Conclusion
When travelers today go from downtown Wenzhou to Rui’an, the first things they see along the newly built Yong-Tai-Wen highway are stretches of paddy fields; small, winding rivers, and lush, low hills in the distance. Next to appear are traditional Chinese buildings dotting hillsides and fields, too bright to miss. Some of them have yellow-painted walls and grey tile roofs. Others are adorned with colorful motifs, statuettes of various kinds displayed in cornices, and occasionally flags of various colors on the rooftops. The yellow buildings are easily recognizable as Buddhist temples, while the colorful buildings are temples for territorial religion. Most of them look fairly new. Careful observers will also notice many newly built Christian churches in a variety of styles, some recognizable, others harder to identify, dispersed in the plains along the highway. These are views the northern soldiers would not have seen on their way to Rui’an in the summer of 1949, when the Communist Party’s Eastern China Field Army came south to Wenzhou to take over the region from local Communist guerrillas....