In 1969, in a hospital in Beijing, an old gentleman who was nearly eighty years old passed away unexpectedly. From his rough hands and face blown by the sea breeze, it is difficult to see that he once led the tattered warships of old China to guard the motherland's sea frontiers and resist foreign invaders several times, and he was a national hero, Chen Shaokuan, the admiral of the Republic of China.
Expedition to the sea
Chen Shaokuan was born in 1889 to a poor family in Chengmen Township, Minxian County, Fujian Province (now part of Chengmen Town, Cangshan District, Fuzhou City). His father was originally a hoop smith, but was later recruited by the Qing government's sailors, from sailor officers to sergeants to manage wheels. When he returned home to visit his family, he often talked to the young Chen Shaokuan about military life at sea.
This made Chen Shaokuan associate with the Navy, and since then he has been full of interest in warships, artillery, and navigation since then. Sure enough, under the influence of his father, he practiced English hard in order to be exposed to advanced foreign navigation technology, and successfully entered the Jiangnan Water Teachers School at the age of 17.
As a child born into poverty, it was extremely rare to be able to enter the university in the old society, and Chen Shaokuan rejoiced. However, unlike the vigorous him, the Qing Dynasty at this time was on the verge of collapse, and in the Battle of Jiawu, the Beiyang Marine Division was completely destroyed, and the corrupt Qing government could only sign the Treaty of Maguan and once again swallow the bitter fruit of defeat.
Bó Lè does not often exist
Despite the defeat in the war, a large number of patriots still emerged. Sa Zhenbing, a famous admiral in the late Qing Dynasty of China, although he was a Mongolian, he did not love to draw bows and arrows, preferred to sail ships to the sea, graduated from the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England, and after returning to China, he served as a battleship pipe belt of the Beiyang Marine Division. Deng Shichang and Liu Butou, who were martyred in the Later Battle of Jiawu, were comrades-in-arms.
After the signing of the Maguan Treaty, Sa Zhen bing was discouraged and once had suicidal thoughts. Thanks to the persuasion of foreign advisers, it was abandoned. Subsequently, he opened the Yantai Naval Military School, and was appointed by the imperial court, and was promoted to the Admiral of the North and South Seas Navy and the Admiral of the Guangdong Navy. Sa Zhenbing hopes to recruit young people who are interested in naval construction while preparing to reorganize the Beiyang Marine Division, which was crushed by the Japanese army.
Sa Zhenbing founded Yantai Naval Academy with the original intention of cultivating naval talents for the country to resist foreign invasion. But he found that after graduation, his students were recruited by the major warlords and became the consumables of their civil war. In addition, at this time, the Qing government had perished, the domestic situation was unclear, and external and internal troubles made Sa Zhenbing, who had a patriotic heart, physically and mentally exhausted.
One day, After finishing his official duties, Sa Zhenbing rested on a recliner, and for many days he took advantage of every opportunity to fall asleep directly in the chair. It wasn't until the evening that he woke up from his slumber, when Sa Zhenbing was surprised to find that he had an extra quilt on his body, and it turned out that a naval soldier who was interning at the school was passing by, afraid that the principal would catch a cold, so he made this move.
If it is Cao Cao in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", then the direction of the story is different, but Sa Zhenbing does not have the suspiciousness of Cao Cao's adulterous male, but pays attention to this young man, after many inquiries, he found out that the soldier who covered himself is named Chen Zhaohan, this person is illiterate, but down-to-earth and industrious.
If you can handle the details well, you will not be bad at big things. Since then, Sa Zhenbing has focused on cultivating Chen Zhaohan, who has also worked very hard, from ordinary soldiers to officers step by step, and later Sa Zhenbing even married his daughter to him.
Chen Zhaohan knew that although he was practical and hardworking, his talent was limited in the end, so he recommended his nephew, Chen Shaokuan, who had just graduated from the Jiangnan Water Teachers School, to his father-in-law. Sa Zhenbing saw that this young man named Chen Shaokuan was white and pure, but after careful consideration, he found that his navigation knowledge was rich, his technology was solid, and he also had his own views on some new naval technologies in European and American countries, so he prepared to vigorously train him and directly promoted him to a low-level officer.
Sharp edge
Chen Shaokuan was a prominent officer in the Navy when he was a low-level officer, and he used the method of "two-end encirclement" to successfully intercept the naval warship stolen by Chen Qimei, and his reputation was greatly enhanced for a time, and he was promoted by the government to acting captain of the "Zhaohe" warship.
At this time, Sa Zhenbing deeply felt that the domestic naval technology could not make Chen Shaokuan make long-term progress, so he sent him to study with the current naval power, Britain. During his stay in Europe, Chen Shaokuan once again continued the excellent quality of hard work, he not only personally entered the warship and the famous naval school for inspection, but even after the Beiyang government declared war on the Allies, he crossed the nationality requirements to join the British submarine force to participate in the Battle of Jutland, and performed well in this battle, and was awarded the medal by the British naval authorities.
However, with the victory of the Allies in World War I, China did not get the dignity and benefits it deserved as a victorious country, and the land of the Chinese nation was further divided. Chen Shaokuan, who participated in the Paris Peace Conference throughout the whole process, witnessed this humiliating scene with his own eyes, and he deeply felt that "weak countries have no diplomacy", and even if he mastered advanced navigation technology and naval concepts, the motherland was still poor and sick.
Therefore, shortly after the conclusion of the peace conference, Chen Shaokuan left for China, hoping that the Nationalist government would also form a strong navy. Unexpectedly, shortly after returning to China, he encountered the Northern Expedition of the National Revolutionary Army.
During the Northern Expedition, Chen Shaokuan, who had originally served under the warlords, resolutely led his ships to revolt for the sake of the ideal China in his heart, and counterattacked the warlord Sun Chuanfang. In the later War of Resistance Against Japan, he was appointed admiral by the Kuomintang government to oversee the Chinese army's maritime operations against Japan.
Fight against the Japanese
A careful analysis of the strength of the Japanese Navy and the Chinese Navy during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression reveals the disparity between the two. The former as an island country, naturally pay attention to the construction of the navy, only there are 4 aircraft carriers, serving 130,000 naval soldiers, 285 ships, a total tonnage of more than 1.15 million tons, its strong strength even once in the Pacific battlefield, facing the US military to gain the upper hand.
At that time, China's military industry was almost zero, with only more than 20,000 navy personnel, 66 old ships, and a total tonnage of only more than 50,000 tons, not even a fraction of the Japanese navy. As far as the navy was concerned, Japan in that era was a generation ahead of China.
Under such a bad situation, Chen Shaokuan, in spite of the Japanese threat and the gap in equipment, still led the dilapidated naval vessels out of the harbor to meet the attack, fought back and forth with the Japanese Navy Admiral Hasegawa Kiyoshi, and even joined forces with various departments along the Yangtze River in the middle of the war to prepare to implement the "blockade of the Yangtze River" plan, with the intention of attacking back and forth, so that the Japanese Navy could not take care of each other, but unfortunately Wang Jingwei defected, sent special envoys to inform the Japanese Kou, and the battle plan was successfully defeated.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Chen Shaokuan, as a national hero, refused to go to civil war, so he was transferred from the military to the government department by the Kuomintang government. During this period, he signed the surrender agreement of Japan as a representative of China aboard the USS Missouri and witnessed the founding of the United Nations in New York.
After the peaceful liberation of Fujian, Chen Shaokuan refused to travel to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek and became the vice governor of Fujian Province of the Communist Party of China. It wasn't until 1969 that the nearly octogenarian national hero spent his glorious life in the hospital.