from more than 86,000 people at the start of the march to more than 30,000.
Guanyang County is the core site of the Xinxu blocking battle in the Battle of the Xiang River, and is also where Yong'an Pass, the first gateway through which the Central Red Army stepped into Guangxi on the Long March, is located.
More than 90 years later, on this land, red stories are still told again and again, and green industries are also growing in the mountains.
In 2025, Guanyang's gross domestic product reached 8.753 billion yuan, with an average annual growth of 4.7%, per capita disposable income of residents rose by an average of 6.0% annually, and per capita disposable income of rural residents rose by an average of 7.3% annually.
In the first three quarters of 2025, it received 3.8094 million tourist visits, up 13.5% year on year, with total tourism revenue of 3.738 billion yuan; per capita disposable income of residents reached 20,782 yuan, a nominal growth rate of 5.5%, ranking first in the city.
A county that was once a regional-level poverty-stricken county is now carving out its own path between red genes and industrial revitalization.
Recently, reporters went deep into several townships in Guanyang, visiting grassroots officials, business owners and farmers to explore the great changes in this mountainous county.
Reviving and passing on the red roots
In a display case at the Jiuhaijing Red Army Memorial Park, a cotton quilt kept for more than 90 years lies quietly on display.
In 1934, when the Red Army passed through Guanyang to cross the river, villager Zhai Shunxiu took down the door planks of his own home to build a bridge for the Red Army, jumped into the river in the cold winter to drive stakes and secure the bridge, and the Red Army gave him a cotton quilt in return.
Zhai Shunxiu treasured it for life and never used it.
Such stories are not isolated in Guanyang.
According to historical records, during the Battle of the Xiang River, the people of Guanyang rescued more than 100 Red Army officers and soldiers, about 30 of whom settled in Guanyang, and more than 40 of their descendants still live locally today.
But for a long time, these stories were almost buried.
Lü Hui, director of the Guanyang Red Army Long March Xiang River Battle Culture Protection and Inheritance Center, recalled to reporters that when he took part in collecting red historical materials in 2012, "the local area had only a roster of Red Army martyrs, but no clear burial sites for the martyrs and no formed martyrs' cemetery; a large number of heroes and martyrs lay in the mountains and fields, unknown to anyone."
Over the following decade or more, he went from village to village and household to household, verified historical materials, and identified the burial sites one by one.
In 2019, Guanyang County completed the last large-scale collection and centralized burial of Red Army remains.
Today, the memorial park has been rated a national 4A-level tourist attraction, 43 revolutionary sites across the county have been included in the premium routes of the Long March National Cultural Park, and the Yong'an Pass ancient road has also been listed as a trail of the Long March National Cultural Park.
According to Lü Hui, the memorial park can receive 800 to 1,200 people on a peak single day, and 20,000 to 30,000 primary and middle school students come each year for study tours.
Folk inheritance is also growing at the same time.
Jiang Shuming's farm is located in Paibujiang Village, not far from the Zhongshan battlefield site of the Xinxu blocking battle.
Zhongshan was the frontline position of the Xinxu blocking battle. At that time, Li Tianyou, commander of the 5th Division of the 3rd Army Corps of the Red Army, was only 20 years old, and most of his soldiers were teenagers.
What makes Jiang Shuming feel regretful is that even within Guanyang County, many people do not know that such a battle took place on Zhongshan.
This summer, Jiang Shuming and two Guanyang high school students jointly planned and staged the red landscape live-action drama "Remembering Zhongshan," based on red stories such as the site where Red Army martyrs died at Jiuhaijing, the Zhongshan blocking battle, and three generations of a family in Fengshujiao Village guarding the Red Army battle flag.
There was no professional theater, so the stage was set up beside the fields and ponds at the foot of the mountain. More than 40 villagers and students performed voluntarily, the oldest actor was 75 and the youngest were primary and middle school students, and all costumes and props were purchased at their own expense.
Jiang Shuming's main Douyin account, "Ziming Junge," has been operating for less than a year and already has more than 700,000 followers, with the full-media matrix totaling nearly one million.
However, although the hardware is increasingly complete, Lü Hui admitted frankly that tight management and protection funding remains the most core difficulty.
The center's most urgent wish is to build a standardized red study camp. At present, the memorial park can only carry out daytime study tours and lacks food and accommodation support. Many descendants of martyrs from Fujian, Jiangxi and Hunan make special trips to pay respects, but due to insufficient supporting facilities they can only return in a hurry.
"The state has special policy support, with up to 5 million yuan in support funds available, but due to local fiscal pressure, land approval procedures and other factors, the project is advancing relatively slowly."
Rice seeds, lingzhi and eels
To translate the red spirit into practice, an important path chosen by Guanyang County is to develop industries.
The noodle processing factory in Dongyang Village, Huangguan Town, is a frequently cited example.
This village, once a regional-level poverty-stricken village, built and put the factory into operation with the assistance of Guilin University of Technology. The village collective economic income increased from 30,000 yuan in 2015 to 300,000 yuan in 2025, the demonstration base's annual comprehensive benefit exceeds 6 million yuan, and it employs more than 150 villagers.
Noodles are only the starting point. Guanyang's greater industrial imagination still lies hidden in the fields and mountain forests.
Shi Weijun, a major grower in Liande Village, returned to the village in 2011. That year, Academician Yuan Longping took a liking to the good mountains, water and soil of Liande Village in Huangguan Town and set up a super rice high-yield research base here.
Shi Weijun had originally been doing engineering work outside, but when he heard the news he returned to the village. At first he planted more than ten mu of his own fields, then transferred some farmers' land, making up more than 40 mu.
Fifteen years later, his planting scale is now nearly 300 mu.
"Each mu yields about 1,500 jin of single-season rice, and ratoon rice about 300 to 400 jin," Shi Weijun told reporters, adding that seedling raising, transplanting, rotary tillage, harvesting and drying are now mostly mechanized.
Under his name there are now five rotary tillers of various sizes, and one each of a rice transplanter and a seedling-raising machine.
Despite mechanized operations, during the busy farming season Shi Weijun has to hire 20 to 30 workers each day, with male workers paid 100 to 120 yuan a day and female workers 80 yuan a day, which can help surrounding villagers increase their income through employment at their doorstep every year.
It is understood that the "Shennong Rice Expo Park" rice demonstration area, with Liande Village at its core, is planned to cover about 30,000 mu, with total investment of 115 million yuan, annual production and sales of rice series products reaching 36,000 tons, output value of 180 million yuan, and directly driving poverty-alleviated households to increase income by 15 million yuan.
In 2017, the demonstration area set a record of single-season yield exceeding 1,000 kilograms per mu and ratoon rice yield of 552.1 kilograms per mu, setting a new record for South China and the world, and Guanyang County thereby consolidated its position as "Guangxi's No. 1 county for super rice high yield."
The demonstration area has also been rated a national 3A-level tourist attraction and an autonomous-region four-star modern agriculture demonstration area, receiving 108,000 tourist visits a year.
Following the winding mountain road from Huangguan Town into Xishan Yao Township, the forest coverage rate reaches 92.8%, with greenery everywhere.
Here there are many mountains and little land, leaving limited room for traditional agriculture, but beneath the dense forest lies another possibility.
Wu Gaoping, founder of Guilin Guanyang Shangnong Agricultural Development Co., Ltd., came to Xishan Yao Township around 2016 and has been rooted here for a full 10 years.
Wu Gaoping's main business is under-forest planting of Sarcandra glabra and lingzhi. The demonstration base covers 8,000 mu and is distributed across several villages and hamlets in the township.
The method of growing lingzhi is not complicated: solid wood is sawed into sections of mushroom sticks, fungus spawn is inserted, the mycelium is allowed to grow fully in the cultivation room, and then the sticks are buried in the soil under the forest, where lingzhi grows naturally from the sticks.
Wu Gaoping insists on using solid wood sticks. Although this costs a little more, the lingzhi grows better.
The cycle for the sticks is generally 5 years, and large sticks can even last 8 years.
Sarcandra glabra is even easier: it can be harvested 3 years after planting, and with good management it can even be sold in the second year.
After 10 years of accumulation, the benefits are visible.
Wu Gaoping told reporters that the company's revenue in 2025 reached 8 million yuan, with output value exceeding 11 million yuan.
"A few years ago revenue was still 4 million to 5 million yuan, and now it has almost doubled."
His peak labor demand is in June and from September to October each year, employing a total of more than 100 to 200 workers across various sites, mainly surrounding villagers, with a daily wage of about 90 yuan, and heavy work making mushroom sticks can pay 150 yuan.
Wu Gaoping revealed that they have also established cooperation with institutions such as Guangxi University and the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and experts regularly go up the mountain to guide planting and quality control.
Also in Xishan Yao Township, an even larger industrial project is being implemented.
The eel ecological breeding base was put into production just over three months after construction began, with a completed breeding area of 27,000 square meters and 3 million fry released.
Tang Sijia, publicity committee member of Xishan Township, told reporters that in the first half of this year the base had already exported 380 tons of eels to overseas markets including Japan. After the project reaches full production, it is expected to produce more than 800 tons of eels annually, with annual output value exceeding 50 million yuan.
In this way, a Yao township deep in the mountains of northern Guangxi has become connected with Japan's aquatic product consumer market.
A grain of rice seed, a lingzhi mushroom, an eel: Guanyang's industrial map is slowly unfolding.
Relevant data show that over the past five years, Guanyang's six major industrial clusters have grown stronger, the planting area of Chinese medicinal materials increased by 161.8% compared with five years ago, and the county's under-forest Chinese medicinal material planting has expanded to 65,000 mu, with industrial output value reaching 1.3 billion yuan.
By the end of 2025, the total fruit area was 313,100 mu, with total annual output of 779,700 tons and output value of 2.378 billion yuan. Guanyang snow pear was recognized as a "National Famous, Special, Excellent and New Agricultural Product."
The next step for a mountainous county
Despite rapid development in recent years, Guanyang County does not avoid its own shortcomings.
The report of the 17th Party Congress of Guanyang County stated bluntly that the local economic aggregate is still relatively small and fiscal self-sufficiency is insufficient; the industrial structure is not optimal, the share of industry is relatively low, and it is difficult to sustain the transition between old and new growth drivers; and the problem of unbalanced and inadequate urban-rural development remains prominent.
Guanyang has long had the saying of "eight parts mountains, one part farmland, half water and half villages." Industry is constrained by space, but the framework of leading industries such as green food processing, deep processing of mineral products and clean energy has basically taken shape.
The 8-billion-yuan Guanyang Pumped Storage Power Station has fully started construction, and the integrated wind-solar-storage new energy industrial base in northern Guangxi is being accelerated.
The Guiping Expressway has been completed and opened to traffic, while the Jianggui Expressway and Quanguan Expressway are being accelerated, and the long-standing transportation bottleneck restricting development is being broken.
Moving from "selling raw materials" to "selling brands" is the core idea of Guanyang's "234" modern industrial system.
Wang Jichao, Party secretary of Dongyang Village, told reporters that Huangguan noodles are well known in Guangxi, especially around Guilin, but are not yet well known in places such as Beijing and Shanghai, and brand building is a long-term process.
Cultural and tourism integration is another main line.
During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, Guanyang County received a total of 20.956 million tourist visits and total tourism revenue of 20.08 billion yuan.
Folk activities such as the "February 8" Farm Tool Festival and the "June 6" New Rice Tasting Festival continue to be active, the ITF International Tennis Masters has landed in Guanyang, and the county has recognized 82 employment assistance workshops, long supporting 2,845 local people in nearby employment.
Today, the people of Guanyang are still "marching" quickly along the road.
Shi Weijun said he still plans to continue expanding his scale, Wu Gaoping is eyeing the lingzhi on the mountain and thinking about trial-planting several new varieties next year, and Wang Jichao is thinking about how to sell Huangguan noodles to Beijing and Shanghai.
More than 90 years ago, Red Army officers and soldiers fought bloody battles in the mountains of Guanyang, holding a passage with their lives.
Today, the Guiping Expressway cuts through the mountains, lingzhi and eels have become industries in the deep mountains, and once-buried stories of heroes and martyrs are being recovered one by one and told to the outside world.
The road is still long, but the people of Guanyang keep moving forward.
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