460 kilometers west of Chengdu, there is a large swamp called Hongyuan County's Riganqiao, where a huge stone stele is engraved with the inscription "Monument to the Red Army's Long March Across the Meadows". Not far from this swamp, there is a new village called Wache Township Herdsman, where there lives an old man who is now 85 years old, and according to locals, he is the old Red Army who was lost here during the Long March of the Red Army, named Hou Deming.
Everyone will be surprised to see this, the Red Army Long March in 1934, it has been a full 85 years since now, then this 85-year-old lost old Red Army, then not only one year old to participate in the Red Army Long March, is it possible? It's not age fraud. But I tell you that this is real, because his parents took him to participate in the Long March, and it was a family of nine who all participated in the Long March of the Red Army.
Hou Deming introduced that his ancestral home was Dayong, Hunan (present-day Sanjiaguan Township, Yongding District, Zhangjiajie), born in a poor family, and his grandparents and fathers were long-term workers, planting land, raising pigs, herding cattle, no food, no clothes, and often beaten by landlord bullies. Unable to bear the torment of the landlord's bully, the whole family had to go out to beg for food, and sometimes lived in the deep mountains and old forests to survive by fighting wild animals and planting grain.
Later, the Second and Sixth Armies of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army liberated Dayong, Sangzhi, Yongshun, Longshan, and other places one after another; hou jiaxian's second brothers Hou Qingzhi and Hou Qingping and his uncle Hou Changgui joined the Red Army.
Subsequently, due to the encirclement and suppression of the enemy, the Red Second Army and the Red Sixth Army held an oath-taking meeting at the Gantian dam in Sangzhi Liujiaping and the Ruitapu Maple Tree Pagoda respectively. In the evening of the same day, the commander-in-chief ordered a breakthrough, and 18,000 people of the Red Second and Sixth Armies bid farewell to the revolutionary base area of Xiang'echuanqian and embarked on a great journey of strategic transfer.
At the time of the Transfer of the Red Army's Long March, Hou Qingzhi's two brothers' parents Hou Changqian, his mother Yin Chengfu, his younger brother Hou Zongjiu, his wife Liu Damei, and his younger sister Hou Shumei; and Liu Damei was pregnant with a child, and a total of nine members of the family participated in the Long March.
Hou Changqian, Yin Chengfu, Liu Damei, Hou Momei, and Hou Zongjiu were incorporated into the family company. The organization has repeatedly mobilized the family members to disperse home. However, Hou Changqian's family did not want to leave the Red Army, and the whole family repeatedly pleaded with the company commander and instructors, insisting that the whole family move with the troops.
During the Long March, the Red Second and Sixth Armies were surrounded and intercepted by hundreds of thousands of enemy troops, and have been in a tense marching operation. Hou Changgui was injured in the leg and died when crossing the snowy mountain due to physical weakness and rolling down the snow slope. When moving from Chengxian County, Gansu to the north of Weihe, he was blocked by heavy enemy troops, and Hou Qingzhi's regiment only had 4 companies of troops left, and he survived after a tenacious and bitter battle.
The road of the Long March is long and arduous. Under the siege and interception of hundreds of thousands of enemy troops, the Red 2nd and 6th Armies tried to establish base areas several times in Qiandong and Panxian, but they failed to succeed due to changes in the enemy situation and could only continue to move. The troops left Hunan, Guizhou, and Yunnan, and Liu Damei was unable to move because she was pregnant, and she often fell behind. When they were almost past the snowy mountains, the troops specially arranged for Hou Qingzhi to take care of his wife, Liu Damei.
Soon after, his uncle Hou Changgui was wounded in the leg during the battle, and when he crossed the snowy mountain, he rolled down the snow slope due to physical weakness, and like many Red Army soldiers, he died on the snowy mountain. His father, Hou Changqian, was seriously injured and unable to move, and his younger son Hou Zongjiu was placed in the home of He Tiansong in Chengxian County, Gansu Province, after Hou Changqian died of his injuries, and Hou Zongjiu was adopted as an adopted son by He Tiansong and his wife. Hou Yimei was killed in this battle. After Yin Chengfu was left behind, he begged along the way and found the Red Army team in Fuping, Shaanxi In December 1936.
Hou Momei was also shot and killed while carrying a stretcher in that battle. Yin Chengfu fell into a sinkhole and was rescued the next day by a farmer who cut firewood. With tenacious perseverance, she begged along the way and inquired about the whereabouts of the Red Army, until December of that year, when she finally found the Red Army team in Fuping, Shaanxi.
One day, Hou Qingzhi helped his wife to hurry, because Liu Damei was difficult to insist on marching, and the distance from the troops was getting farther and farther. Hou Qingzhi anxiously said to his wife: "Once you fall out of line and break away from the Red Army, your life will be in danger!" Liu Damei said firmly: "You go to the troops quickly, let me go slowly alone." Hou Qingzhi wanted to come and go, but he had to grit his teeth, put his wife in a family of ordinary people, left all the only two pieces of guangyang and a small bag of dry food on his body, and repeatedly told his wife to give birth to the child and never fall into the hands of the enemy. The two parted in tears. Later, Liu Damei gave birth to a boy, named Hou Deming, who was taken in by a local monastery. Liu Damei went to look for the Red Army again, and her whereabouts have been unknown ever since.
Hou Deming was adopted by a lama named Geshe Agu, he was kind-hearted, very friendly to the Red Army, taught him to learn Tibetan, gave him the Tibetan name "Lorwu", which means "baby" in Tibetan, and after slowly growing up, The young Hou Deming was smart and studious, very industrious, and soon won the love of local Tibetan compatriots. Later, he married QuMeiram, the niece of Geshe Agu, and gave birth to two sons and a daughter.
After the founding of New China, Hou Qingzhi returned to his hometown in Hunan to become a captain in the Ministry of People's Armed Forces, got married and had 9 children, and left Hugh to be the deputy chief of staff of the Hunan Provincial Military Region. Hou Qingzhi had inquired about Hou Deming's whereabouts in many ways, but his name was not this, and his living customs had been completely hidden, so the people who searched for him never found Hou Deming's "trace", and did not find it until his death.
Later, the relatives of the Hou family formed a family search group, and finally found this old Red Army that had been lost for more than eighty years, for a while, the Hou family boiled over, from the name, region, approximate age, and even image, he was very much like his big brother! Immediately, the family personally came to Waqie Township in Hongyuan County, Sichuan province to see "LuoErwu", and Hou Deming stooped down and laboriously presented them with white Hada one by one.
After that, Hou Deming held the remains of his father and the martyrdom certificate of his mother Liu Damei, and reluctantly embarked on the road back to Hongyuan in Sichuan. When bidding farewell to his relatives, Hou Deming said: "My mother is still in the grassland, and I want to go there to accompany her." I'm older and may not be able to come back. Your brothers and sisters need more help, more contacts, and when you have time, you will come to Wáche..." After 80 years of wind and rain, the scene of the belated family reunion is really very touching.