The former residence of Zhu De (朱德旧居) within the August 1st Memorial complex preserves the rooms where the commander of the Communist forces lived in the days before the 1927 uprising. Zhu De was one of the most important military figures of the revolution — as much as Mao was its political architect, Zhu De was its military builder — and the preserved residence provides a companion to the Mao rooms in the same complex.
Zhu De's role in the uprising and in founding the Red Army is spelled out in the interpretive panels, which are more detailed here than in the main museum galleries. The modest furnishings and the small scale of the rooms are a recurring reminder that the revolution that transformed China was organized in very ordinary circumstances.