After the founding of New China, the situation in our country gradually began to stabilize. Those soldiers who had been fighting for a long time and were desperate on the battlefield finally had free time and were able to return to their hometowns to visit their relatives.
Yi Yaocai, the general of our army, was one of these soldiers.
In 1953, Yi Yaocai received a notice from the organization and was selected to study in the Soviet Union. Before leaving, the organization deliberately approved him to take a vacation for a period of time.
At that time, what Yi Yaocai wanted to do most was to go back to his hometown.
It has been 19 years since he followed the Long March of the Red Army in 1934, during which he has never returned home.
Soon, Yi Yaocai took his wife Fan Jingyang and returned to his hometown of Taihe, Jiangxi. First, he missed his hometown, and second, he wanted to pay tribute to his parents.
When he stood in front of his old house, he was a little surprised: he thought that the old house in his family had long been uninhabited, it must be dilapidated and overgrown.
The old house in front of you looks clean, obviously someone has cleaned it.
Just when Yi Yaocai was strange, a thin woman with sunken eyes and worn clothes came out of the inner room of the house.
Moreover, this woman was none other than Yi Yaocai's wife before she left her hometown, Zhang Feng'e.
At this time, Fan Jingyang, who was standing next to Yi Yaocai, was also his wife.
What's going on here? A founding major general openly married two wives? Yi Yaocai returned to his hometown with his new wife, but when he met his old wife, what would he do?
Yi family old house ancestral hall
Today, the author leads you into the story of founding Major General Yi Yaocai.
One. "Only hear the new people laughing, don't see the old people crying"
Yi Yaocai was born in 1917 in Taihe County, Jiangxi Province, and when he was a child, his family was quite well off. Not to say that he is rich and expensive, but he is well fed and warm, and his parents also sent him to a private school to read books and recognize words.
At that time, China's feudal society had the custom of raising children and daughters-in-law.
When Yi Yaocai was about ten years old, he came home one day and there was a little girl in his house.
Portrait of Yi Yaocai
This girl is Zhang Feng'e, who was kindly taken in by Yi Yaocai's parents.
When Zhang Feng'e was 11 years old, the drought in the north was severe, and she fled with her family to Taihe, Jiangxi.
However, she was separated from her family. In this strange place, she looked up and did not know how to be good.
It was at this time that she met Yi Yaocai's parents. Yi Yaocai's parents looked at her pitifully, and it just so happened that Yi Yaocai also lacked a child bridesmaid, so they took her home.
In this way, Zhang Feng'e became Yi Yaocai's adopted daughter-in-law. She is three years older than Yi Yaocai, and after coming to Yi's house, she is very diligent, getting up every day before dawn to work, cooking for Yi Yaocai, and taking care of his life and living without ambiguity.
For Yi Yaocai, he was too young at that time to have no concept of "daughter-in-law".
In his opinion, Zhang Feng'e was just a playmate and sister who suddenly appeared at his home. Nothing else.
Yi Yaocai's hometown of the "peasant riot"
After Yi Yaocai was a few years older, his parents hoped that he could become related to Zhang Feng'e.
In this way, Zhang Feng'e can continue the incense for the Yi family and pass on the lineage.
But At that time, Yi Yaocai did not want to do this, but he did not beat his parents, or married Zhang Feng'e.
However, the two only held a ceremony, and there was no fact of husband and wife.
Life is full of variables, especially in those turbulent times.
Zhang Feng'e thought that if she got married, she would have one more husband in the future, but she did not expect that her husband would soon leave her side and leave for 19 years.
When her husband returned, she was already an old woman in her fifties, and her husband had a glorious newcomer standing by his side.
When Zhang Feng'e saw Fan Jingyang beside Yi Yaocai, she already understood that her husband had long forgotten himself.
In fact, this can not all blame Yi Yaocai, Yi Yaocai left home in 1934, when he was only 17 years old.
After leaving home for so many years, he thought that Zhang Feng'e had already remarried, where did he want to get her still in the old mansion waiting for her to return?
So, why did Yi Yaocai suddenly leave his new wife?
Two. The young and brave "little red devils" have always had sufficient revolutionary momentum
Yi Yaocai's departure can be said to be a combination of active and passive reasons.
In 1929, at the age of 12, Yi Yaocai joined the revolution of the "peasant revolt" in Taihe County; the following year he joined the Red Army.
After that, his military career began, and he became a soldier in the special agent company of the Independent Regiment of Wantai County, Jiangxi Province.
On the battlefield, he was very brave and was soon promoted to deputy squad leader.
Later, he became a company instructor all the way. Every time he fought, no matter how dangerous the situation was, he could always turn the danger into a disaster.
At that time, many chiefs were very fond of Yi Yaocai, the "little red devil".
He was very brave, participated in the "peasant revolt" and delivered letters to the Red Army.
Such an act was taken as a thorn in the side of the Kuomintang's "homecoming regiment" (composed of some landlords and bullies, who followed the Kuomintang army to attack the liberated areas, burn and loot, and did nothing evil), and was eager to cut his body into pieces.
The former site of the CCP's Soviet District
However, because the Red Army was still in the Central Soviet Region at that time, the Kuomintang's "homecoming regiment" did not dare to act rashly.
Yi Yaocai's parents are proud to see their son so brave, and at the same time can't help but worry about his personal safety.
But his parents did not expect that their son's participation in the revolution would first bring them to the scourge of death.
After the failure of the Fifth Anti-Encirclement and Suppression Campaign of the Red Army, the Central Red Army was forced to start the Long March in October 1934, and Yi Yaocai also embarked on the Road of the Long March.
Before leaving, he said goodbye to his parents and Zhang Feng'e, but he did not expect that the farewell to his parents would be a farewell.
After Yi Yaocai and the Red Army left, the Kuomintang's "homecoming regiment" immediately rushed to Yi's house and arrested Yi Yaocai's parents.
These "homecoming regiments" did not suffer less from the Red Army, and naturally hated the Red Army to the bone.
They killed Yi Yaocai's parents in an extremely cruel way, nailed them to the door panels, and then sank to the bottom of the lake.
At that time, Zhang Feng'e hid with the help of her neighbors, which was a way to escape the disaster.
Later, the neighbors in the village helped Zhang Feng'e to bury the remains of the Yi family and his wife.
At this time, zhang Feng'e was left alone in the entire Yi family, and the neighbors advised her to take advantage of her youth to quickly remarry, after all, Yi Yaocai was dead or alive.
However, Zhang Feng'e refused. She chose to live in the old mansion and waited for Yi Yaocai to return.
So, what happened to Yi Yaocai after participating in the Long March, and how did he go from a "little red devil" to a "founding major general"?
On the eve of the Long March, the 21st and 23rd Divisions of the Fujian-Gansu Military Region were reorganized into the Red Eighth Army. Yi Yaocai served as a youth officer of the Red Eighth Army.
At that time, there were more than 10,000 people in the entire Red Eighth Regiment, but there were less than 3,000 guns equipped. Due to the limited equipment, the gun could only be given to experienced soldiers, and Yi Yaocai was only given a javelin.
Soon, Yi Yaocai ushered in a very difficult battle - the Battle of the Xiangjiang River.
On the way from the Red Army to western Hunan Province, the Kuomintang laid out four blockade lines.
In mid-November 1934, after breaking through the third line of defense of the Kuomintang army, the Central Red Army advanced from the south of Hunan Province to the north of Guangxi Province.
The Central Military Commission decided to rush across the Xiang River between Jeonju and Xing'an to break through the fourth blockade line of the Kuomintang army.
It was an extremely fierce battle.
After a heroic struggle, the Central Red Army successfully broke through the fourth blockade line laid out by the Kuomintang and crushed Chiang Kai-shek's attempt to annihilate the Red Army east of the Xiang River.
However, the Red Army also suffered huge losses.
Originally, before crossing the Xiang River, the number of the Red Army's Long March was 86,000, and only more than 30,000 people remained after the Battle of the Xiang River.
Taking Yi Yaocai's Red Eighth Regiment as an example, after the Battle of Xiangjiang, the Red Eighth Regiment, which originally had more than 10,000 people, was only more than 1,000 people.
Yi Yaocai was lucky to survive, but he had witnessed the tragic deaths of so many comrades-in-arms, and silently swore in his heart that he must avenge his comrades-in-arms!
After the Battle of the Xiangjiang River, the Central Committee held the Liping Conference on December 18 of the same year.
The Party Central Committee has carried out a new reorganization of the remaining troops.
At that time, Yi Yaocai's Red Eighth Regiment was merged into the Red Fifth Regiment and then continued the Long March.
Picture of the Battle of the Xiangjiang River
However, because the grass was wet and mosquito bites during the Long March, Yi Yaocai got malaria, and the situation was very bad, and his body twitched and chilled.
He didn't want to drag his comrades down, he didn't want to slow down the pace of everyone's progress, so he offered to let the organization put him in the homes of the people who passed by.
At that time, Yi Yaocai's uncle joined him in the Long March and resolutely disagreed with Yi Yaocai's decision.
At that time, his uncle replied solemnly to his proposal
：
Your parents entrusted you to me, you are dead if you stay, and I will carry you out of the grass even if I have to carry you out of the meadow!
During the Long March of the Red Army, the conditions were harsh, there was no food or drink, often nibbling on tree bark, and some people even ate straw shoes.
The heroic posture of the Red Army
In order to supplement Yi Yaocai's nutrition, his uncle finally cut off the belt on his waist and boiled a pot of "soup" for him.
Then, the uncle carried him all the way, trying to catch up with the pace of the troops. This is what made Yi Yaocai pick up a life!
After the Red Army arrived in northern Shaanxi, because of its firm political stance and outstanding performance, in 1936 Yi Yaocai was transferred to the first bureau and second section of the Central Military Commission.
In May of the same year, Mao Zedong delivered a report entitled "The Present Situation and future strategic guidelines" at a meeting in Yan'an County.
At the meeting, Mao Zedong pointed out:
It is necessary to train a large number of cadres, and the party must have hundreds of new cadres, who will be sent to the front line in all aspects one after another.
Not long after, the Chinese Anti-Japanese Red Army University was established, and in January 1937, Yi Yaocai, as one of the first cadets, entered the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University.
Chairman Mao spoke
In September of the same year, he became the chief of the operations section of the headquarters of the 358th Brigade of the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army.
In January of the following year, as the commander of the 34th Brigade of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, he led the 34th Brigade to fight more than a dozen victorious battles in the territory of Chicheng in Pingbei Province.
He led his men through the Dragon Gate And the soldiers to the chicheng castle, using the prisoners to smoothly open the city gate and command his men to take advantage of the opportunity to attack the county seat.
In this battle, he led his fighters, killing and capturing more than two hundred people. The remaining enemies abandoned the city and fled.
After that, he followed General Nie Rongzhen and fought with the Japanese army many times at Mount Wutai in Shanxi.
Yi Yaocai was very clever in fighting, and he could always find a way to fight the Japanese army by surprise and was caught off guard.
For example, when he was the chief of staff of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, he commanded the legion to liberate Zhangjiakou, an important town in the chabei region, for several days in a fierce battle.
General Nie Rongzhen
As long as the Japanese puppet army in the Jin-Cha-Ji region heard the name "Yi Yaocai", it trembled with fear.
For Yi Yaocai's work, the Party Central Committee and the organization are a hundred at ease; but for his life, the organization still has some worries.
At the age of 23, Yi Yaocai was already the chief of staff of the Fifth Military Subdistrict of Jin-Cha-Ji.
His parents had already sacrificed for the revolution, and the organization was very concerned about Yi Yaocai's private life.
So he decided to arrange a blind date for him to solve his lifelong events.
Three. Love at first sight, one marriage is set for life
It was this blind date that allowed Yi Yaocai to get acquainted with his current wife, Fan Jingyang.
In fact, the blind date arranged by the organization for Yi Yaocai was not Fan Jingyang. The organizational arrangement for Yi Yaocai was Dr. Zhang, who was in the cultivation company of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region at that time.
However, Dr. Zhang's first blind date was too nervous, so he pulled up Fan Jingyang, who was practicing for a while in recuperation.
Fan Jingyang originally did not want to go, but could not withstand Dr. Zhang's request, and finally accompanied her to Yi Yaocai's dormitory of chief of staff.
During the meeting, Dr. Zhang was a little nervous and did not speak much. Yi Yaocai is not an extrovert either, so the atmosphere is very stiff.
Fan Jingyang enlivened the atmosphere between the two and finally broke the embarrassment.
However, it is precisely because of this that Yi Yaocai did not look at Dr. Zhang, but instead looked at the lively and generous Fan Jingyang.
After this blind date, about a month later, Xiao Shiren, the head of the organization section at the time, found Fan Jingyang.
Xiao Shiren said to Fan Jingyang bluntly:
Comrade Fan Jingyang, we have investigated your family background, and you can be ready to get married.
Fan Jingyang's family background is not ordinary.
She is one of the most famous "Three Sisters of the Fan Family" in Fuping, Hebei Province, with two older sisters.
The eldest sister, Fan Jingxin, married Wang Ping (later the founding general); the second sister, Fan Jingming, married Wang Zonghuai (later the founding lieutenant general).
As for Fan Jingyang, she was also very brave to join the revolution under the influence of her two sisters participating in the revolution.
Three sisters of the Fan family
After joining the revolution, because she was a lesbian, she was organized to study at the Bethune Medical School.
After graduation, she was assigned to the medical department of the headquarters of the Fifth Military Region of Jin-Cha-Ji and was responsible for the work of pharmacists.
It was in this way that she met Dr. Zhang, and then was dragged by Dr. Zhang to go on a blind date with Yi Yaocai.
But of course, she didn't expect that Yi Yaocai actually fell in love with her at first sight!
So when Xiao Shiren informed her to get married, she was simply confused by the second monk:
marry? With whom?
Xiao replied at the time:
Who else can you talk to, Chief of Staff Yi Yaocai, he has a crush on you!
Fan Jingyang's brain was blank, and he didn't know what to say for a while.
Previously, she had heard of Yi Yaocai's glorious deeds, he was only 23 years old and became the chief of staff, naturally very powerful.
But she and Yi Yaocai are only one-sided, and it is a bit hasty to suddenly say that they want to get married.
After thinking about it, Fan Jingyang proposed that she should spend some time with Yi Yaocai before deciding whether to marry him.
Old photo of the Fifth Military Region of Jin-Cha-Ji
This in itself was not an excessive requirement, after all, free love was already allowed at that time, and marriage was no longer arranged.
However, Yi Yaocai's work is of a special nature, and he often has to go out to fight, and sometimes he can't come back for several months.
Xiao Shiren told Fan Jingyang:
Nowadays, in this year, where there is so much time to talk about love, it is not impossible to get married first and then fall in love. It just so happens that you and Chief of Staff Yi can also set an example in our military sub-district and inspire our comrades.
Fan Jingyang finally chose to obey the requirements of the organization, and Yi Yaocai soon formed a family.
Such a hasty marriage, in modern times, must be called "flash marriage".
Does this mean that after the two get married, there will be all kinds of problems?
Yi Yaocai was in the Fifth Military Region
Contrary. The two can be described as Qinser and Ming, and their love is continuous.
Someone quipped to Yi Yaocai and asked him why his relationship with his wife was so good.
Yi Yaocai replied:
I am Yao (medicine), she is a medicine, I was born to be taken care of by her, how can we be separated!
Four. Joint burial
After marriage, there was Fan Jingyang as Yi Yaocai's inner helper, and Yi Yaocai became more and more outstanding in his work. In August 1940, he participated in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments and once again made outstanding military achievements; at the age of 27, he became the chief of staff of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region.
After serving as chief of staff, he achieved very prominent results, commanding the 10th and 40th regiments of Pingbei to fight fiercely for several days and liberating Zhangjiakou, an important town in the Chabei region.
After the founding of New China, in October 1950, the Central Military Commission wanted to establish the Navy Qingdao Base, and Yi Yaocai was appointed commander.
Pictures of Yi Yaocai at work
At that time, Qingdao's strategic position was very important, and the party and organizations attached great importance to Yi Yaocai.
Yi Yaocai's task was to repair the shore artillery positions, fire the cannons, build the airfield, and build patrol boats within a month.
Yi Yaocai did not live up to the expectations of the organization, and after taking office, he first repaired nine artillery positions to strengthen the defense force along the coast of the Jiaodong Peninsula; built three airfields and developed 40-ton gunboats.
Because of his excellent work, it was decided to send him to study at the Voroshilov Naval Academy in Leningrad, USSR.
This is the plot mentioned at the beginning of the article, Yi Yaocai gave him a vacation before leaving for the Soviet Union, and he took Fan Jingyang back to his hometown with him.
Seeing Zhang Feng'e again, Yi Yaocai was not only surprised, but also more guilty - this woman actually waited for him for 19 years!
What about Zhang Feng'e? Seeing Fan Jingyang beside his "husband", of course, he understood what was going on.
Yi Yaocai was in a dilemma, and for a moment he did not know how to compensate Zhang Feng'e.
Yi Yaocai Memorial Statue
Fan Jingyang saw Yi Yaocai's difficulties and proposed to him: he could help Zhang Feng'e build the family's old house well, and then send her a living allowance every month so that her life would no longer be difficult.
This proposal was adopted by Yi Yaocai, so he sent a sum of money back to Zhang Feng'e in his hometown every month, and told her that if there was any difficulty, he would help her solve it.
After returning from studying in the Soviet Union in 1958, Yi Yaocai served as the principal of the Naval Submarine School; two years later, he served as the first deputy commander of the Navy's North Sea Fleet.
In order to build China's naval defense well, Yi Yaocai has been working diligently and making continuous efforts.
In 1988, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Red Star of the people's liberation army of the Chinese, first class by the Central Military Commission.
It was not until October 3, 1990, that General Yi Yaocai died in Beijing at the age of 73.
Yi Yaocai's hometown in Jiangxi
In his last words, he mentioned that half of his ashes would be sprinkled on the coastal areas of Qingdao where he worked, and the other part would be sent back to his hometown in Jiangxi and buried next to the tomb of his parents.
Before his death, he did not fulfill his filial piety as a son, and after his death, he hoped that he could always accompany his parents.
Six years after Yi Yaocai's death, Zhang Feng'e in Jiangxi also died.
At that time, Yi Yaocai's wife Fan Jingyang made a decision: Zhang Feng'e and Yi Yaocai were buried together.
Although Zhang Feng'e was poisoned by the customs of feudal arranged marriages, her tenacity and long-term affection touched Fan Jingyang.
She spent her life guarding her hometown for Yi Yaocai.
She did not get happiness before she died, and she was buried with Yi Yaocai after her death, which can also be regarded as a wish.
Resources:
"The Spark of Fire in Memory" by Zhu Dongsheng
"Jidong People's Anti-Japanese Rebellion" by The Tangshan Municipal Committee of The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
"Akagi Heroes" by Zhang Jinzhong
"Jin Sui Heroes Military Figures Volume" author: Wang Bo
Edited by Cui Cui
Editor-in-Charge: Thalia