In September 1938, lurking at the door of a garden house on Shanghai's Fukaisen Road were several Kuomintang military agents, carrying loaded pistols on their bodies at all times, and their eyes had been staring at the opening of the door of the garden house, waiting for the owner inside to leave.
However, several days passed, but the agents of the military command never waited for the person they were waiting for to come out,-Tang Shaoyi.
Born on January 2, 1862 in Tangjia village, Tangjiawan Township, Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, tang Shaoyi was appointed consul general in Korea by the Qing government in 1895, becoming a major Minister of Chinese diplomacy at that time.
At the end of 1911, Tang Shaoyi served as Yuan Shikai's plenipotentiary cabinet representative to negotiate an armistice with Wu Tingfang, and reached an armistice agreement in Shaanxi, Anhui, Hubei, Fengtian and other places.
Tang Shaoyi
After Yuan Shikai became the provisional president of the Republic of China, Tang Shaoyi served as the first premier of the Cabinet of the Republic of China, but due to political discord with Yuan Shikai, he resigned less than three months after taking office.
After the establishment of the Nanjing National Government headed by Chiang Kai-shek, Tang Shaoyi served as chairman of the Zhongshan County Training and Administration Implementation Committee and the governor of Zhongshan County, Guangdong Province, concentrating his efforts on building Zhongshan County into a model for all counties in the country, and was known as the "Governor of Buyi County."
On November 12, 1937, Shanghai was completely occupied by the invading Japanese army, the Chinese army was forced to withdraw from Shanghai, and many Kuomintang dignitaries and celebrities fled Shanghai. For the safety of her family, Tang Shaoyi transferred her wife and children to Live in Hong Kong, while she stayed in Shanghai.
As for Tang Shaoyi's stay in Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek was very worried that he would follow the Japanese and then make public his plan to negotiate peace with the Japanese. Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek sent someone to send a handwritten letter to Tang Shaoyi, persuading him to leave Shanghai quickly and come to Wuhan to take up the post of chairman of the Kuomintang Foreign Relations Committee.
Cabinet member of the Republic of China, the most right Tang Shaoyi
However, Tang Shaoyi politely rejected Chiang Kai-shek.
The reason why Chiang Kai-shek attached so much importance to Tang Shaoyi was because at this time Tang Shaoyi was also concurrently serving as a member of the National Government, and once he cooperated with the Japanese, many secrets within the Kuomintang would be leaked out. Tang Shaoyi's compatriots even directly remitted 20,000 yuan as a way to get him out of Shanghai, but he ignored them.
Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek immediately instructed the Kuomintang military command to closely monitor Tang Shaoyi's every move.
On March 28, 1938, with the support of the Japanese, Wang Jingwei established the puppet restoration government in Nanjing and served as the president of the legislative yuan of the puppet restoration government, and Wen Zongyao, as the second person in the puppet restoration government, was once an old subordinate of Tang Shaoyi. For a time, this matter spread in the society, and people speculated:
Tang Shaoyi was also going to be a traitor.
Tang Shaoyi, Sun Yat-sen
In this regard, Chiang Kai-shek also specially asked Du Yuesheng, a big gangster in Shanghai, to write a letter to persuade Tang Shaoyi to go to Hong Kong or Wuhan. In the face of the advice of the crowd, Tang Shaoyi said emphatically:
"I am old and do not want to leave Shanghai, so I would rather be a slave to the country than a traitor."
On September 27, a black car ridden by Japanese secret agent Kenji Doihara drove into the french concession of Shanghai and stopped at the entrance of Tang Shaoyi's house, and he personally visited the door this time, with the purpose of establishing a pseudo-central government supported by the Japanese army, with Tang Shaoyi in charge of the politics of the pseudo-central government and Wu Peifu in charge of the army, so as to realize the meticulous planning of the Japanese army
"Southern Tang and Northern Wu"
plan.
Chiang Kai-shek learned that Kenji Toihara had visited Tang Shaoyi twice, thinking that Tang Shaoyi was about to reach a cooperation agreement with the Japanese, so he decided to get rid of him first.
Kenji Toihara
Chiang Kai-shek immediately gave instructions to Dai Kasa, the head of the military command:
"Get rid of Tang Shaoyi.".
Dai Kasa will
"Assassination of Tang Shaoyi"
The task was given to Zhao Lijun, deputy station chief of the Shanghai Station of the Military Command and head of the action brigade, who was a graduate of the fifth phase of the Whampoa Military Academy and one of the four major killers of the military command, with the title of "chasing after the age of too old".
The French Concession was well aware of Tang Shaoyi's prestige and was worried about what would happen to him in the French Concession, so they sent patrols to patrol around Tang Shaoyi's mansion day and night.
The agents of the military command squatted outside Tang Shaoyi's mansion for several days without results, and Zhao Lijun knew that it would be very difficult to contact Tang Shaoyi. Just when Zhao Lijun was in a dilemma, the agents found that there was a person who often went in and out of Tang Shaoyi's mansion, and this person was Xie Zhipan.
Li
As early as when Tang Shaoyi was serving as the county magistrate in Zhongshan County, Xie Zhipan was a reporter in the Minguo Daily in Guangzhou, and he still had a little distant relationship with Tang Shaoyi, and at that time, a lot of news about "Zhongshan Model County" was exported by Xie Zhipan, and Tang Shaoyi also had great trust in him and could enter and leave the Tang family's mansion at will.
Zhao Lijun immediately found Xie Zhipan and bribed him with heavy money, and he agreed to join the Kuomintang military command.
When Xie Zhipan was once persecuted by the enemy family, it was Tang Shaoyi who took him in, so the Tang family would never have thought that he would be a military agent, let alone that he would assassinate his own savior.
From Xie Zhipan's mouth, it was learned that Tang Shaoyi especially liked antiques and cultural relics, and after some research, Zhao Lijun carefully formulated a plan to assassinate Tang Shaoyi.
Xie Zhipan
Xie Zhipan came to Tang Shaoyi's house with an antique porcelain bottle and said:
"I found you a good thing, it's an open porcelain bottle from the Song Dynasty."
Tang Shaoyi was originally an expert in this area, and he picked up the porcelain bottle and looked at it carefully, saying to Xie Zhipan:
"Although this bottle has an open piece, it is a bottle from a folk kiln, not an official kiln, and I don't want this bottle."
Therefore, in order to further attract Tang Shaoyi into the pre-designed trap, Xie Zhipan said to him:
"There is a master who has a batch of bottles from the song dynasty official kiln in his hand."
As soon as Tang Shaoyi heard something from the official kiln, his eyes lit up, and he agreed with Xie Zhipan on the spot to take a look at this batch of antiques.
On September 30, under the guidance of Xie Zhipan, Zhao Lijun and another military command agent, Li Ada, disguised themselves as antique dealers and came to Tang Shaoyi's house with a box containing antique vases.
The antique chest is nothing special from the outside, but there is a mezzanine compartment in the chest, and inside the compartment is an extremely sharp axe.
Tang Shaoyi's mansion was heavily guarded, and visitors and the items they carried had to be carefully inspected by the guards before they could enter.
Just as the guard at the door opened the box and was about to pick up the vase for inspection, Zhao Lijun suddenly said:
"This vase is very precious, and if something goes wrong, it's a shame."
Tang Shaoyi (right)
The guards also knew that the antiques brought by Xie Zhipan were usually very expensive, so they did not check again. In this way, under the careful planning of Zhao Lijun, they successfully entered Tang Shaoyi's mansion.
Tang Shaoyi walked down from the second floor with the support of the housekeeper, Xie Zhipan immediately came forward to say hello, and Tang Shaoyi immediately instructed the housekeeper to light cigarettes and pour tea for the guests.
But at this time, the housekeeper could not find the matches on the table, in fact, the matches had already been put into zhao Lijun's pocket. Tang Shaoyi saw that the guests were waiting, so he ordered the housekeeper to hurry out to find matches.
Waiting for the housekeeper to walk out of the living room door, Xie Zhipan secretly stuffed some money into him and said to him:
"We have something important to discuss with your master, and you will come in after we have finished discussing."
Former residence of Tang Shaoyi in Shanghai
Zhao Lijun's every move was carefully planned, and at this time, in the living room of the room, except for Zhao Lijun, Li Ada, and Xie Zhipan of the military command, only Tang Shaoyi himself was left.
However, Tang Shaoyi could not have imagined that danger was slowly approaching him.
Zhao Lijun opened the box and took out the vase, Tang Shaoyi watched carefully, just at this time, Li Ada suddenly opened the mezzanine of the box and took out an axe, and slashed several axes at the back of Tang Shaoyi's neck, and Tang Shaoyi immediately fell to the floor.
After successfully assassinating Tang Shaoyi, Zhao Lijun instructed Li Ada to go out and get on the car, while he and Xie Zhipan walked last, greeting the bodyguards and guards at the door as they walked.
Tang Shaoyi was assassinated with murder weapons
After Zhao Lijun and his party got into the car, they quickly drove out of the gate and sped away on the road.
When the housekeeper entered the living room, he found Tang Shaoyi lying in a pool of blood, and immediately sent Tang Shaoyi to the hospital for rescue, but due to old age and physical weakness, excessive blood loss, he died at four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day.
The patrol house in the French Concession was led to Xie Zhipan's house by the subordinates of the Tang Dynasty, but his family was already empty.
Although Tang Shaoyi met with Kenji Doihara a few days before his death, he did not accept the position offered by the Japanese puppet government, nor did he ever issue any declaration of "taking up a false post", and there was no evidence to prove that Tang Shaoyi was late and defected to the enemy and committed treason.
In fact, there are other people who want to cooperate with the Japanese:
Cen Deguang
。 Cen Deguang is the son-in-law of Tang Shaoyi, who studied at the Imperial University of Japan in his early years, and he thinks that his family background is deep and his knowledge is also high, but he is suffering from the fact that he has not yet emerged.
Therefore, Kenji Toihara visited Tang Shaoyi twice through the relationship between Cen Deguang and Tang Shaoyi.
Cen Deguang thought that if his father-in-law Tang Shaoyi became the head of the japanese-backed pseudo-central government, he would also be able to hold a very high position. The self-interested Cen Deguang seemed to see the opportunity to soar, so he negotiated with the Japanese under the banner of Tang Shaoyi.
It was precisely because cen Deguang's traitorous activities, and at the same time under the banner of Tang Shaoyi, that Chiang Kai-shek mistakenly thought that Tang Shaoyi really wanted to defect to the enemy and commit treason, so he ordered the secret agents of the military command to kill him.
Just when everyone was arguing endlessly about Tang Shaoyi's death, an even stranger news came. Since Tang Shaoyi was assassinated, Xie Zhipan, who had never appeared before, suddenly
"Insanity"
finish.
After Xie Zhipan fled to Chongqing, he thought that he had made a great contribution to the "assassination of Tang Shaoyi", so he began to ask Dai For benefits. And Chiang Kai-shek was worried that once Xie Zhipan wanted to reveal this matter, it would be very unfavorable to himself.
Therefore, Dai Kasa put him in a hospital in Chongqing under the name of "Xie Zhipan's insanity", but it was not enough to be locked up, Xie Zhipan was always a hidden danger in Dai Kasa's heart.
Dai Kasa secretly instructed Wang Kequan, a secret agent of the military command, to completely block Xie Zhipan's mouth, and Wang Kequan, a veteran secret agent, came to the hospital with a gun and beat Xie Zhipan to death.
Chiang Kai-shek
Xie Zhipan betrayed his savior Tang Shaoyi and eventually killed himself, and shortly thereafter, Wang Kequan, who killed Xie Zhipan, also died mysteriously. At this point, the insiders of the assassination of Tang Shaoyi could no longer speak, and Chiang Kai-shek and Dai Kasa finally breathed a sigh of relief.
On October 5, 1938, the Nationalist Government specially promulgated the "Tang Shaoyi Commendation Order":
"Five thousand yuan was allocated for funeral expenses, and the deeds of his life were announced to the National History Museum to show the government's desire to commemorate the honor."
Assassination on the one hand and condolences on the other have always been Chiang Kai-shek's usual methods.