Ruijin is a county-level city

County-level city

A county-level city is a county-level administrative division of mainland China. County-level cities are usually governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions....

 of Ganzhou

Ganzhou

Ganzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangxi province, People's Republic of China. Its administrative seat is at Zhanggong .-History:...

 in the mountains bordering Fujian

Fujian

' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...

 Province in south-eastern Jiangxi

Jiangxi

' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to...

.

The name derives from the ancient God, Rui Jin. It is most famous as one of the earliest centers of Chinese communist activity. After being forced out of Jinggangshan

Jinggangshan

Jinggangshan is located in the Luoxian Mountains , in the remote border region between Jiangxi and Hunan provinces of China. It lies at the junction of four counties - Ninggang, Yongxing, Suichuan and Lingxian. The mountains cover some 670 km², with an average elevation of 381.5 m above sea...

 in the late 1920s by the Kuomindang, the Communists fled here, taking advantage of Ruijin's relative isolation in the rugged mountains along Jiangxi's border with Fujian. In 1931, under Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...

's leadership, the Chinese Soviet Republic was established here. By 1934, they had again been surrounded by Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....

's forces. It is from here that the famed "Long March

Long March

The Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south...

" began.

Ruijin is a popular tourist destination for both its natural scenery and its "Red" heritage. It is a pilgrimage for surviving Maoists from China and around the globe.