Chen Xilian's former residence is located in Pengjia Village, Gaoqiao Town, Hong'an County, Huanggang City, Hubei Province, which is a one-in-four, brick and tile structure, with a curved angle flying along the carved building, covering an area of 228 square meters.
Chen Xilian's former residence is a bungalow with a two-in-four brick and tile structure built in the early Qing Dynasty, and the original house is very dilapidated.
In 1948, when General Chen went south, he gave his mother some money, which was built by his mother and brother in three years on the original site.
It was not destroyed in the decades after liberation and was well preserved. It was overhauled in 2002 due to a leaking roof.
The former residence has two halls and four rooms, and the front is a green brick (red clay and lime after fire) wall, which is relatively strong. The gatehouse and windows are made of stone strips. The gatehouse is a traditional inner vault, directly above the stone strip gate is a pair of green dragon carvings, and the gate is a thick wooden door.
The windows are small, surrounded by stone columns and iron bars. The back wall and the left and right side walls are mud brick walls, and the bottom floor has a 1-meter-high bluestone brick wall at the bottom. The furnishings in the house are as old as before, and they are laid out in the style of Mr. Chen Lao's life. Photographs of each period are also attached and illustrated.
Former residence of General Chen Xilian. On the old wall, the words "Ready to fight" can still be faintly seen.
Former residence of General Chen Xilian.
"Modern Zhao Zilong" General Chen Xilian
Chen Xilian, the founding general of the Republic, was born in 1915 to a poor peasant family in Huang'an (now Hong'an) County, Hubei Province. In April 1929, under the condition that he was oppressed by the landlords beyond tolerance, Chen Xilian embarked on the revolutionary road and successively participated in the struggle to open up the revolutionary base area of Eyu and Anhui, and the four anti-"encirclement and suppression" revolutionary base areas of Eyu and Anhui, and the arduous Long March. In the course of the battle, Chen Xilian dared to fight well and charge ahead, established outstanding combat achievements, became a commander of the Red Army with excellent military and political skills, and was praised by people as "a small steel cannon." In August 1937, the 10th Division of the Red Fourth Army was reorganized into the 769th Regiment of the 385th Brigade of the 129th Division, with Chen Xilian as its regimental commander. In accordance with the overall arrangements of the Central Military Commission, Chen Xilian led the 769th Regiment to march on behalf of the 385th Brigade, and under the direct command of Liu Bocheng and Xu Xiangqian, they marched north. On the anti-Japanese battlefield, Chen Xilian played an important role in a series of battles and battles, known as "Zhao Zilong", and wrote new glory for himself and his old troops.
The first battle of Yangmingbao
In mid-October 1937, under the fierce attack of the Japanese army, the Kuomintang in the Shanxi battlefield retreated again and again, successively abandoning the Great Wall defense line from Yanmen Pass to Pingxing Pass and retreating to the Xinkou area for defense. The battle line moved south, making the Battle of Xinkou the key to determining the situation in Shanxi. After the Battle of Xinkou began, in addition to carrying out crazy attacks with infantry on the ground, the Japanese army also took advantage of its absolute superiority in the air, stepping up the airlift of personnel and materials, and at the same time indiscriminately bombing the xinkou front line, causing great losses to the Chinese military and civilians, especially the front-line troops. Therefore, the elimination of these Japanese aircraft became a top priority for insisting on the Battle of Xinkou.
At this time, the 769th Regiment, which had just arrived at the front line, penetrated more than 50 kilometers behind enemy lines and entered the area of Sulongkou and Liujiazhuang on the south bank of the Tuotuo River south of Dai County to deploy. Here, Chen Xilian learned from the local people that there was an airstrip of the Japanese army in yangmingbao town, less than 10 kilometers away from the Tuotuo River, from where the planes supporting the Xinkou front took off. Chen Xilian was keenly aware that the enemy plane was too much of a threat to our anti-Japanese soldiers and people, and we must find a way to knock it out hard. So he quickly began to formulate a well-thought-out battle plan. From October 15 to 18, in order to grasp the details of the airport, he personally led Zhao Chongde, commander of the third battalion, and several company and platoon cadres to repeatedly conduct secret reconnaissance of the Japanese airfield. During this period, they learned from a peasant who was arrested by the Japanese army to do hard labor at the airport and sneaked out of the black airfield: There are 24 planes at this airport, which are parked in 3 trains in normal times, and take turns to bomb Xinkou and Taiyuan during the day and fly back here at night; the Japanese troops defending the airport have about a company, but most of them are stationed on the street of Yangmingbao Town, which is more than 3 miles away from the airport, and there are only dozens of Japanese guards at the airport. It seems that the enemy stationed is quite paralyzed, thinking that this is their rear, and there will be no and cannot be chinese troops who dare to attack behind them. This mentality and defensiveness of the enemy further strengthened the confidence of Chen Xilian and the officers and men of the whole regiment in carrying out a surprise attack on the airfield and winning a victory by surprise, and a complete combat plan was quickly perfected in reconnaissance.
According to the battle plan, on the evening of October 18, Zhao Chongde, commander of the third battalion, led ten companies to the northwest corner of the airfield to first eliminate the Japanese troops guarding the airfield; then, the eleventh company directly penetrated the hinterland of the enemy's airfield and blew up the aircraft; the other companies served as reserves and were responsible for blocking the Japanese troops who came out from the town of Yangmingbao to aid the airport. After an hour of fierce fighting, 24 enemy planes were burned, more than a hundred Japanese troops were annihilated, a glorious example of annihilating a large number of enemy aircraft with infantry was created, and the first victory of the 129th Division after the division was sent out to resist Japan was achieved, which caused the Japanese army to lose its air superiority in the northern Jin Dynasty battlefield for a period of time, seriously weakened the offensive strength of the Japanese army, greatly eased the air pressure of the Chinese army on the Xinkou front, greatly encouraged the enthusiasm of the vast number of soldiers and civilians for resisting the war, and was commended by the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army.
The Battle of Yangmingbao shattered the enemy's guts and became the headline news that spread throughout China and abroad, and the reputation of the 769th Regiment as one of the "four famous regiments of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" was thus laid down, and Chen Xilian became the "Chen Gang Cannon" that the enemy feared.
Set up a ringing hall shop
In the spring of 1938, while actively attacking and capturing the important towns in the southeast of Jin, the Japanese army rushed along the Long Road of Handan, and soon entered and occupied Linfen. For a time, the road from Handan to Changzhi and from Changzhi to Linfen became an important communication line for the Invading Japanese Army to provide rear support for the troops invading the various crossings of the Yellow River. According to the enemy's situation, the commander of the 129th Division was determined to ambush the enemy's round-trip transport troops with the main force at Xiangtangpu in the southwest of Xiangxian County, and cut off the enemy's forward supply.
After being appointed, Chen Xilian carried out a simple mobilization. He said: This time, as the representative of the 385th Brigade, most of our 769th Regiment participated in the offensive and a small part of the reinforcement, so as not to lose people in front of the brother troops of the 386th Brigade. As soon as the words fell, the whole regiment roared: It will never lose the face of the Eyu-Anhui Red Army!
At about 9 o'clock on March 31, 180 vehicles of the Japanese heavy troops and their cover troops entered the ambush circle, and Xu Xiangqian ordered the 771st Regiment to spare more than 100 vehicles in front of them and let them enter the ambush area of the 769th Regiment of the old subordinate Chen Xilian. After the rest of the cars had all entered the ambush area, he ordered a fierce attack. Chen Xi, a pioneer, personally commanded the troops on the front line for two hours, and the Eighth Route Army annihilated more than 400 Japanese soldiers and less, destroyed 180 enemy cars, captured more than 130 long and short guns, 4 mortars, and a large number of military supplies, and exchanged a small price for a major victory.
Soldiers and Lions Mountain
In April 1938, Chen Xilian was transferred to the deputy brigade commander of the 385th Brigade. In June, the 769th Regiment and the Independent Regiment of the 129th Division were merged into the new 385th Brigade, with Chen Xilian as the brigade commander and Xie Fuzhi as the political commissar, with a total of about 8,000 people in the brigade
From the winter of 1939 to the spring of 1940, the Kuomintang diehards set off their first anti-communist upsurge. During this period, Chen Xilian led the 385th Brigade to fight back and annihilate more than 6,400 Kuomintang recalcitrant troops.
From August to December 1940, Chen Xilian led his troops to participate in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments, and carried out a breakout battle in the western section of the Zhengtai Railway, focusing on the yangquan to Yuci section. As soon as the campaign began, he commanded his troops to preemptively occupy Shi'an Mountain. In order to retake Shi'an Mountain, the Japanese brigade headquarters stationed in Yangquan rushed out, first sending a number of aircraft to bomb at low altitude and constantly releasing poison gas; then using ground troops to attack in turn, building fortifications in each section of advance, and repeatedly competing with the Eighth Route Army. Chen Xilian personally came to the front, commanded the troops to fight for every inch of land, fought a bloody battle with the Japanese puppet army for 6 days and nights, cut off the Zhengtai Railway, and effectively covered the safety of the flanks of the road-breaking troops. From guerrilla warfare to position warfare, Chen Xilian made the Japanese puppet army lament that Chen Bu was becoming harder and harder.
In March 1943, in accordance with the spirit of the Wencun High-level Cadres Meeting of the Taihang Branch of the CPC, the Taihang Military Region continued to streamline its troops and implement the localization of the main forces, and most of the direct organs and direct subordinate units of the 385th Brigade were merged with the Third Military Subdistrict of the Taihang Military Region, and Chen Xilian was transferred to the commander of the Third Sub-district of the Taihang Military Region and the commander of the Taihang Column of the Eighth Route Army. After his arrival, he directly commanded the battle of Pan Dragon, Wu, And Xiang, and adopted the tactics of "encircling Japan to fight against the fakes, attacking the weak with the strong, and attacking the weak with the strong, and the fierce tigers digging out their hearts" to annihilate hundreds of Japanese puppet troops.
After the above-mentioned battles and battles, Chen Xilian became the "modern Zhao Zilong" passed down by his comrades-in-arms, and made great contributions to the establishment, consolidation and development of the Taihang Mountain revolutionary base area and to the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Source: Excerpt from "Party History Wenyuan"