At about 2:00 a.m. on May 6, 1923, a train from Pukou, Jiangsu Province, to Tianjin was speeding on the tracks, with a number of Chinese officials and foreign envoys, members of the Rockefeller family from American oil tycoons, daughters of U.S. senators, and an American correspondent in China named "Powell." At this time most of them were sleeping, the American reporter was chatting with a Frenchman about the situation in China, warlords were fighting, bandits were rampant, there were several bandit teams even larger than the regular army, they were talking, the train suddenly braked sharply, because the driver found that there was a railway track in front of it that had been removed, and then accompanied by gunfire, thousands of bandits boarded the train, controlled everyone, and began to loot, during which an Englishman tried to resist and was shot on the spot by the bandits.
The next day, the newspaper reported on the front page that the most advanced "blue steel leather" train in China was hijacked in Shandong Province, and more than 20 Chinese and 39 foreigners on the board were all kidnapped! This incident brought unprecedented diplomatic and political crises to the Beiyang government, and even almost became the fuse of the Aggression of the Western Powers against China. This is the famous "Lincheng Train Robbery" in the Republic of China period, and the leader of the bandits is Sun Meiyao, Xiangma, Shandong.
Sun MeiYao
Sun Meiyao is a native of Zaozhuang, Shandong, the fifth oldest in his family, although his bandit ranks are so large, he is not a habitual bandit who has been up the mountain for many years, but the son of a rich family. His elder brother Sun Meizhu was still a talent, and originally wanted to continue to obtain meritorious titles through the imperial examination, but the Xinhai Revolution came, the Qing Dynasty collapsed, and his four books and five classics from elementary school could not be used in that war-torn era.
As a large local household, the Sun family was often "patronized" by groups of bandits, and Sun Meizhu was overwhelmed, so she took her younger brother Sun Meiyao and some local regiments to form a team to protect the villagers. As more and more victims defected to him, Sun Meizhu's team also grew larger, so in 1920, the "Shandong Jianguo Autonomous Army" was formally established, with Sun Meizhu as the commander-in-chief of the coalition army and Sun Meiyao as the deputy commander.
Sun Meiyao
In this way, Sun Meizhu and his own team also learned from other bandits, began to "eat big households", and often kidnapped the objects of extortion of tickets outside the columns of large landlords within a radius of tens of miles, because the quality of the people in the team was uneven, and when the tickets were kidnapped, things would happen in the market to ruin women and plague the neighbors, so it quickly aroused the indignation of the people, and their notoriety quickly spread to the ears of the Beiyang government.
The Beiyang warlords were very angry when they heard about it, and immediately became the headquarters of the bandits, but the huli guards occupied by the Sun brothers were easy to defend and difficult to attack, and the terrain was dangerous, and several groups of bandit troops did not dare to go up the mountain at will after coming here, and could only watch from the bottom of the mountain, so the process of suppressing bandits was delayed again and again.
Although the officers and men at that time had undergone formal training and had strict military discipline, they were still loosely disciplined and had no discipline when they were on duty outside the country. The officers who did not dare to go up to the mountains to suppress the bandits thought of the crooked idea of checking out the bandits' families; not only did they wantonly plunder money in the local area, but even the second, third, and fourth elders of the Sun family and thousands of their clans were looted, but several of them also lost their lives in the hands of these officers and men.
Sun Meizhu, who received the news, was naturally enraged, and immediately took a few of his right-hand men to the bottom of the mountain to seek revenge on the officers and soldiers, but on the way, he encountered a large force of bandits, Sun Meizhu and others were outnumbered and were seriously injured, and Sun Meizhu himself fell into the mud of the pigsty and suffocated to death.
The city hijacked the train from the beginning to the end
After Sun Meizhu's death, Sun Meiyao took over the position of the eldest brother and became the leader of a new generation of bandits, and his means were even worse than Sun Meizhu's. In 1923, Sun Meiyao ransacked a large household in Linyi surnamed Zhao. The Zhao family had befriended many warlords in the past, and after being looted, they went directly to the Shandong overseer Tanaka Yu to file a complaint, and Tanaka Yu immediately ordered that 5,000 people and horses be gathered to surround Sun Meiyao's mountain.
After Sun Meiyao and others were besieged for many days, food and drinking water became a problem, and several breakthroughs were also unsuccessful, and in desperation, some people suggested that he go to Lincheng to rob the train to divert the attention of Tanaka Yu's troops.
So there was a scene at the beginning of the chapter, the train was hijacked, the local garrison came and exchanged fire with Sun Meiyao and others, what everyone did not expect was that a group of bandits, using guns that were very advanced at that time, were actually very advanced Japanese "three or eight big covers", which were much better than the weapons of the regular army, and they then returned to their old nest with all the hostages.
The American reporter named Powell took advantage of the bandits' lack of attention and wrote down the incident on a piece of cigarette packing paper and asked a local farmer to bring it out, so that when the Beiyang government did not know the details of the incident, all the foreign ministers had already grasped the passage of the train being hijacked. They put pressure on the Beiyang government one after another and put forward many conditions, some of them sent troops on the pretext of protecting Shandong's security, some wanted to stop returning Gengzi's indemnities, and some wanted to take the opportunity to supervise the beiyang government's finances.
On May 15, the Beiyang government sent Shandong overseer Tanaka Yu and Shandong governor Xiong Bingqi, and the bandits sent Sun Meiyao's close confidant Zhou Tiansong to negotiate at the Zhongxing Coal Mining Company.
Sun Meiyao put forward two conditions:
Require that their own troops be absorbed by the Beiyang government, and give regular titles and sufficient salaries;
The Beiyang government was asked to carve out Xuzhou and give Sun Meiyao's troops autonomy.
Xuzhou has been a place of contention since ancient times, and Sun Meiyao wants such a strategic place, and the Beiyang government will naturally not agree. After a month of negotiations, both sides made concessions, Sun Meiyao no longer demanded autonomy in Xuzhou, and the Beiyang government promised to absorb Sun Meiyao's troops, but not everyone wanted, only the physically strong can fight.
According to historical records, the Beiyang government collected more than 2,000 bandits with guns under Sun Meiyao and more than 500 bandits with five guns, and jointly formed a new brigade, with Sun Meiyao as the brigade commander, and the rest were all dismissed, and whether they were incorporated or not, all the bandits were issued 20 yuan in silver, and then all the Chinese and foreign passengers who were abducted were released, and the Lincheng train robbery that shocked China and foreign countries was "perfectly" solved.
Sun Meiyao is actually a Japanese puppet
The aforementioned American journalist in China, Powell, who lived in China for twenty-five years, wrote a book about what he had seen and heard in China over the past twenty-five years. When he mentions the train robbery in the book, he reveals a detail that no one has noticed:
There used to be Japanese on the train, but before the train was hijacked, all the Japanese on board, whether they bought half-way tickets or full-time tickets, all got off the train in Xuzhou early.
Two details before combining:
All the bandits who hijacked the car had all the three or eight big covers in their hands;
A bandit negotiating with the government, not for money, but for the acquisition of a military stronghold, but also for a military stronghold to do autonomy, such a strategic vision and military vision, a 25-year-old bandit does not have.
Many people speculated that Sun Meiyao should have secretly accepted the support of the Japanese army, and their robbery of the train was completely completely completely planned by the Japanese army, with the purpose of provoking incidents and taking the opportunity to continue to invade China.
Sun Meiyao died
Because the impact of the carjacking incident was too great, As the governor of Shandong, Tanaka Yu could not escape the blame, although his ability was very strong, but the Beiyang government was forced to transfer Tanaka Yu from his post under pressure from all sides, and it was not only Tanaka Yu alone who suffered losses, but all the big warlords behind him, so Sun Meiyao was listed by many people as the first target to be eliminated from the moment he became the brigade commander.
The successor Shandong overseer first sent Wu Kezhang and Sun Meiyao to garrison troops in the same area, and then through various methods to disintegrate the forces around Sun Meiyao, and before long, several capable generals around Sun Meiyao defected one after another.
Subsequently, Wu Kezhang arrested several rogue bandits and prepared to kill them, including Sun Meiyao's clan, which completely intensified the contradiction between him and Sun Meiyao.
Finally, the superiors sent people to mediate the contradiction between Wu and Sun, and on December 9, 1923, Sun Meiyao and her brother Sun Meisong were notified to go to the Zhongxing Coal Mining Company to discuss the arrest of the clan, and when the Sun brothers arrived, they were shot and killed as soon as they entered the door.
After Sun Meiyao's death, all of his new brigades were disarmed and dismissed, and Sun Meiyao's group was completely wiped out by the Beiyang Army, ending the era of bandits on the Luxi Plain.
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