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He was an old subordinate of General Yang Hucheng and a lieutenant general in the Kuomintang Army. In the guerrilla war in southern Jinnan from 1939 to 1940, he worked closely with the Eighth Route Army to kill the Japanese Takahashi Wing Commander, conquer 7 Japanese strongholds, recover a large area of land, and was awarded the Order of the Blue Sky and White Sun No. 90 by the Nationalist government. He was also one of the few Kuomintang generals who participated in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments and formed a deep friendship with the Eighth Route Army. In the spring of 1946, in order to avoid civil war, he resigned from the military and returned to his hometown to work as a farmer, and did not return until after 1949, when he served as a librarian at the Shaanxi Provincial Research Museum of Culture and History. This famous anti-Japanese general was General Geng Zhijie (formerly known as Geng Jinghui).
Geng Zhijie, formerly known as Geng Jinghui, was born in 1886 to a wealthy squire family in Gengjia Village. From an early age, he entered a private school to study, and later transferred to the Gaoling Guoxue Institute to study ancient books and classics. He paid attention to state affairs, aimed at the four directions, and was deeply dissatisfied with the corrupt politics of the Qing government, so he went to Xi'an in 1906 and was admitted to the Shaanxi Army Primary School. He wrote in his autobiography: "I abandon my writing and take force, and seek the shame of the great powers."
Around 1911, Geng Zhijie was admitted to the Baoding Military Academy. After graduating in 1916, he was invited to Chen Shufan's Third Company of the Model Infantry Battalion of the Second Mixed Brigade of the Shaanxi Army as a company commander. In May of the same year, the battalion was reorganized into the 2nd Infantry Regiment and promoted to the commander of the 1st Battalion. Became a backbone member of the Shaanxi Jingguo Army.
From 1924 to 1927, Geng Zhijie, who was promoted to the commander of the Supplementary Brigade of the Shaanxi Army, participated in the warlord melee, sometimes turning to Feng Yuxiang and sometimes to Ma Hongkui, living in a fixed place and completely deviating from his goal of life. After the outbreak of the Central Plains War in 1930, Geng Zhijie simply resigned and returned to his hometown, living a life of seclusion without controversy.
In 1931, General Yang Hucheng defeated the remnants of Feng Yuxiang, who were entrenched in Xi'an, and gained control of Shaanxi. At the invitation of Yang Hucheng, Geng Zhijie served as the chief of staff of the 17th Division of the Shaanxi Army, and soon became the commander of the supplementary regiment of the 50th Brigade of the 17th Division. In order to weaken the power of the local warlords, Chiang Kai-shek dispatched Yang Hucheng's troops to southern Shaanxi to deal with the Red Fourth Front, hoping to achieve the goal of killing two birds with one stone. Yang Hucheng and Geng Zhijie and others saw through Chiang Kai-shek's plot, remained neutral with the Red Army, and broke Chiang Kai-shek's wishful thinking.
On December 12, 1936, General Yang Hucheng and General Zhang Xueliang jointly launched the Xi'an Incident, detaining Chiang Kai-shek, who had come to supervise the war, forcing him to stop the civil war and actively resist Japan. As the main force of Yang Hucheng, Geng Zhijie's regiment was deployed in the area of Shilipu on the eastern outskirts of Xi'an to prevent the armed invasion of the Central Army. After the peaceful settlement of the Xi'an Incident, Yang Hucheng's department was reorganized into the 38th Army (Commander Sun Weiru), and Geng Zhijie served as the brigade commander of the 49th Brigade of the 17th Division of the 38th Army.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the 17th Division of the 38th Army marched to the front line in Baoding, Hebei. In the Battle of Niangziguan in the same year, the officers and men of geng zhijie's brigade fought with rudimentary weapons in their hands and the Japanese army combining the air force and artillery units, and the battle was extremely fierce.
Geng Zhijie and the generals of the 17th Division personally commanded the front line, fought for nine days and nine nights, the Snowflake Mountain changed hands five times, the Japanese corpses were scattered in the field, and the 17th Division also paid a heavy price. After the fall of Taiyuan, the 17th Division was ordered to be incorporated into the 18th Army Led by Zhu De, and the Geng Brigade accompanied the 17th Division to the moraine mouth in northwestern Jin (belonging to Linxian County, Shanxi) and suide in northern Shaanxi for training. In February 1938, he crossed the Yellow River east into the enemy's rear and went to the Jincheng area of the Taihang Mountains to cooperate with the Eighth Route Army. In the campaign to besiege the Japanese army of Changzhi and liberate 19 counties such as the Shangdang in southeastern Jin, the Geng Brigade and the various units of the 17th Division fought side by side with the Eighth Route Army, and jointly established immortal merits against the Japanese invaders.
After the battle of Shangdang, the 17th Division was returned to its structure and incorporated into the 31st Army, which was expanded from the original 38th Army, and was ordered to enter the defense area of the Jinnan Triangle. Soon, the Japanese invaded the sealed mountain pass garrisoned by the 49th Brigade. Under the command of Geng, the officers and men of the whole brigade repeatedly charged and killed the Japanese army, and engaged in hand-to-hand combat many times, and the enemy and us suffered heavy casualties. Subsequently, Geng Brigade participated in the famous Battle of Yongji with the 17th Division, dealing a heavy blow to the Japanese army. Then the siege of Ruicheng was lifted.
In November 1940, Geng Zhijie was promoted to commander of the 17th Division of the 38th Army for his merits. In the Battle of NakajōZan in the same year, although the Chinese army was defeated by the Japanese army due to improper command. However, under the leadership of Geng Zhijie, the 17th Division actively cooperated with the Eighth Route Army (for a time the 17th Division was assigned to the control of Commander Zhu De of the Eighth Route Army), launched a guerrilla war behind enemy lines, killed the Japanese Takahashi Wing Commander, recovered many lost places, and was commended by the Nationalist government.
The 17th Division was also one of the very few Kuomintang troops that took part in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments. In the Battle of the Hundred Regiments, the 17th Division, under the leadership of Geng Zhijie, not only sent troops to cooperate with the Eighth Route Army on many occasions, but also repeatedly attacked the strongholds on the southern line of Tongpu Road, destroying road and railway traffic, causing heavy losses to the Japanese army. During guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines in southern Jin, he led his troops to conquer seven strongholds of the Japanese puppet army in succession, and thus won the 90th Order of the Blue Sky and White Sun issued by the National Government.
In 1943, when Geng Zhijie, who was promoted to deputy commander of the 38th Army, participated in the Central Plains Campaign under the command of Tang Enbo, he was relieved of his military power by Chiang Kai-shek as a scapegoat due to the defeat of the battle, and was transferred to the commander of the Fengbin Division in Shaanxi Province, responsible for conscription and logistics, and never had the opportunity to go into battle to kill the enemy again (there are also rumors that because of the secret agent's informant: Geng Zhijie had close contacts with the Eighth Route Army, he was relieved of military power by Chiang Kai-shek).
Soon after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Kuomintang was brewing a civil war. Geng Zhijie deeply resented Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorial rule and civil war policy, and resolutely resigned from his post as commander of the division and took his family to settle in the northern city of Sanyuan, taking up the cause of Nongsang, and vowing not to go out of the mountains again. As a result, in just three years from 1946, the Kuomintang was defeated and lost power on the mainland.
After 1949, Geng Zhijie made a comeback and served as a librarian at the Shaanxi Provincial Research Museum of Culture and History. In 1962, General Geng Zhijie died of illness in his hometown at the age of 77.
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