U.S.-Chiang Kai-shek Criminal Acts Exhibition Hall and SACO Prison

U.S.-Chiang Kai-shek Criminal Acts Exhibition Hall and SACO Prison Review

SACO stands for the Sino-American Cooperation Organization, a collaboration between Chiang Kai-shek and the U.S. government and dedicated to the training and supervision of agents for the Nationalist Party government that fought the Communists before retreating to Taiwan. It was jointly run by the Chinese and the Americans, who built prisons outside Chongqing where sympathizers of the Communist Party were imprisoned and tortured. The exhibition hall houses a few photographs and examples of the restraining devices used on the prisoners but has nothing in English. The prisons are a considerable walk from the exhibition hall. The SACO museum is a complex of four separate sites in the Sha Ping Ba suburb in northwest Chongqing, at the foot of and atop Gele Mountain. There is also the option of hiring a car and a guide with passable English for Y140. The prisons are not worth the price, but Gele Mountain is worth the climb; it is peaceful and often misty, and has several small pavilions, a playground, and a monument to the martyrs at the summit.