The year 1927 was an extraordinary year in China's history. On April 12, Chiang Kai-shek launched a coup d'état in Shanghai; in May, Xu Kexiang launched the "Ma-Ri Incident" in Changsha; in July, Wang Jingwei launched a counter-revolutionary coup in Wuhan... The first Kuomintang-Communist cooperation broke down, and the great revolution failed.
However, the young Chinese Communist Party did not collapse, but understood the truth that "power comes out of the barrel of a gun." Thus, also in the same year, the Chinese Communists carried out several armed uprisings to independently create the people's army. Following the Nanchang Uprising in August, in September, the great man Chairman Mao led the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Xianggan province. However, the uprising suffered a setback, and Chairman Mao immediately made a decisive decision and made a wise choice to let the insurrectionary troops retreat to Wenjia City in Liuyang.
At the Liren School in Wenjia City, Chairman Mao presided over a meeting of the Committee of Former Enemies and made a resolution to shift the revolutionary forces to the rural mountains.
On the morning of September 19, on the playground of Liren School, the meeting of the first, second and third regiments of the Autumn Harvest Rebel Army was held. Chairman Mao spoke to all the commanders and fighters with full enthusiasm and firm confidence, saying: Victory or defeat is a common affair of soldiers, and it is not a big deal to lose a few battles in this uprising, but what is important is to change the strategy, go to the countryside, accumulate grain and grass, and develop our cause...
Chairman Mao's splendid speech invigorated the spirit of the insurrection soldiers and inspired their confidence.
At this time, on the wall of the school, there was a group of children riding on the wall to "join in the fun", but one of the teenagers carefully "watched", he was impressed by Chairman Mao's incisive arguments, and he was determined to follow Chairman Mao to participate in the revolution. Twenty-eight years later, the teenager became the famous founding general of the republic.
His name is Yang Shijun, 14 years old, born in Wenjia City to a poor peasant family. A year ago, Yang Shijun, who studied at Liren School, served as the leader of the Labor Boy Group. This morning, he heard someone shouting, "Our poor people are coming with their own team," and he was overjoyed and hurried to the Liren School.
The teams on the playground dressed in different costumes, some in military uniforms, some in worn-out blue shirts; they also carried different weapons, some carrying long guns and sleeve guns, some carrying short guns, and even armed darts and large knives. In front of the densely packed line, a tall, thin middle-aged man gave a speech in Xiangtan dialect. After Yang Shijun heard that this person who spoke was the well-known Member Mao, he listened more attentively.
The more Commissar Mao said, the more wonderful it became:
Our strength is great, the reactionaries are not terrible, and as long as we are united, the final victory must be ours. We are now like a small stone, and the Chiang Kai-shek reactionaries are like a big water tank, but our small stone will one day destroy Chiang Kai-shek's big water tank!
"Small stones" break the "big water tank"! Yang Shijun was deeply attracted by the metaphor of Commissar Mao's image, yes, why can't he join the ranks of "small stones" and destroy the reactionaries? He made up his mind to follow Commissar Mao in making a revolution!
However, Commissar Mao's team soon left Wenjia City. Unbeknownst to Yang Shijun, Member Mao led the troops of the Autumn Harvest Uprising up the mountain to create a base area. At this time, the revolution was at a low ebb, Hunan was shrouded in white terror, Yang Shijun and his friends fled to the homes of relatives and friends in Wanzai County, Jiangxi Province, to escape the limelight, and then fled to Changsha in the summer of 1928. In Changde, Yang Shijun and another partner went to Lu Daoyuan's Fiftieth Division as cadets.
Soon, Yang Shijun heard that Peng Dehuai, Teng Daiyuan and others were rioting in Pingjiang, and he realized that his opportunity to be a "small stone" had come.
In May 1930, Yang Shijun finally came to Peng Dehuai's Red Fifth Army and entered the camp school of the Red Fifth Army. In order to motivate himself, Yang Shijun changed his name to "Yang Yong". Since then, this poor peasant-born soldier bravely championed the three armies in the rain of bullets and bullets, and became a famous general of the People's Liberation Army. In 1955, at the age of 42, Yang Yong was awarded the rank of general.