Zhang Lingfu, born in 1903, also known as Zong Ling, Zi Lingfu, also known as Zhong Lin, Han ethnicity, from Chang'an County, Shaanxi Province (now Chang'an District, Xi'an). He was born in Dongda Village, Dongda Township, Chang'an County. Senior general of the National Revolutionary Army, with the rank of lieutenant general. He was captured and killed at the Age of 44 at the Battle of Menglianggu on May 16, 1947.
What to say? The biggest controversy about this person was that in the winter of 1935, he shot his second wife, Wu Hailan, and was known as Zhang Lingfu's wife murder case, also known as the regimental commander Gucheng's wife killing case. Today, there are always some people who argue about this and have a lot of arguments, but no matter how much they fight, there is no further result, but the argument itself becomes a smoke bomb, which more or less causes a cover-up of the truth. We do not speak of the right or wrong of those arguments, but only of the events themselves, and only of making some reasonable reasoning from the events.
Zhang Lingfu was born into a family that was not too rich, but in that era, it could not be said that he was too poor to let his children eat and receive education. Zhang Lingfu was educated from an early age, with excellent grades and good calligraphy. The Kuomintang elder Yu Youren, a great calligrapher, heard that a child could write a good stroke, he wanted to see it with his own eyes, let Zhang Lingfu write in front of him, and could not help but praise one after another: "Wizard, wizard, the future life is terrible!" ”
After graduating from high school, Zhang Lingfu was successfully admitted to the History Department of Peking University. This is not easy, and it shows the excellence of his academic performance. During college, Zhang Lingfu married his first wife, Xing Fengying, which was an arranged marriage, and when he was still in middle school, his family settled on this family affair. Nowadays, some people say that on the university campus, Zhang Lingfu abandoned his pen and applied for the Whampoa Military Academy because he was influenced by the new ideas. Is that right? Our analysis may not be complete, or the "new ideas" have little impact on Zhang Lingfu, otherwise, he would not have agreed to an arranged marriage. Therefore, we adopt the phrase of unity newspaper, that is, Zhang Lingfu dropped out of school because he could not afford the tuition. [i]
At this time, Zhang Lingfu probably thought of the old gentleman who had watched him write at that time, Yu Youren, and under the suggestion of Youren, he was admitted to the Whampoa Military Academy in 1926 and became a student of the huangpu ivy, and became a classmate with his later colleagues Hu Lian and Li Mi. [ii]
Therefore, Zhang Lingfu abandoned his pen and congrong, although it has the role of "new ideas", it is not necessarily as "lofty" as some people say, at least there is a practical reason behind this that cannot afford to pay tuition.
Next, let's talk about the wife murder case. After graduating from the Huangpu Fourth Phase, Zhang Lingfu was assigned to the 21st Division of the National Revolutionary Army as an infantry platoon trainee officer, and soon after the probationary qualification was promoted to platoon commander and began to participate in the Northern Expedition. It can be seen that although he graduated from Huangpu, there is nothing special about it, and Zhang Lingfu started from the probationary platoon leader. But it may be that the "foundation" is better, or there is another reason, after the end of the Northern Expedition in 1928, Zhang Lingfu was transferred to the First Division of the National Revolutionary Army, and by 1933, at the age of 30, he became the colonel of the 1st Regiment of the Independent Brigade of the division. The speed was magical, but it wasn't surprising at the time.
At this time, Zhang Lingfu felt that he could end his marriage with Xing Fengying in name only, but when he was studying and fighting, Xing Fengying was at home to take care of the elderly, and he would not be able to give Xing Fengying a break. On the one hand, let those who exist in name and die still exist in name; on the other hand, they begin to constantly look for new ones, or those who do not exist in name only. This was what Zhang Lingfu did at that time, and after being introduced by friends in the army, he met Wu Hailan.
Wu Hailan is a Native of Guangyuan, and his father is a well-known local coppersmith, and his family is rich, but he cannot be said to be very rich. Most of the women of rich families will be raised, habitually and spoiled by their parents, and Wu Hailan is like this. In that small county, she rarely received formal education, and people were also good-looking, in our words today, she was a cultured and beautiful Sichuan girl, very eye-catching, so the eyes of finding objects were also high. Local she can't look at it, so look for Zhang Lingfu, young, good-looking, status can also be.
The two progressed rapidly, first met in 1933, and at the end of the year, they became relatives, and a few years later, their daughter Zhang Qingfang was born. It is said that after marriage, the husband and wife Qinse and Ming have deep feelings, especially the birth of their daughter, which makes the family happy and harmonious. However, married to a soldier, there are always some unsatisfactory places, Zhang Lingfu is fighting outside, Wu Hailan cannot accompany the army, and he looks beautiful, and over time there will always be some disharmonious statements. The more popular ones on the Internet are this:
When a colleague and fellow regimental leader returned to the camp from Xi'an to visit relatives, Zhang Lingfu asked him about his wife Wu Hailan. When the regimental commander saw his anxious look, he deliberately joked with him and jokingly said, "Ah, dude, don't be angry when you say it." Your wife, once I saw her dressed up in a flowery way, there was a young man next to her, wearing a suit and leather shoes, and the two of them could be intimate. If you are not at ease, go to Xi'an to have a look. Zhang Lingfu listened, suddenly angry, thinking, my cousin manly husband, how can I wear a "green hat", let the family poke and poke in the back, decided to immediately take leave to go back to Xi'an to find Wu Hailan to "settle the account". [iii]
Obviously, the fellow just made a joke with Zhang Lingfu, but Zhang Lingfu couldn't stand it. Analyze it, if there really is someone around Wu Hailan, I am afraid that this fellow will not tell the truth so directly; another is that at this time, Zhang Lingfu and Wu Hailan have been married for less than three years, and the freshness of the two has not passed, which can find a "third party" so quickly, and if Wu Hailan has it before, it is generally not so fast to marry Zhang Lingfu, nor will it give birth to Zhang Lingfu so quickly.
Therefore, the absurdity of this matter is relatively large. The source of this statement comes from Wu Yi's "Zhang Lingfu I Know" [iv]. Wu Yi has long been the director of the personnel department of the 74th Army, and some people today said that his knowledge of Zhang Lingfu's past should come from rumors among colleagues. It should be noted that rumors are also an understanding, and sometimes the difference is not very large. Many later books have adopted this statement, such as "The Biography of Zhang Lingfu, a Senior General of the Republic of China", in addition to quoting the joke made to Zhang Lingfu by his compatriots, but also tells the story in more detail.
Zhang Lingfu is a very serious person, heard that his wife is "unchaste", so angry that he can't even say a word, for several days he was sullen and unhappy, his temper became more and more rough, and he saw who scolded whom. He considered it an intolerable disgrace. But directly filing for divorce is afraid of becoming the laughing stock of colleagues. Later, he asked Hu Zongnan for leave, returned home with a pistol, tried his best to restrain his feelings, and said to his wife: "I have not eaten dumplings for a long time, you can wrap a meal of dumplings for me." After hearing this, the wife happily went to the vegetable field to cut leeks. Zhang Lingfu followed behind, and when his wife just squatted down to cut the leeks, he pulled out his pistol and shot his wife in the back of the head, and the wife fell to the ground. After shooting his wife, he neither spoke nor buried the body, and returned to the army. [v]
However, there is a problem here, that is, Zhang Lingfu should go home in winter, and there are no leeks in the garden in this part of Shaanxi. So, there is a second way of saying it – the spy theory. That is, Zhang Lingfu suspected that his wife might be a "spy", and the direct trigger was that his wife took away her military documents. According to the recollections of the Zhang family's descendants, when Zhang Lingfu returned home for a vacation in the winter of 1935, he and his wife Wu Hailan were inseparable in Xi'an for the first few days, and only after returning to their hometown in the countryside did tragedy occur. [vi] According to Zhang Lingfu's last wife, Wang Yuling, and his former subordinate Liu Guangyu, Zhang Lingfu actually killed Wu Hailan because of a document. [vii]
In our view, espionage is unreliable for two main reasons:
1. Wu Hailan was killed, Zhang Lingfu stayed at home for a few days before going to prison, xing Fengying soon became pregnant, and gave birth to their son Zhang Juli. [viii] Zhang Juli was born in 1936, and his birth made people see that Zhang Lingfu still had this idea at that time, that is, he hoped that he could have another offspring. If Wu Hailan is a "spy", what he does is taken for granted, and this kind of scruples will not be too much.
2. After Wu Hailan was killed, his brother Wu Zheng wrote a letter of accusation, and finally went to Song Meiling, and Chiang Kai-shek ordered that Zhang Lingfu be sent to the Nanjing Military Tribunal for investigation. Out of pity, Hu Zongnan did not carry out Chiang Kai-shek's order to send someone to escort Zhang Lingfu to Nanjing for trial, but asked Zhang Lingfu to go to Nanjing himself. Zhang Lingfu took a small amount of coils to the road, and after using the coils, he sold words to make a living, stopped and walked all the way, and came to Nanjing for more than two months. He was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison and served his sentence in Nanjing's "Model Prison".
It can be imagined that if Zhang Lingfu had killed a "spy" without spending so many "twists and turns", what he did would have become "deserved". Moreover, he was a regimental commander at that time, not even a senior officer, where were so many secrets around him that made him kill people?
If the past is a knife, it should be Zhang Lingfu's cold, brutal and inhuman side that should be cut at this time. Although the details of "cutting leeks" are somewhat fabricated, it is also a fact that Wu Hailan was shot and killed by him. A man can give such a cruel hand to his wife, and it is difficult for ordinary people to do it.
That's the truth, it doesn't take much detail.
Today, when people study history, there is no need to dwell too much on the details of the same event, and sometimes, in the vertical comparison of similar events, they can get more inspiration.
Huang Shoufa, born in 1911 in Liancheng County, Fujian Province, joined the Red Guards in 1929 and was appointed chief of staff of the Central Hebei Military Region in July 1946. He participated in the revolution for nearly twenty years, was wounded in battle, and had made meritorious contributions to the revolution, but because he did not work hard in study, did not carry out politics, became accustomed to the style of warlordism, and was criticized and punished for beating and cursing comrades. His warlordism of individualism developed until he eventually became the murderer of his own wife.
On the second day of the first lunar month in 1947, Huang Shoufa killed his wife He Yin with a pistol in Zhangzhuang, a black horse in hejian, and He Yin was shot three times in a row and died immediately. At that time, He Yin was several months pregnant, because Huang Shoufa was in the autumn of 1946 and had an affair with his child's nanny Shan Jieying. As a result, the relationship with He Yin deteriorated day by day. After the case occurred, Huang Shoufa did not confess his guilt, but instead defended himself in many ways, trying to be cunning, and after more than a year of interrogation, the evidence was conclusive, and it was impossible to deny it and admit it directly. In order to strictly enforce law and discipline and educate the whole army, I decided to execute Huang Shoufa and immediately execute him by firing squad.
Zhang Lingfu's situation was different, his case has been delayed, in 1937, Wang Yaowu pleaded with Chiang Kai-shek to intercede for him, and then he was secretly released and served as a colonel-in-waiting officer in Wang Yaowu's office. Subsequently, he married and divorced Gao Yanyu, and married Wang Yuling in Shanghai in 1945. At the same time, he worked all the way to the commander of the division and became Chiang Kai-shek's confidant and favorite general.
There is a saying that goes like this: If the environment changes, if you can't change the environment, the most important thing you should do is to find ways to improve your resistance. This is for ordinary people, as the upper echelons of society, sometimes it is possible to change the "environment", but Chiang Kai-shek did not do this. That's what history really wants to tell people.
[i] Wang Kai, "Zhang Lingfu You Don't Know," Unity Daily, February 15, 2015;
[ii] Ji Peng, "The Reactionaries in China: Zhang Lingfu, a Famous Anti-Japanese General", National Humanistic History, August 2013;
[iii] Yang Lieguang, "The Absurd Case of Zhang Lingfu's Wife Murder", Longmenjin Magazine, No. 01, 2008;
[iv] Wu Yi, "The Zhang Lingfu I Know", Essence of Literature and History, No. 12, 2003;
[v] Nanchang Army Academy, ed., Biography of Senior Generals of the Republic of China, Plaster Press, November 1990;
[vi] He Renyong, "Zhang Lingfu Killed His Wife Suspicious Cloud: Spy Wife Steals Military Documents?" 》People's Daily Online, 2017-07-23;
[vii] Xun Yue, "Zhang Lingfu Cemetery Destroyed, Tombstone written "Wife-killing villain, People's Sinner", Beijing Youth Daily, 2016-09-22;
[viii] "Revealed: Where Are the Descendants of the Kuomintang Anti-Japanese General Zhang Lingfu Now?" "Great River Network,2015-01-23.
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