Xu Hanzhang, because of a cinnabar mole on his face, was the most recognizable among the bandits in western Hunan Province. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, when our army suppressed his arrest, it also regarded his cinnabar mole as an important identification mark. But Xu Hanzhang was able to drive cattle, carry weapons, and swing past our army's checkpoints. So why didn't the inspectors see it? Where was his weapon hidden?
In the early years of the Republic of China, Xu Hanzhang was born into a landlord family in Luxi County, Xiangxi Province.
Xu Hanzhang's father was a local bully, who bullied men and women, fished and fleshed the people, and relied on cruel means of exploitation to obtain many ill-gotten gains. Under the influence of his father, Xu Hanzhang acted recklessly at a young age, and he either fought and fought all day long, or stole chickens and dogs. But his father not only did not correct his behavior, but often boasted that he would become a great instrument in the future.
Xu Hanzhang's father never thought that knowledge could change his destiny, and his life creed was: Money can make ghosts grind. Therefore, when Xu Hanzhang was a teenager, his father spent money to give him a position as a platoon leader in the National Revolutionary Army.
From then on, Xu Hanzhang's father had a son of an officer and was even more unscrupulous when he oppressed the people.
However, after Xu Hanzhang stayed in the army for a while, he felt that there were too many disciplines in the army and was not free, so he simply took more than a dozen people, occupied the mountain as the king, and became a bandit.
Xu Hanzhang was really a natural bandit billet. Although he only had a dozen people, he was bold. Not only did they rob houses, kill people and set fires, but they also raped women, did no evil, and forced Luxi County to make a hundred miles of chickens and dogs restless.
After having money, Xu Hanzhang bought guns and expanded his team, and soon he had a team of hundreds of people. His scope of activities also gradually expanded to Chenxi, Fenghuang, Mayang and other surrounding counties.
During Xu Hanzhang's time as a bandit, not only were the villages often looted by him, but even the shops in the county town were often blackmailed by him. Those rich people are even more unable to live in peace. Not to mention that money was robbed, and even his family would be tied up to the mountain to make meat tickets. But if his family fails to deliver the ransom to the throne according to his requirements, the meat ticket will be cruelly tortured by him, and even cut off his hands and feet, and cut off his heart and liver.
As Xu Hanzhang's power grew, the lives of the local people became more and more bitter. The county government had to encircle and suppress Xu Hanzhang. However, several encirclements and suppressions failed.
It turned out that Huxi County was only a small county, and the number of security teams was only a few hundred, and it was impossible to compete with Xu Hanzhang's bandits. Therefore, after several failed encirclement and suppression, the county magistrate had to change his encirclement to Fu, collected his bandits, and appointed him as the leader of the security team.
Since Xu Hanzhang became the leader of the security brigade, on the one hand, he collected protection fees from merchants, and on the other hand, he collected taxes on peasants' grain. As for how much to pay, it was all up to him to be happy, and most of the money received went into his own pocket.
Despite this, Xu Hanzhang still felt restrained by the county magistrate. So he returned to the mountains with the security team and the guns and bullets issued by the county government, and continued to live a life of killing and setting fires.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to expand the army, the National Revolutionary Army again recruited Xu Hanzhang and incorporated his bandits into the army, and he was also appointed as a company commander. Subsequently, Xu Hanzhang repeatedly asked the Nationalist government for weapons on the grounds of "rudimentary weapons." With the Great War looming, the National Government granted his request. However, when he got his weapons and equipment, he rebelled and led the team back to the mountains as bandits.
Before liberation, Xu Hanzhang was recruited by the Kuomintang several times. But after each request was met, he repeated the same trick. Because the National Revolutionary Army was busy with the War of Resistance at that time, it did not have time to draw troops to encircle and suppress him, so his army quickly expanded to more than 5,000 people, and he became one of the bandits in western Hunan Province.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to win the hearts and minds of the people, the Nationalist government encircled and suppressed Xu Hanzhang, who was already angry and resentful.
This time, the Nationalist government dispatched a regular army to engage Xu Hanzhang's bandits head-on. In the face of the regular army of the Kuomintang, Xu Hanzhang's troops were quickly defeated and retreated, and there were countless casualties. In order to preserve his strength, Xu Hanzhang had to take the remnants of the bandits and hide in the mountains.
Since then, Xu Hanzhang has spent most of his time in the mountains. Occasionally go down the mountain to rob, but no longer dare to have the arrogance of the past.
Before liberation, the Nationalist government had been defeated. Xu Hanzhang took advantage of the chaos to loot the county government and occupy the county seat of Luxi. As for Xu Hanzhang's behavior, the Nationalist government no longer has the ability to suppress it. On the contrary, in order to deal with the People's Liberation Army that was close behind, they gave Xu Hanzhang a lot of weapons and property, so as to recruit them. His bandits were thus incorporated into the Anti-Communist National Salvation Army, and he was awarded the rank and position of brigade commander of the Major General.
Only a few months after Xu Hanzhang became a brigade commander, the People's Liberation Army invaded luxi county. Xu Hanzhang knew that he was invincible and set fires all night in the city, but led the bandits to escape back to the old nest.
After entering the county seat, the cadres of our army persuaded Xu Hanzhang to abandon the secret and surrender to the light, but Xu Hanzhang believed that he had been a bandit for twenty years, and the Kuomintang had done nothing to do with him, and the new government could do anything about it. Therefore, he categorically rejected the suggestion of the cadres of our army and led his bandits around to plunder as before.
In 1950, considering that there were still 100,000 bandits active in the western Hunan area. Like Xu Hanzhang, there were hundreds of bandits with hundreds of people. On the one hand, these bandits posed a threat to the production and safety of the people, and on the other hand, they were assigned by the Kuomintang to wreak great havoc on the work of our Party in the local area. Therefore, our army set up a bandit suppression unit and began to encircle and suppress the bandits in the western Hunan region on a large scale. And evil bandits like Xu Hanzhang have become the focus of encirclement and suppression.
In February 1950, Xu Hanzhang was celebrating the Lantern Festival on the mountain. Suddenly, there was a dense burst of gunfire. It turned out that the bandit troops had unconsciously surrounded his old lair. A rain of bullets and bullets killed the bandits who had beaten the unsuspecting bandits to death and fled. In the chaos, Xu Hanzhang, with several henchmen and bandits, also took advantage of the chaos to escape into the hinterland of the mountains.
Since then, the bandit troops have repeatedly entered the mountains to search for Xu Hanzhang. Several of his henchmen were killed or captured, but Xu Hanzhang escaped the encirclement and suppression like a loach every time.
In fact, Xu Hanzhang's recognition is very high, because he has a cinnabar mole near the corner of his mouth. This feature of his was reinforced by the wanted notices posted by the bandit forces. Those who were deeply affected by him did not want to arrest him, the heinous bandit. Therefore, everyone was very cooperative with the bandit suppression troops, and as soon as they saw Xu Hanzhang's whereabouts, they immediately secretly reported it to the bandit suppression troops. This is also one of the reasons why the bandit forces can always pursue him.
Xu Hanzhang also knew that the cinnabar mole would harm him and lose his life, so in order to hide his identity, he took up the dagger and shaved the cinnabar mole down...
On this day, in front of the checkpoint in Luxi County to Tongren, Guizhou, the passing people were all under interrogation by the People's Liberation Army. A cattle dealer led two cows from afar to the People's Liberation Army. He saw that the People's Liberation Army had a wanted notice with a portrait of Xu Hanzhang in its hands and was comparing the people who came. When inspecting the cattle dealers, the People's Liberation Army also looked at the cattle dealers several times. Although he looked a bit like Xu Hanzhang in the painting, the cattle dealer had no cinnabar mole on his face except for a knife scar, so the People's Liberation Army raised his hand and let him pass.
After the cattle dealer led the two cows far away, in a secluded place, he saw no one around, so he pulled out a pistol from the cow's butt. It turned out that the cattle dealer was Xu Hanzhang, who had already self-destructed.
Originally, after Xu Hanzhang left Luxi, he wanted to defect to yao Dabang, a giant bandit who was entrenched in Huang County. However, after he arrived in Huang County, he learned that Yao Dabang had been captured by the bandit troops. In order to hide his eyes and ears, Xu Hanzhang had to assume the pseudonym Chen Xiuyun and worked as a mason in a nearby village called Anjiazhai.
In the past two years, the anti-bandit troops have eliminated tens of thousands of bandits after an arduous struggle, and it can be said that they have achieved great victories. But the bandit troops did not forget Xu Hanzhang, who had been running away.
Fast forward to the New Year. Li Normal, a militia platoon leader in Luxi County, went to the Huang County Government on official business.
At noon, he was eating at a small restaurant on the street when he heard two people at the next table chatting. One of them looked at Xu Hanzhang's wanted warrant on the wall and said to the other, It's strange, the more I look at this Xu Hanzhang, the more I look like Chen Xiuyun.
The speaker has no intention, the listener intends. After Li Normal heard about it, he couldn't suppress his inner excitement and quickly asked, can that Chen Xiuyun have a cinnabar mole on his face? When the speaker saw the question, he shook his head and said, No, but he had a scar there.
Li was normally interested, chatted with the two men for a while, and after inquiring about Chen Xiuyun's residence, he quit.
After returning to Luxi County, Li Normal immediately reported the situation to the bandit suppression troops, and after discussion, it was finally determined that Chen Xiuyun was Xu Hanzhang, who had been missing for a long time. Subsequently, the bandit suppression unit immediately dispatched more than a dozen People's Liberation Army troops to follow Li Normal for more than 400 miles to Anjiazhai in Huangxian County. Based on the clues provided by the local people, they quickly found the tile shed where Xu Hanzhang lived.
When the PLA kicked open the door, Xu Hanzhang, who had no time to escape, just wanted to shoot, and one of the PLA people had already shot him in the arm. Xu Hanzhang, who was injured, could only tie his hands and grab it.
At this point, Xu Hanzhang, who was the party of misfortune, was finally arrested.
In April 1952, the Luxi County government held a public trial meeting of Xu Hanzhang. Tens of thousands of people came that day to accuse Xu Hanzhang of his numerous crimes. Subsequently, in order to vent the people's anger, Xu Hanzhang was put to justice on the spot.
![Xu Hanzhang, the leader of the Xiangxi bandits: He has killed countless people for wrongdoing, and when he was finally arrested, he was still doing dirty things[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)