In the quiet lanes of Xiabeimen Village, near the waters of Cibihu Town in Eryuan, stands a modest courtyard of earth and wood. This 280-square-meter residence is the birthplace of Shi Huang, a Bai intellectual born in 1900. He lived here until 1913, listening to his schoolteacher father speak of civic duty under the eaves. The original late Qing structure faced north. The rebuilt home faces east, preserving the traditional Bai layout of three bays and a central screen wall.

The architecture holds the physical memory of those who maintained it. On the door lintel, a red star added by local hands during the 1980s repairs catches the morning light. Inside, the cool shadow of the white screen wall blocks the mountain wind, offering a quiet space where a young boy once studied.

Shi Huang left this valley for Kunming and then Tsinghua School, where he founded the Truth Society. His journey stretched across the Pacific to Stanford University, where he joined the Communist Party of the USA in 1927 and served as the first secretary of its Chinese Bureau. He translated at a youth school in Moscow, worked in the underground in Hong Kong, and eventually became the provincial secretary in Hebei.

In the winter of 1933, a betrayal in Beiping ended his work. He was taken to the military prisons of Nanjing and executed at Yuhuatai in 1934, at the age of thirty-four. Today, the Tsinghua University Library honors him as the school’s most glorious son.

In 2023, Yunnan Province designated this rebuilt home as an official revolutionary relic. Visitors can touch the rough plaster of the star on the lintel, feel the cool mountain air, and trace the journey of a youth who carried the dust of Eryuan to the centers of global revolution.