The City
Downtown Shijiazhuang is laid out on a grid with long axial roads, which change their names several times along their course, running north-south and east-west. The main street running east-west across town, just north of the train station and served by the #5 bus, is one of the most interesting. Five blocks west of the station along a section called Zhongshan Lu, you'll find the Martyrs' Memorial (daily 6am-5pm), an ordered, sober-looking park, containing the graves of the only two foreigners to be honoured as heroes of the Revolution. On the west side of the park, the grave of Norman Bethune , a Canadian doctor, is marked by an ornate sarcophagus, a photo exhibition, and a statue, identical to one standing in Bethune Square, Montréal. Bethune (1890-1939), whose remains were moved here from Canada at the request of the Chinese government in 1953, was a brilliant, idealistic surgeon, who came to China to help the Communists in the fight against the Japanese after working on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. He was present at most of the major battles of the era, and became a close confidant of Mao when the Red Army was holed up in Yan'an after the Long March. Mao was so impressed with Bethune's devotion to his work that he later exhorted the Chinese to "learn selflessness from Dr Bethune". As one of the most well-known foreigners in China, Bethune is one reason why many Chinese are well disposed towards Canadians. Dwarkanath Kotnis (1900-1942) is given identical treatment on the east side of the park. Dr Kotnis, one of five Indian doctors who came to China in the 1930s, stayed in the country for nearly a decade, joining the Communist Party just before his death. Both doctors are celebrated in a small museum at the back of the park; items on display include the exercise books in which they practised writing in Chinese and the crude surgical implements they had to work with. The large number of photographs include pictures of Bethune operating by torchlight and chatting with Mao.

East of the station, the road becomes Jiefang Lu, the city's commercial sector, with a few department stores, the largest of which, the ostentatious five-storey Bei Guo Department Store , at the intersection with Bei Dajie, is the biggest in Hebei, and the pride of local residents, who express regret that it isn't even taller. Overstaffed and full of window shoppers, it's probably the city's premier tourist attraction. There's nothing special, though, about the household goods and clothes on display.

Two blocks farther east is the unexpectedly good Hebei Museum (daily 8.30-11.30am & 2.30-4.30pm; ¥10). The downstairs rooms hold temporary exhibitions of local products, while the two rooms upstairs display a fascinating hotchpotch of historic artefacts. The first hall includes a complete mammoth skull and tusk, a miniature terracotta army unearthed in a nearby tomb and a jade burial suit. The second hall, concerned with modern history, has displays of weaponry, photographs of battlefields, and a model village with a network of tunnels underneath illustrating how the Red Army hid from their enemies.

CITS arranges tours to the showpiece Bethune Army Hospital , just west of the train station, one of the best-equipped and most advanced in China. Similarly, there are CITS group tours to the Military Academy outside town, where you'll be introduced to some happy, smiling soldiers by your attentive chaperone, and see some fit, well-adjusted cadets practising their drill. What happens when you are not around is another question, as this is where counter-revolutionaries are sent for refresher courses in ideological correctness. Prices for these tours vary depending on numbers, but at least four tourists are needed - expect to pay around ¥50 per head.