No. 1 Guangfu Road, Jing'an District (formerly Zhabei District), Shanghai
After watching the movie "Eight Hundred", I went to visit the Sixing Warehouse Memorial Hall located at No. 1 Guangfu Road in Jing'an District (formerly Zhabei District). After that, we collected relevant information from many aspects to understand the details of the Sihang Warehouse Defense War, as well as the follow-up situation of General Xie after the Sihang Warehouse Defense War, which is now recorded as follows.
Sihang Warehouse was built in 1931 and was a joint warehouse of the four banks of the mainland, Jincheng, Zhongnan and Yanye at that time. At that time, it was the most famous among the many bank warehouses on the banks of the Suzhou River, but what really made it enter the annals of history was the Sihang Warehouse Defense War in October 1937. Among them, Xie Jinyuan, the protagonist of the Sihang Warehouse Defense War, and the Guangdong Jiaoling people, (Jiaoling, a county under the jurisdiction of Meizhou City, Guangdong Province) were the fourth batch of cadets of the Huangpu Military Academy and direct participants in the two Shanghai battles. In 1932, during the "1.28" Songhu War of Resistance, he was the battalion commander of the Nineteenth Route Army, and he led his troops to fight bloody battles with the Japanese in the area of Zhabei and Jiangwan. This time, he participated in the battle as Sun Yuanliang's acting regimental commander and came under the jurisdiction of General Zhang Zhizhong's 88th Division. The "Eighth And Third" was the larger battle of the two Songhu War of Resistance. The Japanese army gathered 10 divisions and 280,000 troops, and in the marines of more than 30 warships, more than 500 aircraft and more than 300 tanks, they launched an attack from Qiujiang Road, and the 524th Regiment of the Chinese defenders took the lead in attacking, kicking off the prelude to the Battle of Songhu. Xie Jinyuan's troops, who had been urgently transferred from Wuxi, immediately threw themselves into the defense of the Zhabei Railway Station and insisted on fighting for more than two months. Finally, the Dachang defensive line was broken, and 500,000 Chinese defenders withdrew westward. The 88th Division was ordered to send an officer who could fight a good battle to lead a well-organized force to hold the main points and take charge of the task of covering the retreat, a mission that eventually fell on Xie Jinyuan's shoulders. The "Eight Hundred Heroes" was just a bluff in the answer to the British officers on that day, when Commander Xie was answering the British officers, in fact, he took a battalion of only 411 soldiers on the suzhou river, and that day was the day of the big loss. The north bank of the Suzhou River is full of scorched earth of war, and the Sihang Warehouse occupied by Xie Jinyuan's troops is a fortress of concrete architecture that has rarely been preserved at that time. In addition, it is also a very rare strategic commanding height.
Xie Jinyuan
At that time, Commander Xie received an order from Commander Sun Yuanliang that "we must hold the last position in Zhabei", and the meaning of the words was also very clear. Subsequently, Xie Jinyuan said to his subordinates: "This is our grave." Fierce fighting began in the early hours of the next day. The Japanese fiercely strafed our defenders' positions with machine guns and set fire to them everywhere in the surrounding area, while Commander Xie led his troops to resolutely return fire. So the record of the Sihang Warehouse on the day was "killing eighty enemies", which was an absolutely remarkable number of kills. The achievement of the Sihang Warehouse immediately caused a sensation in the morning of Shanghai on the 28th, and the excited Shanghai citizens risked their lives to go to the Suzhou River to watch the battle and cheer, and the people's sentiments immediately boiled. Soon, a beautiful 15-year-old girl named Yang Huimin braved the rain of bullets and bullets to cross the Suzhou River to present a newly sewn national flag to Xie Jinyuan's troops on the other side to express the highest respect of Shanghai citizens for Chinese soldiers. When the national flag in the morning light flew high on the roof of the Sihang Warehouse, the people watching across the river cheered and worshiped the national flag across the river. Soon, a song of "Eight Hundred Heroes" was also sung in Shanghai: "China will not die, China will not die, you see the national hero Xie Tuan!" I'd rather die than give in; I'd rather die than surrender! Rise up your compatriots, hurry up and go to the battlefield, and take the eight hundred heroes as an example! ”
The ensuing battle was even more fierce. The Japanese not only used conventional weapons such as machine guns and flat-fire artillery, but also fired petrol and poison gas bombs with great recklessness, and the warehouse was surrounded by fire. Xie Jinyuan, a veteran who participated in the Northern Expedition, improvised a poem on the position to inspire the soldiers: "Bravely kill eight hundred soldiers of the enemy, resist the enemy with pride and poetry; who pities the patriotic thousand lines of tears, speaking of the unfairness of the slaves." After 4 days and 4 nights of bloody fighting, the Chinese defenders repelled dozens of attacks by more than 10,000 Japanese Kou people in the land of bullets in the Sihang Warehouse, killing more than 200 Japanese troops and injuring countless enemies at the cost of sacrificing 9 people and wounding more than 20 people.
However, not far from the south bank of the Suzhou River, 100 meters from the Sihang warehouse, there is a British Shanghai Gas Company with two huge gas storage tanks, and if it is detonated, the consequences will be unimaginable. Therefore, the consuls and public concession authorities in Shanghai took this as an excuse to issue strong protests to the Nationalist government, and Chiang Kai-shek did not dare to offend the great powers, and was forced to issue an order for the defenders of the Sixing Warehouse to withdraw into the concession. When receiving the order to retreat, the officers and men of Xie Jinyuan's troops were not happy, but were very disappointed, and even felt that the retreat was an insult to all the defenders. Because, they had already exhausted their strength, juxtaposed life and death outside their stomachs, and vowed to fight with the Japanese devils in this four-line warehouse. Xie Jinyuan immediately called back and reiterated repeatedly: All officers and men swore to coexist and die with the position. However, after repeated orders, the remaining 370 soldiers had to carry out the orders of their superiors and retreat into the concession. However, when Xie Jinyuan led his troops to go to join the 88th Division, he was inexplicably intercepted by the British in the concession, and under the coaxing of the Guild of Nations and the persuasion of the chief of staff Zhang Baiting, he was disarmed by the British army. (It wasn't until long after the incident that the British told the truth—the concession had received threats from the Japanese that if the four-line defenders crossed the border, the Japanese would pursue them with arms.) ）
Subsequently, the four-line defenders had no choice but to be caught by the British and sent to an empty place near 40 Singapore Road (now located south of Yuyao Road in Jing'an District, west of Jiaozhou Road, and in the area of present-day Jinyuanli) surrounded by barbed wire and held by White Russian soldiers in the concession. Soon, due to the harsh environment and the mood of anxiety, some officers and men fell ill one after another, and in order to revive the morale of the army, the regimental commander Xie Jinyuan led the soldiers to build their own barracks, dormitories, kitchens, and so on. In order to exercise, they also built their own training playgrounds. In early August 1938, in order to commemorate the first anniversary of the 88th Division's anti-Japanese resistance in Shanghai. After repeated negotiations with the concession, Xie Jinyuan led all the officers and men to hold a flag-raising ceremony in the playground at 6:00 a.m. on August 11. Before long, they were interfered with by the concession authorities, who were not allowed to hold a flag-raising ceremony. To this end, it was also seriously suppressed, and in desperation, Xie Jinyuan led all officers and men to change the flag-raising ceremony to another kind of ceremony -- "spiritual flag-raising", that is, every morning before the exercise, all officers and men stood tall and marched to the sky to salute, in order to express their love for the motherland and their determination to resist to the end.
Later, after the traitor Wang Jingwei established a puppet national government in Nanjing, he once promised Xie Jinyuan to Houlu, a high-ranking official who was the commander-in-chief of the army, but was reprimanded by Xie Jinyuan's words: I was born as a Chinese, and died as a Chinese ghost. I take it as my duty to protect the country and the people, and I have already made up my mind. After that, the Wang puppet government despicablely bribed the traitors: Hao Dingcheng, Long Yaoliang, Zhang Wenqing, Zhang Guoshun, a total of 4 people. At 5:00 a.m. on April 24, 1941, when Xie Jinyuan was leading the team to exercise in the morning, they were deliberately late, Xie Jinyuan came forward to inquire about the reason, they suddenly took out daggers and iron pickaxes and other murder weapons prepared in advance, flocked up, and stabbed Xie Jinyuan's chest and temples in a frenzy. Caught off guard, Xie Jinyuan was seriously injured in many places, bleeding profusely, and died at 6 o'clock. Xie Jinyuan, a generation of anti-Japanese heroes, died for the country, and he was only 37 years old when he hated to die. Then, the news came out, the whole country was sad, Xie Jinyuan's Nanmu coffin was buried in the funeral, and in July of the same year, Xie Jinyuan's tomb was completed, and the cemetery at that time was in Lane 331, Yuyao Road. (After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to commemorate the patriotic general General Xie Jinyuan, the Nationalist government renamed the Manchuria Road in front of the Sihang Warehouse to Jinyuan Road; renamed Jiaozhou Park Jinyuan Park, now the Jing'an District Workers' Stadium; and renamed Huatong Public School Jinyuan Middle School; in addition, in Xie Jinyuan's hometown, There is also a Jinyuan Middle School built in honor of the anti-Japanese hero Xie Jinyuan in Jialing County, Meizhou City, Guangdong Province;)
In 1983, the shantytown of Yuyao Road in Jing'an District was renovated, and Xie Jinyuan's coffin was moved to the celebrity cemetery park of Song Qingling Cemetery, according to the April 1983 "Liberation Daily" report, the tombstones and epitaphs of the tombs moved by General Xie Jinyuan were original, according to this analysis, General Xie's loyal bones were not destroyed in a special period, and should be buried here.
If you read this article and are in Shanghai, then you may wish to take a walk to Guangfu Road, Yuyao Road, Songyuan Road, and other places in your spare time to commemorate the heroic deeds.
21 Songyuan Road, Changning District, Shanghai