Hu Zongnan, a first-class general in the Republic of China Army, known as the "first protégé of Tianzi", was Chiang Kai-shek's favorite and most important military general, and was once the "King of the Northwest" who held hundreds of thousands of heavy troops and commanded several corps. But in my eyes, Hu Zongnan is a person who does not know how to fight.
On May 12, 1947, Hu Zongnan heard a comment by me specifically commenting on him, entitled "The Sinister and Hypocritical Hu Zongnan of Zhidacai": "Chiang Kai-shek's last trump card is now stuck in northern Shaanxi, and he cannot enter and advance, retreat and retreat, and Hu Zongnan is now riding on the back of a tiger... Facts have proved that the Hu Zongnan on which Chiang Kai-shek relied was actually a rice bucket of 'great ambition and great talent'..."[i]
It is said that Hu Zongnan therefore stopped reading my radio newspaper, and it had been nearly two months since Hu Zongnan first entered Yan'an, the empty city I had left for him. In these two months, although Hu Zongnan said that he had "occupied" Yan'an, he was completely overwhelmed, and it was clear that he would continue to be burned down. This general, whom I call the rice bucket, had to pay the price for his bragging.
To tell the truth, Hu Zongnan, as the "King of the Northwest", still knew Yan'an relatively well compared to other generals in the Republic of China, and because he was ordered to suppress me, he often made some active understanding of Yan'an, and even wanted to come to Yan'an to visit, but because he was blocked by Jiang, he was unable to make the trip.
Chairman Mao said that there are "ten noes" in Yan'an: first, there are no corrupt officials and corrupt officials, second, there are no local tycoons and inferior gentry, third, there is no gambling, fourth there is no prostitute, fifth, there is no little wife, sixth there is no flower, seventh there is no party and privateers, eighth there is no sluggishness, nine no one eats friction food, and ten people do not make the country rich. [ii] At that time, after Hu Zongnan heard this on the radio, his mouth was a little unconvinced, saying: "Only old Mao can blow this kind of cow!" Now, he came, he came to Yan'an, and it was his turn to "brag", but he blew the cow into a joke.
Before hu zongnan occupied the empty city of Yan'an, he drafted a "Letter to the People of Northern Shaanxi" and put forward his own "administrative program," claiming that he wanted to thoroughly implement the Three People's Principles and be more revolutionary than me. On March 19, he got his wish, and although he knew it was an empty city, he still sent this telegram to Chiang Kai-shek: "After seven days and nights of fierce fighting, the First Brigade finally occupied Yan'an on the 19th. More than 50,000 enemy soldiers were captured, countless weapons and ammunition were captured, and they were being investigated. Chiang Kai-shek quickly telegraphed him, and the telegram read as follows:
Yan'an was recovered as scheduled, and it was slightly comforted by the shame of the party for twenty-one years. My brother worked hard, was loyal and courageous, and the heavens were rewarded. When you read the good news, there is no satisfaction. All officers and men who have meritorious service and those who have died or injured shall be reported in detail as soon as possible. As far as the order of Yan'an is concerned, it should be quickly restored, paying special attention to the original remnants and the group of returning people and prisoners, so that they can fully expose and fully realize the animal behavior of the oppressive and deceitful beasts of the communist bandits. Ten days later, Chinese and foreign journalists will come to Visit Yan'an, and at that time they will show some performance, so that the hypocritical propaganda of the communist bandits will always be completely exposed. It is best to temporarily maintain all its systems and local organizations, so that the local people can automatically abolish them, so that the people's rescue and leadership must do their best to appreciate that the central authorities are actually the saviors of their liberation. [iii]
Hu Zongnan's bragging process in Yan'an began here, he was "ashamed" and made things bigger, he had to pose and make a show. First, he set up a "Service office for the people" to distribute food to the local people. When the common people received the grain for the white hair, he sent someone to ask, "Is the national army good or the communist army good?" The other party was not good at answering directly, so he said: "All good!" ”
The people sent asked, "Is the nationalist army better or the communist army better?" "The other person is no longer speaking. The person who asked the question was not polite, and directly slapped the other party: "Eating our grain in vain, let you say such a sentence can not be said!" The other side said: "The communist army has been here for so long, and it has never slapped me... You guys just came and did it... Is your national army good or the communist army good? ”
Hu Zongnan did not seem to care about lifting a stone and dropping it on his own feet in this way, and he also had to prepare to receive Chinese and foreign journalists. He instructed the following clerks that since "more than fifty thousand enemy enemies have been captured and countless weapons and ammunition have been captured," there must be at least two such items: a prisoner of war camp of the communist army; and a second capture showroom. But what if no one is captured? It can only be filled by its own people and weapons.
Hu Zongnan captured 500 local people, filled them with 1,500 soldiers, and began to make up and train them to become prisoners of our army. As for the captured weapons, the Three-Eighth Type and Hanyang-made weapons were the mainstays, and all the troops could find and those that could be mobilized were drawn. But the problem comes out as soon as this is done - because the weapons are "innumerable", why do so many soldiers have no guns? Thinking about it, Hu Zongnan thought of a way -- sticking stickers -- to put a note on those weapons, write down the time and place of capture, and "transfer" whose weapons are " , who must remember this time and place, so that there will be no chaos, and they will be transferred to the showroom during the day and sent back at night.
The next step is the training of the "captives" and the drafting of the tour of the showroom, the weapons in the showroom are dead, can not speak, the explanatory words are relatively simple, on the continuous application of a word - compilation, compilation, compilation. This is relatively simple, anyway, it is nonsense, random editing, blind editing, and there will be no big loopholes. But the "captives" are different, they are living people, they have to be able to talk, they have to be interviewed by reporters, and, like the real thing, it is somewhat difficult.
In order to do this thing decently, Hu Zongnan examined it, and the pre-designed interviewee was a captured brigade commander. Hu Zongnan asked the "brigade commander": "How are you doing over there?" The "brigade commander" lizheng reported to Chief Hu: "The president's ... Very good! Hu Zongnan said: "This is not a communist army, one mouth is our people, no, no, no!" He then instructed his men to continue training.
The men called the "brigade commander" into a cave and designed a lot of dialogue for the "brigade commander", until the "brigade commander" could answer freely, and said uneasily: "If you encounter some tricky and strange questions, you can't answer them, just shut up, pretend not to hear clearly, pretend to be stupid." He also brought the "brigade commander" to Hu Zongnan, who asked a few questions, basically agreed, and asked the "brigade commander" to return to the "prisoner camp", but expressed dissatisfaction with the people who trained the "brigade commander": "If you think about it, when the brigade commander of the communist army mentions the president, can he still call him president?" You have to call Chiang Kai-shek, scold, understand? The people who trained understood and finally successfully trained the "brigade commander."
Next, Hu Zongnan had to face another problem: there were only 2,000 "captives", but there were more than ten "captive camps", so how could these 2,000 people fill more than ten "captive camps"? He instructed his men to let the "captives" take turns sitting in the village, and the reporters visited and interviewed the "captive camp" at the end of the interview, and used a car to quickly send the "captives" to the next "captive camp" and face the reporters again. In this way, there are "captives" in every "captive camp", and there is a steady stream of tens of thousands of people, and there is no need to prepare tens of thousands of people. His men thought this was a good idea, and at the same time gave Hu Zongnan a good idea—the "captives" could not only live, but also have to die—there had to be a large number of fake graves to prove the misery of Hu Bu's capture of Yan'an.
Hu Zongnan quickly agreed, and the Nationalist army in Yan'an therefore launched a huge "tomb-making campaign"; in order to make the fake tombs more realistic, they also cut down a lot of trees and made wooden planks, and in the form of "tombstones" recorded when and where the Nationalist army eliminated those "communist troops".
In early April, reporters from 55 people, belonging to 39 media outlets, both Chinese and foreign, came to report on Huzong's "Northern Shaanxi Victory" in the southern conquest of Yan'an. However, hu zongnan's operation of the "prisoner camp" went wrong, and after the first interview, the "brigade commander" trained by them was transported to the next interview point and was preparing to be interviewed again, but was recognized by the reporters: "Isn't this the one we just interviewed?" The "brigade commander" immediately thought of the "shut up" that the trainer had taught him to "shut up and not talk", and held himself red in the face, into a straight, somewhat fat wooden pillar.
What to do? Hu Zongnan thought of silver, money can make the ghost grind, he gave those reporters a "sealing fee", the "Northern Shaanxi Victory" really "blew" out, he also began to enjoy life in these "victory news". At this time, he adopted the method of not reporting the defeats I gave him, such as the three battles and three victories I gave him, such as the three battles and three victories I gave him. He took the time to get married, and also accepted condolences from various Kuomintang systems in the northwest region to come to Yan'an, and for this reason, some people even proposed that Yan'an be changed to Zongnan County, "in recognition of the great honor of Hu Chang'an's restoration of Yan'an.", he not only acquiesced, but also waited for the good news that this proposal was sent to Nanjing was approved.
On August 7, Hu Zongnan waited for Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek flew to Yan'an on a special plane on the Meiling, and was immediately transported by heavy troops to the best and heavily guarded diplomatic hotel in the border area in Yan'an. Hu Zongnan not only brought Chiang Kai-shek's living utensils, bathtubs, tableware, and toilets from Xi'an earlier, but also found some people who could sing and conducted a "ceremony of entering the city" and asked them to sing "Dongfang Hong": The sun rises in the East, and China has a Chiang Kai-shek... Slap Chiang Kai-shek on the ass. Most of those people were local people and students, and when they sang, they sang the song back and sang it as it was—they didn't even know who Chiang Kai-shek was, and they only had Chairman Mao in their hearts.
Many articles today have shown this, but the specific statements are different, one is that Chiang Kai-shek sat on the car and did not hear it; the other is that Chiang Kai-shek was in a good mood when he heard it. But whether you hear it or not, whether you sing it back or not, people can see that Hu Zongnan's kung fu of bragging and patting the horse's ass is very good. This was Chiang Kai-shek's first and last visit to Yan'an, or more directly the only time in his life, that he probably did not expect that the grand welcome he received was actually a dishonest and false enthusiasm deliberately created by Hu Zongnan.
That night, Chiang Kai-shek held a military meeting for Hu Zongnan and his able subordinates, and when he came to zaoyuan, he saw the cave where Chairman Mao had lived, "only to see that it was no different from the cave where the local peasants lived, the doors and windows were made of old wood that had not been painted, the walls inside the cave were peeling off, the elm table by the window was uneven, and the simple bed was also made of elm nails." There are many literary works here that like emotional processing:
Although Chiang Kai-shek's intelligence on Mao Zedong and others has not been interrupted for more than a decade. At this moment, in the face of the small city of Yan'an and these almost primitive cave dwellings, he was still very shocked, and he could not imagine how the old opponent could maintain a strong fighting spirit in such a harsh living environment, how he could effectively command thousands of troops and horses, and be able to write the article so sharply and sharply on such a table. Chiang Kai-shek was amazed at Mao's will and lamented his perseverance. The guards who watched with him also sighed one by one. [iv]
In fact, these descriptions are just a sentence for Chiang Kai-shek: Under such difficult conditions, will the Nationalist army still fight a war, can it win a war? Perhaps, it was precisely for this reason that Chiang Kai-shek's mood became very bad, and he left Yan'an on the same day. What we want to say is that Chiang Kai-shek must have known about the ten nones in Yan'an like Hu Zongnan, but they clearly did not take these "noes" seriously, so in the future they could only meet the great rout of tens of millions of miles, and what the common people wanted to sing was never: The red sun in the east is rising, and China has produced Chiang Kai-shek.
[i] "The Sinister and Hypocritical Hu Zongnan of ZhidaCai", Jin-Cha-Ji Daily, May 12, 1947;
[ii] Chairman Mao's speech at the Yan'an People's Conference on February 1, 1940;
[iii] Xiong Xianghui, Twelve Years Underground and Zhou Enlai, Central Party School Press, 1991;
[iv] "Chiang Kai-shek's Trip to Yan'an", Yan'an Government Network, November 14, 2013.
The pictures in this article are from the network, thanks to the original author!
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