Yan'an is a small, sleepy town in the far northern border region of Shaanxi province, in the heart of this region's Loess Plateau. If the biggest notables in recent Chinese history had not intervened, this area would almost certainly have remained in obscurity. In 1936, however, a troop of hardened and weary soldiers, part of a once fairly powerful faction of a United Front government, arrived and then settled in the town.
