"Old foreigner" is not a real foreigner, his name is Zhang Qing, because of his tall stature, yellow hair, deep eye sockets, high nose bridge, looks very similar to foreigners, so later people gave him the nickname "old foreigner". Since the Republic of China, he was probably the first among the bandits to kidnap foreigners.
In May 1922, after the Hongwei Army was defeated by Feng Yuxiang, Zhang Qing, who was then the company commander of the Hongwei Army, led more than 300 of his men to fight and became bandits. He went south from Zhongmu to Western Henan, and in just a few months, the number reached seven or eight thousand. The activities of the "old foreigners" greatly disturbed Wu Peifu, the leader of the warlords directly under his direct lineage and the deputy envoy of Zhilu Yuyu, and Feng Yuxiang, the overseer of Henan. They formulated a three-way joint suppression plan in an attempt to annihilate the "old foreigner" bandit gang in western Henan. But the "old foreigners" tore open the siege and within 10 days, they crossed Henan Province and fought from western Henan to western Anhui. During this period, thousands of bandits held high the banner of the "Henan Jianguo Army" and shouted slogans such as "Fighting the Rich and Helping the Poor" and "Doing the Heavenly Path", which caused headaches for various warlords.
In November 1922, the "old foreigners" sent people to sneak into Fuyang City, and on the night of the 2nd, the bandits attacked the city with a large force, and under the combination of the inside and the outside, the city gate was opened, and a large number of bandits and horses entered the city smoothly. The "old foreigners" not only scavenged a large number of silver dollars and smoke in Fuyang, but also obtained a large number of weapons in the city - more than 3,000 rifles, 13 machine guns, more than 2 million rounds of ammunition, and even a few cannons. Before leaving, the bandits also kidnapped dozens of meat tickets, ransom tens of thousands, at least 500 oceans, and even kidnapped missionaries from Italy, the United States, and Britain. With these "true foreigners", the gang of bandits of the old foreigners can be said to be even more rampant. Whenever they encountered the encirclement and suppression of officers and soldiers, the "old foreigners" ordered the captured real foreigners to be pushed to the front line, so that the officers and men did not dare to shoot and watched the bandits flee.
The abduction of missionaries from three countries caused protests from the great powers, and the Beijing government was naturally sincerely afraid, and Cao Kun immediately ordered Jin Yunlu to be appointed as the commander-in-chief of the bandits and surrounded and suppressed the "old foreigners." It is even more wanted in the whole army that "old foreigners", the raw catchers are rewarded with 10,000 yuan in the ocean, the killed people are rewarded with 7,000 yuan, and those who can rescue foreigners are rewarded with merit and promoted to higher ranks. After more than a month of encirclement, pursuit, and interception, although the bandits were reduced to pieces and broke the encirclement of officers and men, their strength was also greatly reduced, and only more than 3,000 people remained. At this time, the number of foreign meat tickets in the bandits' books has reached 7 people, which is their special weapon against officers and soldiers - it can be used as a shield on the battlefield, and can also be used to "tear up the ticket" to threaten the officers and soldiers not to pursue excessively.
Because of the presence of foreigners, Jin Yunlu decided to recruit the "old foreigners", and after repeated consultations with the bandits, the two sides reached an agreement: "the old foreigners" released all the kidnapping tickets, and the unit was reorganized into two guerrilla detachments of the official officers and troops. After the recruitment was completed, Jin Yunlu returned to his own defense area, even if he was in charge of any guerrilla detachment. However, what Jin Yunlu did not expect was that the "old foreigners" had a formal establishment, and even more grandly they had collected the people's fat and people's ointment and forcibly seized them, so that the local landlords and gentry continued to appeal, and Wu Peifu had planned to send troops to surround several counties where the "old foreigners" bandits were stationed, encircle them separately, and order them to disarm and dismiss. Wu Peifu's five-province coalition army chased and intercepted and did not catch the "old foreigner", and kept chasing after him.
In order to avoid being pursued by officers and soldiers, the "old foreigners" led the crowd to wander through many provinces, and many small groups of bandits along the way rushed to join the pole, and the bandits reached an astonishing 30,000 in their heyday. During the capture of Zaoyang County, the bandits burned down hundreds of houses, killed and wounded more than 200 civilians and soldiers, and kidnapped hundreds of people. What is particularly shocking is that the pole bandits took the American female missionary Gillen and injured the American missionary Hefu and his wife, and the Hefu priest died.
The "old foreigners" a band of bandits marched day and night for more than two months, fighting continuously, and were already exhausted, and in early January 1924, they wandered back to their old nest in western Henan. Because of the siege of officers and soldiers, the "old foreigners" became extremely irritable and very prone to anger. On January 12, the "old foreigners" summoned various bandit leaders to a meeting to punish Li Erhei, who colluded with officers and men, to rectify people's hearts, but they did not expect that their chief of staff, Ding Baocheng, would also betray himself, and Li Erhei's collusion with officers and men was secretly instigated by Ding Baocheng. The "old foreigner" angrily pulled out a pistol on the spot to kill him, but he did not know that the praying mantis catching cicadas and yellow birds was behind, and a bandit who advocated recruiting security shot the result of the "old foreigner", and this bandit who dared to kidnap foreigners may not have dreamed that he would die like this.