Many people who have seen Wang Yaqiao's photos will be very surprised why such a person wearing round-rimmed glasses and looking like a weak scholar would be associated with the "Shanghai Beach Axe Gang Leader". You must know that at that time, the Shanghai Beach gang was rampant, and the most powerful ones were the Green Gang led by the three tycoons Jin Rong, Du Yuesheng and Zhang Xiaolin, and Wang Yaqiao was able to make Jin Jinrong and Du Yuesheng afraid to give up three points, which showed how arrogant they were!
Wang Yaqiao was born in the last Xiucai of the Qing Dynasty, but he was not willing to live a leisurely life of setting up a library to teach all his life, and he longed for a vigorous life with lofty ambitions. In 1911, he actively responded to the Wuchang Uprising, but fled to Nanjing because of persecution, and it was from that time that Wang Yaqiao began his career of exile. In the meantime, Wang Yaqiao came to Shanghai, known as the "Adventurer's Paradise", and in this ten-mile ocean field mixed with dragons and snakes, he met the person he wanted to follow all his life- Sun Yat-sen.
After the two had a deep conversation, Wang Yaqiao was impressed by Sun Yat-sen's ideal of "overthrowing the warlords, sweeping away the remnants of the Qing Dynasty, and unifying China", and resolutely joined the Chinese Revolutionary Party and followed Sun's side. After the failure of the Dharma Protection Movement, Sun Yat-sen went to Japan, and Wang Yaqiao chose to continue his revolutionary activities at home, which was naturally hunted down by warlords everywhere. In desperation, Wang Yaqiao came to Shanghai for the second time, that is, this time, he made a name for himself in the whole Shanghai beach.
At that time, in order to commemorate Han Hui and wanted to establish the "Fuyan Primary School", Wang Yaqiao sought out Yu Chengge, then president of the "Anhui Brigade shanghai hometown association", to seek funding, and as a result, he was insulted by Yu. Enraged, Wang Yaqiao invited many Anhui celebrities, drove Yu away, forcibly took over the hometown association, and officially changed its name to the "Anhui Brigade Shanghai Labor Union". The association thought that the Anhui laborers came forward to support the purpose, coupled with Wang Yaqiao's own heroic righteousness, in a very short period of time, it had more than 100,000 members.
At first, Wang Yaqiao mostly negotiated, said and resolved labor disputes. But once, a capitalist not only defaulted on the wages of the laborers, but also gathered a gang of gangsters to beat the laborers. The king, who knew about this, immediately sent people to the blacksmith's shop to build a hundred axes, and rushed into the capitalist compound with a hundred big men with sharp axes to ask for explanations, and the capitalists were frightened and apologized one after another, and paid the workers' wages on the spot. In this way, the name of "Axe Gang Leader Wang Yaqiao" rose to fame in Shanghai Beach, and even the Qing Gang tycoons Jin Jinrong and Du Yuesheng had to be afraid to give up three points.
So did Wang Yaqiao and Du Yuesheng and others have a head-on collision? The answer, of course, is inevitable. In July 1930, Wang Yaqiao carefully planned and successfully implemented the plan to assassinate the traitor Zhao Chunqiao, and the supporter behind the scenes, Li Guojie (Li Hongzhang's eldest grandson), also fulfilled his promise two years later, handing over the Jiang'an, the largest steamship of the Steamship Merchants Bureau, to Wang Yaqiao. The manager of the "Jiang'an" at the time was named Zhang Yanling, who was Zhang Xiaolin's nephew and a disciple of Du Yuesheng. He was tough on his backstage and refused to hand over the ship. Wang Yaqiao first sent people to blow up a large hole in the backyard wall of Zhang Xiaolin's house at night, and then sent hundreds of disciples to force Zhang to hand over the ship with sharp axes.
Zhang Yanling ran to Du Yuesheng for help, and Du Yuesheng was naturally afraid of causing trouble, saying: "Wang Yaqiao's outlaw, I am difficult to wait for, why bother?" Zhang Yanling was told to hand over the ship immediately, and Zhang Yanling had no choice but to obey. Later, after taking back the "Jiang'an" ship, Wang Yaqiao further proposed to Du Yuesheng the requirement of dividing the comprador posts of the Shanghai River and Sea ships equally. Although Du Yuesheng was unwilling, he finally gave up some comprador positions.
Although he won over Du Yuesheng and others, Wang Yaqiao's ambition was not to be a rogue tycoon in Shanghai, he had his own political ambitions - to follow Sun Yat-sen and realize the Three People's Principles. For this ideal, he boldly delivered a speech opposing Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal of the revolution at the "Founding Ceremony" meeting of the Nanjing government; for this ideal, he organized assassination operations on many occasions, stabbed Chiang Kai-shek and the Song Dynasty, and committed adultery in iron blood, thus achieving the fierce name of "the first killer of the Republic of China." Shen Drun, a former backbone of the Kuomintang military command, once said: "Everyone in the world is afraid of the devil, but the devil is afraid of Wang Yaqiao." "However, such a well-known figure was betrayed by a woman and died at the gun of the secret agents of the military command."