After more than a year and a half of renovation and expansion, the Memorial for the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai opened on Thursday for the upcoming centenary of the founding of the Party in July.

The expanded memorial in the city's Huangpu district includes an exhibition hall where visitors can view 1,168 historical relics, photos and diagrams illustrating the history of the founding of the Party. In addition, there is a preserved hall where Party members take their admission oath, and the renovated original site where 13 Chinese delegates and two foreign representatives from the Communist International attended the First CPC National Congress in July 1921.

"This place has witnessed the groundbreaking event of the founding of the Party, which marked the great start of the Chinese revolution, carried the great dream of the Party, and inherited the great spirit of Party members. It's the eternal glory of the city to be the birthplace of the Party," said Li Qiang, the Party secretary of Shanghai, at the opening ceremony.

Li emphasized that the city will make full use of the rich resources of the Party to promote its culture and history.

The exhibition hall, called Epoch-Making Beginnings: Founding of the Communist Party of China, spans 3,700 square meters－a more than threefold increase from the previous memorial, which has been open to the public for free since 1952.

Key exhibits cover 72 translated versions of The Communist Manifesto by the great German thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; medals commemorating the 1911 Revolution, from October 1911 to February 1912, which ended China's last imperial dynasty; flyers from the May Fourth Movement of 1919; and a toolkit used by the martyr Li Bai, who died in 1949 at the age of 39 in the fight to liberate the country.