On a grey stone column in Pyongyang, a mural shows Chinese and North Korean soldiers rushing into battle against US-led forces in the Korean War.
Decades later, the monument is a regular stop for new waves of Chinese going to the North, this time as tourists.
Hundreds of soldiers and workers have been sprucing up the obelisk and its grounds in recent days ahead of a state visit to Pyongyang by Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.
An inscription on it lauds "the Chinese People's Volunteer Army, who fought with us on this land and smashed down the common enemy".
Their "immortal exploits" will "last forever", it proclaims, as will "the friendship forged in blood between the peoples of the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea".
Nearly 70 years after Mao Zedong sent millions of soldiers to save Kim Il Sung's troops from defeat as General Douglas MacArthur's men marched up the peninsula, China remains the isolated, nuclear-armed North's key diplomatic backer and main provider of trade and aid.
Now the Friendship Tower, as the monument is known, attracts growing hordes of Chinese tourists -- and the renovations suggest it may also be on Xi's itinerary.
Ordinary Chinese pay travel companies around 2,500 yuan (USD 360) for a standard three-day trip, arriving overland by train in Pyongyang to tour the capital's highlights, from the Arch of Triumph to Kim Il Sung Square.
The following day they head south to the Demilitarised Zone that has divided the peninsula since the two sides fought each other to a stalemate in 1953, before returning home.
"I'm very interested in North Korea and wanted to come to see what North Korea looks like," said Yu Zhi, a retiree from Anhui province visiting Pyongyang, telling AFP that she had a "special feeling" for the country.
"China is very friendly with North Korea," added her fellow traveller, a woman surnamed Jin.
"We have been friends for generations."
"That's far too many because there is no infrastructure to accommodate that many tourists, so problems with train tickets, with plane tickets, hotel space."
"There are issues with just hundreds of people showing up at the same time."
There has to be a path on both sides and so something like opening up tourism is a good way to enable that."
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