Zaoyuan Occupying an area of 540,000 square meters (about 133 acres), the Date Garden is eight kilometers (about five miles) away from Yan'an. There are twenty cave dwellings (a kind of traditional house for people in northern Shaanxi Province, usually carved out of hills made up of compacted earth), along with over eighty tile-roofed houses and one assembly hall. It was originally a garden of a warlord and at one time had also been used as the site of the CCP Secretariat from October 1943 to March 1947. As an important revolutionary site, it has now become a famous revolutionary tourist attraction.