The guards make no effort to be inconspicuous. There are five of them, one in plain clothes in a grey T-shirt, two in police trousers and black T-shirts, and two more in full uniform. They follow the reporters everywhere as they visit the caves in the yellow loess of the mountain village of Liangjiahe in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. During the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, Xi Jinping lived here for a few years when his father, a high-ranking party cadre, fell out of favour with the paramount leader Mao Zedong. Here, as the party, state and military leader himself has said, he acquired the tools he needed to become China’s most powerful man since Mao.