Students get a history lesson

"Liangjiehe village is absolutely beautiful and the history of how it developed also reflects people's rising living standards in Yan'an and the country as a whole," says 16-year-old Isabel Katharine Braithwaite from Sweden.

Elizaveta Koposova from Russia says that the visit to Yan'an allowed her to learn more about China's past and think about how China has gone about achieving its development.

"We live in Shanghai, a modern city, and the tour in Yan'an helped us learn about the country from another perspective," says the 17-year-old.

After seeing this part of Chinese history, she learned that Chinese people used to live a hard life and they were eager to get out of it. "Their life and living environment was changed enormously because of their diligence," she says.

In the 1960s and '70s, 15 youths from Beijing, including Xi, came to Liangjiahe and experienced difficult and unforgettable times. Back then, the terrain was rough and undulating, there was no water in what is now a river, no trees on the mountain slopes and the fields were untilled.

However, the village today has access to natural gas, the internet, tap water and new infrastructure. The elderly have pensions, the children get a good education and citizens have comprehensive medical insurance, making life nearly on par with city life.