Zunyi is largely overlooked by foreigners aside from the few residents employed by Britain's VSO and the US Peace Corps and a scattering of foreigners teaching English at some local colleges or high schools and a single private language school. As a result, outsiders are still quite a rarity here and staring is common as is hearing "Laowai" shouted everywhere you go. The city does attract large numbers of Chinese tourists however and the road in front of the Zunyi Conference Site can get congested from all of the tour buses.The local dialect combines elements of Guizhou-style Mandarin with Sichuanese although all people in town should be able to understand Mandarin.Like most cities in China, Zunyi claims a long history. It served as the seat of government power in northern Guizhou during the Song and Yuan Dynasties. During the 19th century, the walled city of Zunyi enjoyed prominence as a trading town but became a Chinese landmark after the 1935 Zunyi Conference. The prefecture surrounding Zunyi city-proper bears monuments to the Long March and the civil war in Guizhou.The region is famous for the military manoevers of the Red Army to escape the Guomindang (KMT) encirclement in the winter and spring of 1935. In order to break out, the Red Army crossed the Red River (Chishui) four times in a series of deceptions and feints to enable the bulk of the forces to escape into Yunnan.After the establishment of the People's Republic, a new era for Zunyi's development began. Under Mao Zedong's leadership, cities like Zunyi in the Southwest became home to a hidden military-industrial infrastructure known as the third-front. The purpose of locating heavy industrial and military factories in such remote areas was to create a base for military industry out of the range of US and Soviet bombers. In the event of war, even if eastern and northern China were overrun, the southwest could continue to support a mechanized military effort. Mountains were hollowed out and heavy-industrial factories hidden in remote valleys. Zunyi's hills still contain many such caves and passages - which can be identified by the heavy iron doors leading into mountains. http://wikitravel.org/en/Zunyi