Society's founders commemorated in exhibitions

The Memorial Hall of the Awakening Society, an organization founded in Tianjin in 1919 to inspire local youths during difficult times, is staging two exhibitions to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, according to Ma Yuan, the curator.

The organization is notable because Zhou Enlai, one of its founders, was also a founding member of the CPC in 1921 and served as premier and foreign minister after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949.

Led by Zhou, the Awakening Society, whose members were ages 16 to 25, worked in the city from 1919 to 1920 to raise young people's political awareness and advocate communism in the years before the CPC was founded.