As we all know, Du Yuesheng was one of the most legendary figures on the beach in the first half of the 20th century. From a small scoundrel to a wealth tycoon involved in entertainment, culture, education, finance, and journalism, he called the wind and rain, and he was omnipotent, and the huge gangster kingdom he built is still terrifying.
The tyrant had come from poverty. Du Yuesheng once recalled his childhood: "At that time, the tuition fee for a month was only five cents, but unfortunately, because the family was too poor, after reading until the fifth month, the first mother could not pay the tuition fee, so she had to stop school." ”
The painful experience of out-of-school children makes Du Yuesheng unforgettable. Although he is from a rough background, he attaches great importance to culture. After becoming famous, he has been working hard to improve his cultural accomplishment, and the entrance hall hangs high in the couplet "Friends with the World Corporal, Read the Books of the Ancients", always spurring himself. However, after all, he was illiterate and could not "read", so he hired a clever storyteller to tell him "Three Kingdoms" and "Water Margin" for a long time, learning historical knowledge and the way the ancients lived in the world.
He practiced calligraphy diligently and wrote his signatures quite beautifully.
He paid great attention to the civility of appearance, no matter how hot the weather, the top button of his robe was never undone, and forbade the disorganized and shirtless disciples to enter and leave dumen.
Du Yuesheng
Du Yuesheng was born in 1888, a native of Chuansha, Jiangsu (now Pudong New Area, Shanghai), whose original name was Du Yuesheng, which is a very common and somewhat rustic name. After the discovery, he felt that the name was not tall enough, so he asked someone to help him change the name.
The person who helped him change his name to Du Yuesheng was a very cattle person, named Zhang Taiyan, a famous master of traditional Chinese studies.
The master is the master, Zhang Taiyan, with the indecent name of his original name "Yuesheng", helped him find a name for him from the sentence "The music of the East is sheng, and the music of the West is the yong", advocating that the big name is "Yong" and the number "Yue Sheng". Only one word was changed, and the name was immediately upgraded, and the aura was much larger.
With a lot of money in your hand, you have a lot of friends around you. In addition to Zhang Taiyan, many well-known figures in the cultural circles, such as Huang Yanpei, Zhang Shizhao, Yang Du, Jiang Yiping, Zheng Yuxiu, Qin Liankui, Chen Qun, Yang Yunshi, Yang Qianli, etc., are Du Yuesheng's ordinary guests.
Li Yuanhong, who had been the president of the Republic of China, had a secretary general named Rao Hanxiang, who was also a great scholar, and he gave Du Yuesheng such a couplet: "Three thousand guests under the Chunshen Gate, five feet south of Du Cheng." ”
The evaluation is not high, but it is also in line with the facts.
Of course, it is good to have a wide range of celebrities, which is conducive to the overall improvement of a person. The influence of culture has transformed Du Yuesheng's entire temperament. When Xu Zhucheng, a famous old newspaperman, recalled the scene when he first saw Du Yuesheng when he was young, he said that he originally thought that this person would be a green-faced fangs, but when he met him, he knew that he was a thin old man who was very gentle in speech and demeanor.
At that time, there was such a sentence to describe the three underworld bosses on the beach: Golden Rong loved money, Zhang Xiaolin was good at fighting, and Du Yuesheng would be a man. Jin Rong ate black and white in the French Concession, Zhang Xiaolin had hands and eyes in the military circles, only Du Yuesheng, relying on human feelings, long sleeves and good dancers, on the surface looked the most unworld habits, and was known as "the number one person in the three hundred years of the Green Gang".
Now many people are very envious of Du Yuesheng's richness in those years, and the inspirational chicken soup article about Du Yuesheng has turned and turned in the WeChat circle. But where Du Yuesheng's money came from, he rarely asked. The answer is: from the poison of yellow gambling. Du Yuesheng, in conjunction with Jin Jinrong and Zhang Xiaolin, not only monopolized the opium business in Shanghai Beach, but also sold opium throughout the country through the French Concession, killing many people.
In 1930, the Du Ancestral Hall built by Du Yuesheng was completed, which was very large in scale and gathered by famous artists. But few people know that another use of the Du Ancestral Hall is to make morphine and other drugs here.
The pain of Du Yuesheng's life is nothing more than the bad thing that he helped Chiang Kai-shek do.
In early April 1927, the situation in Shanghai was uncertain. On April 5, Chiang Kai-shek, commander-in-chief of the Northern Expeditionary Army, sent a plaque of "Common Struggle" written by himself to the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, while sharpening his knife and preparing to go on a killing spree. In this series of activities, the pioneer is the Shanghai Gang.
On the evening of April 11, Wang Shouhua, chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, came to the Du Yuesheng Mansion on Hua Ge Zhen Road in the French Concession and was invited by Du Yuesheng to his palace to discuss resolving the friction between the workers' pickets and the gang organization "Chinese Communist Advancement Association".
Before leaving, Gu Shunzhang, the commander-in-chief of the workers' pickets, suggested that he take a small group of workers' pickets with him, but Wang Shouhua replied with a smile: "No." Mr. Du and I are old friends, and this riot was successful, and he helped us a lot and gave us a lot of guns. Besides, not long ago, a group of defeated soldiers disturbed the Du Family Ancestral Hall in Pudong, and I sent troops to destroy them. I had come and gone with him and couldn't turn my face. ”
Wang Shouhua was still too naïve, and the result was tragic—he was buried alive at the fenglin bridge in Shanghai by Du Yuesheng's men, at the age of 27.
Du Yuesheng then instructed a large number of hooligans to attack the workers' pickets and massacre the Communists and the masses of workers, committing heinous crimes.
After the establishment of Chiang Kai-shek's Nanjing government, Du Yuesheng became an adviser to the Nanjing government's Army, Navy, and Air Force Headquarters, a major general in the Military Commission, and a senator in the Executive Yuan.
Turning a mafia leader into a major general can only be done by Chiang Kai-shek.
Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek's deeds have always been looked down upon by people.
Du Yuesheng and his fifth aunt, Tai Meng Xiaodong
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Du Yuesheng did something to support the War of Resistance, and many people spoke highly of him in this regard.
Du Yuesheng participated in the Shanghai Anti-Enemy Support Association from all walks of life and served as a member of the presidium and director of the preparatory committee. In the remaining months alone, the fundraising meeting presided over by Du Yuesheng raised more than 1.5 million yuan in donations to save the country, which effectively supported the war of resistance in the front. He raised large quantities of towels, cigarettes, and canned food for the army. At the end of the August 13Rd War, when he learned that the Xie Jinyuan regiment stationed at the Sixing warehouse lacked food, he sent 200,000 cakes to the Xie regiment in just one day. He took the initiative to lend Du Meilu's private residence to the "Persuasion Committee" of the Ministry of Finance as an office location, and mobilized and organized forces from all walks of life in Shanghai to subscribe to 75 million yuan of national bonds for national salvation, accounting for almost 1/6 of the total issuance. Du Yuesheng also obtained some urgently needed communication equipment and armored insurance vehicles from the army to give to the CHINESE communist generals, and at the request of Pan Hannian, the representative of the Eighth Route Army stationed in Shanghai, he imported a thousand sets of gas masks from the Netherlands and gave them to the officers and men of the Eighth Route Army on the northern Jin front for use.
After the fall of Shanghai, Du Yuesheng, as the head of the municipal anti-enemy committee from all walks of life, continued to persist in the concession for a period of time. He did not hesitate to spend a lot of money to buy a lot of progressive books such as "Journey to the West" and "The Complete Works of Lu Xun" that the CPC organization managed to publish, and burned the golden characters of "Du Yuesheng Gift" and sent them to the major libraries in the concession to provide spiritual food for the broad masses of citizens to resist Japan and save their lives.
But he did not make less money in the country.
In 1943, a fierce battle between China and Japan was in full swing. Du Yuesheng cooperated with Dai Kasa to establish Tongji Company. At that time, the nationalist area was under perennial artillery fire, and the light industry was very backward. The development of light industry is closely related to the people's livelihood, the necessities of life in the national unification area are very limited, and there has been a situation of malicious hoarding of goods, which has led to very serious inflation, and Tongji Company is one of the most important factors.
At the same time, in the areas occupied by Japan at that time, light industry also developed rapidly, but there was a lack of materials for the development of heavy industry, such as non-ferrous ore. Then came the most appalling scene in the history of human warfare: the fierce war between China and Japan was in full swing, but in order to continue the war, the two sides traded behind their backs. Du Yuesheng got scarce necessities of life, and the Japanese got heavy industrial materials.
Typical collusion between officials and businessmen is to make national disasters and wealth, and it is also nakedly providing strategic resources for the invasion of China and the Japanese Kou.
After the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Du Yuesheng wanted to gain an influential position in Chiang Kai-shek's regime, but failed to do so. Because of these positions, Chiang Kai-shek was selected, that is to say, Du Yuesheng was abandoned by Chiang Kai-shek. So Du Yuesheng later said such a very emotional sentence on this: Chiang Kai-shek took me as a night pot, and after using it, he stuffed it under the bed.
On April 21, the People's Liberation Army crossed the Yangtze River, and on the 23rd, Nanjing was liberated, and the liberation of Shanghai was imminent. Chiang Kai-shek, who was in his hometown of Fenghua Xikou, still remembered Du Yuesheng, and sent a telegram to Shanghai Mayor Wu Guozhen and Police Chief Mao Sen to urge Du Yuesheng to go to Taiwan.
But Du Yuesheng insisted on going to Hong Kong.
After living in Hong Kong, Du Yuesheng happened to see such a news in the newspaper: In the winter of 1950, Shanghai citizens dug up the body of Wang Shouhua, the leader of the early Shanghai labor movement of the Chinese Communist Party, at Fenglin Bridge, and exhibited Wang Shouhua's blood clothes at the Workers' Cultural Palace.
Later, it was reported that the Shanghai government had come to kill Wang Shouhua's murderers Ma Xiangsheng and Ye Zhuoshan at the Yiyuan Mass Trial and sentenced them to capital punishment, and at the site of Wang Shouhua's murder at Fenglin Bridge, the two were executed by firing squad.
As the main murderer of Wang Shouhua, Du Yuesheng's heart fluctuated from then on, and his mood was extremely restless, and he fell ill, who was already in poor health.
This piece of heart disease is getting worse and worse.
Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan still did not forget Du Yuesheng at this time, and sent Yu Hongjun, Hong Lanyou, and others to Hong Kong to lobby him to go to Taiwan, but Du Yuesheng refused on the grounds that he was plagued by illness.
Du Yuesheng knew very well that Chiang Kai-shek was not kind. Taiwan absolutely cannot go, because if you go, you will die faster and die even more ugly.
In his later years, Du Yuesheng
On March 11, 1951, Taiwan's "JoongAng Daily" forwarded the 10-day special telegram of the China News Agency in Hong Kong: Qian Yongming, Zhang Gongquan, Du Yuesheng, etc., and were ready to apply to go to Taiwan.
Of course, this is fake news, and it is Chiang Kai-shek's public opinion war.
Producing fake news has always been a good trick for the Kuomintang.
Add another handful of firewood to the fire! The cunning Chiang Kai-shek then used intimidation.
In early April 1951, Kuomintang agents in Hong Kong sent a message to Du Yuesheng: The mainland was about to negotiate with the British authorities in Hong Kong to escort him back to Shanghai and criticize him at the liquidation of the "April 12" coup, and at the same time, the mainland had sent people to infiltrate Hong Kong Island, and if the negotiations failed, he would be summarily executed.
Due to the poor information at that time and the inability to verify the authenticity, Du Yuesheng fell into extreme fear, causing severe neurasthenia and heart disease. In July of that year, Du Yuesheng suffered a stroke but refused treatment, and died on August 16, at the age of 63. This once invincible figure was scared to death and had no choice but to spend it.
Du Yuesheng's education of his children is still commendable, he strictly requires their studies, and strictly prohibits them from being involved in tobacco gambling prostitutes. His son Du Weifan skipped a big exam in high school and was slapped twice by him; his daughter Du Meiru, who had a poor foreign language test, was beaten ten times with a whip. His eight sons and three daughters were well educated and trained, and they were all active in overseas business circles. (Liu Jixing)