Zunyi red-tour routing

Build your route

Days available

Interest

Group includes school-age children

Self-drive?

How to read the result

Core anchors

The Zunyi Conference site (遵义会议会址) sits on Honghuagang (红花岗) — a 1930s brick building with the meeting room preserved. Entry is free with passport; you must join a guided slot in Chinese to enter the actual meeting room on the second floor. The Long March exhibition (长征纪念馆) is across the street, larger, more visual, with English captions on the second-floor timeline.

Maotai leg

Maotai town (茅台镇) is 1.5 h south of Zunyi by S81 expressway. The town smells of fermenting sorghum the moment you step out of the car. Three distilleries take visitors: the official Maotai distillery (茅台酒厂), Yanghe (洋河), and Xijiu (习酒). Only the official Maotai distillery sells genuine Kweichow Moutai at retail, and even there you queue for a lottery ticket — most days you will not win.

Chishui sidestep

Chishui (赤水) is 2.5 h northwest of Zunyi. The town itself is forgettable but the surrounding waterfalls — Sidonggong (十丈洞瀑布), the bamboo-sea at Bing'an — these are where the Red Army crossed and re-crossed the Chishui River in 1935. The waterfalls are the actual reason to extend; the red-tourism commemorative markers are a thin overlay.

What this tool can't tell you

Whether the meeting-room guided slot is open the day you arrive. Zunyi Conference site schedules school-group bookings that close the second floor for 1–2 hours.
Whether you'll actually win the Maotai distillery lottery. The odds are roughly 1-in-30 on a weekday, 1-in-100 on a weekend. Some visitors buy small bottles at the village-collective stores (镇合作社) instead — see Sources.
Whether the Long March exhibition's English-caption second floor is open. The second floor has been on rotating closure since 2023 for renovation — confirm on arrival.
Personal tolerance for the propaganda tone of Chinese red-tourism sites. Some halls are genuinely interesting (the Long March equipment and uniforms), some are pure slogans.

Common questions

Do I need a Chinese-speaking guide for the Zunyi Conference site?

To see the meeting room, yes — the second-floor entry requires joining a Chinese-language tour slot (free, 20 min, on the hour). The rest of the site (the courtyard, the Mao Zedong and Bo Gu wax figures, the photos) is self-paced. If you don't read Chinese, ask at the front desk — sometimes they run an English version for groups; otherwise the English audio-guide app scans the QR codes at each exhibit.

Is Maotai town worth it if I don't drink baijiu?

Yes for the visual + smell. The Chishui river valley, the long fermentation pits (窖池) at the official distillery, and the riverside restaurant row are unusual even without a taste. If you don't drink, buy a small bottle of empty-town Meng-zhi (萌之) sorghum snack or skip the distillery ticket (¥60) and just walk the river.

Can I include Chishui on a 2-day Zunyi trip?

Not realistically — Chishui is a 2.5-hour drive each way from Zunyi and the waterfalls need 4–5 hours on site. With 2 days, do Zunyi city + Maotai town. Add a third day for Chishui as a self-drive loop, or take the Chishui-bound tour bus from Zunyi and skip the Conference site (less ideal).

Sources & reference data

Zunyi Conference Memorial Museum 2025 ticket & guided-slot schedule; Kweichow Moutai Co. 2025 distillery retail policy (lottery ticket system in effect since 2023); Chishui Tourism Bureau 2025 waterfall-site opening hours. Distillery lotteries are daily draws — we cannot hardcode outcomes.

Advertisement slot — natural placement, below tool output, not adjacent to any button.