Yang Yong (chief commander of the military parade)
The 10th anniversary celebrations of founding of the People's Republic of China were held on 1 October 1959. The main event was held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. A grand banquet with many international dignitaries had been organized on the preceding evening.[2]
On the evening of 30 September 1959, a jubilee banquet was hosted in the Great Hall of the People. Around 5,000 people attended the banquet, including guests from around 80 countries. Mao Zedong and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev entered the hall together, meeting applause. Chinese PremierZhou Enlai and Soviet Premier Khrushchev presented their greetings at the banquet. The Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko also participated in the banquet.[2]
Khrushchev had arrived directly from a visit to the United States on the same day. He held a short speech upon his arrival at the airport.[2]
1 October Tiananmen Square parade
According to Chinese media, the Tiananmen Square event gathered 700,000 people. At Tiananmen Square participants formed a human version of the national emblem of the People's Republic with the numerals '1949' and '1959' on the sides. A band of one thousand musicians with brass instruments and olive-green uniforms opened the event, playing The East is Red at 09.45. At this point Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev entered the dias. Other dignitaries on the dias included Liu Shaoqi, Soong Ching-ling, Lin Biao, Zhu De, Dong Biwu, Deng Xiaoping and various international guests.[2]
In Beijing, ten "great buildings" were constructed ahead of the celebrations. The most prominent of the ten was the Great Hall of the People.[4] On 26 September 1959, just a few days ahead of the anniversary, oil was discovered at Datongzhen.[5] Datong Town and the oilfields were renamed 'Daqing' ('Great Celebration'), in reference to the tenth anniversary celebrations.[5][6] Major parades were also organized in Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Xi'an, Wuhan, Shenyang and Tianjin.[2]
^Since the founding of the people's republic until 2009, the country has held 14 National Day grand military parades in 1949–1959, 1984, 1999, and 2009.[1]