What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
In April 1895, Li Hongzhang signed the Treaty of Maguan in Japan, and the court reprimanded him inside and outside the court, demanding that the traitors be punished. Empress Dowager Cixi understood in her heart that this was her will, and she was reluctant to take a stand, so in order to divert her attention, she asked Li Hongzhang to go to Europe to investigate. When he visited Emperor Wilhelm II in Germany, the German Emperor took out one of the 12 gift pistols ordered by Belgium and gave it to him. After Li Hongzhang returned to China, he was enshrined to the Guangxu Emperor and later collected by Puyi. Therefore, the gun crossed the ocean into the Forbidden City.
When Puyi fled the puppet state of Manchukuo, the gun was used for a long time by his attendants Li Tiyu and Qi Jizhong. Later, I heard that Empress Wanrong had an affair with these two attendants, and Puyi wanted to shoot the two of them, and after consultation, in order to save the face of the royal family, she gave the two of them a 400 ocean sealing fee and expelled them. After being expelled, Qi Jizhong, who had entered the Japanese non-commissioned officer school, defected to the Kuomintang 7th Army and became a quartermaster.
Beginning in the spring of 1948, the People's Liberation Army surrounded Changchun with superior troops, leaving the Kuomintang army alone and trapped. In mid-to-late October, Zeng Zesheng led the 60th Army to revolt, Li Hong led the New 7th Army, zheng Dongguo led the troops to lay down their weapons, and Changchun was liberated. Changchun was besieged for 7 months, the grain was cut off, the Kuomintang army competed with the people for food, and the population of the residents fell from 500,000 to about 250,000. Qi Jizhong, a quartermaster in the defenders, did not want to revolt with the troops, and absconded in disguise, and was seized by our army. Of course, his disguise could not hide the bright eyes of our front-line officers and men, staring at his body shape and face that were not emaciated, interrogating his true identity, and having to say that he was a Kuomintang quartermaster who wanted to escape. At that time, the policy was to severely punish the Kuomintang officers above the company level who were not uprisings, and he was afraid and applied for meritorious atonement, saying that he knew that there was an emperor's pistol buried somewhere. The matter was reported to the Enemy Industry Department of the Northeast Field Army, and after the minister Wang Yanggong personally interrogated it, he ordered the soldiers to escort them to dig it up. Sure enough, i dug out a delicate pistol with a sleeve, gold wire on the bottom handle, and shell grip guard, that is, the Belgian 7.65 mm M1900 automatic pistol.
During the Liberation War, after the soldiers seized the pistols, they had to hand them in, and then handed them in step by step, and if the cadres at any level liked it, they asked their superiors to keep them, and when they got the permission of their superiors, they carried them for use. Cadres at or above the regimental level who use 1 pistol and encounter a newly handed in pistol can "replace the old for the new" after asking for instructions. If you like the new and don't get tired of the old, some will keep more pistols, and the higher the level, the more they will retain. For example, Wu Faxian, former commander of the Air Force, has 1 German Walter 6.35 mm M9 pocket pistol, Belgium 6.35 mm M1906 pocket pistol, Germany 6.35 mm Legnucse pocket pistol 1, and 1 domestic 1964 type 7.62 mm pistol.
In the 1970s, after the national gun collection was centralized, the Air Force was kept by the air force military department. Today, the M1900 pistol is placed on a warehouse display board in the Air Force.