China has stepped up efforts to promote "red tourism," said the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Red tourism destinations feature visits to sites with the significance of memorializing the history and the heroic martyrs dedicated to the country. More history museums will be open to the public for free and more creative cultural products will be developed, said the ministry.

Meanwhile, the red tourism sites are encouraged to increase cooperation with surrounding schools, the Communist Party of China (CPC) committees and government institutions, to attract more students and party members to learn about the country's history.

China has 33,315 revolutionary historical sites and relics on record. Statistics show that more than 800 million red tourism trips are made on average every year. 

In recent years, red tourism has gained great popularity in China. Popular red tourism destinations like Zunyi in Guizhou province -- the site of the Zunyi Conference, and Yan'an, Shaanxi province, the endpoint of the CPC's Long March, are memorable and educational.

Japanese Germ Warfare Experimental Base in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, is another destination of red tourism that's worth a visit. The museum includes photos, sculptures, and exhibits of the equipment used by Japan's notorious Division 731. It aims to record the pain from war and call for peace. On May 18, 2018, an International Convention Wall was set in the museum and opened to the public, which was engraved with the text of the international convention of the prohibition of biochemical weapons.

In the city of Jinggangshan in east China's Jiangxi Province, the center of early revolutionary activities of the CPC, tourists clad in Red Army uniforms visit places where revolutionary figures once lived and worked. In the first 10 months of 2018, Jinggangshan received more than 10 million tourists, generating tourism revenue of more than 10 billion yuan (1.49 billion U.S. dollars), up almost 10 percent year on year, according to local government figures.

(With input from Xinhua)