Where did Zhou Enlai grow up and live?

📍Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China

1898 – 1976

“I was born Zhou Enlai on the 5th of March 1898 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, into a declining gentry family. I studied in Japan and France, became a communist organiser in Paris, survived the Long March, and served as Premier of the People's Republic of China from its founding in 1949 until my death in 1976 — twenty-seven years as the diplomat and administrator who made the revolution governable. I managed relations with the Soviet Union, opened China to America through the Nixon visit of 1972, and survived the Cultural Revolution by protecting what institutions I could while Mao's chaos raged around me. I was the civilised face of a revolutionary state — the man who made the deals, absorbed the contradictions, and kept the machinery running.”

👍 LovedThe diplomatic achievements — the Soviet alliance, the Nixon opening, the Non-Aligned world relationships. The ability to survive and protect others through the Cultural Revolution. The Shaoxing cultural tradition.

👎 DislikedThe compromises with Mao's worst excesses that survival required. The Cultural Revolution's destruction of everything I valued about Chinese culture. The cancer that I kept secret while continuing to work.

Map showing where Zhou Enlai lived — Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China

🗺️ Approximate location today

📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons

Sources: Gao, W. Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary (2007, translated Lawrence Sullivan), PublicAffairs; Han, S. Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China (1994), Hill & Wang