In October 1934, the Central Red Army was forced to embark on the Long March. The State Bank, which was subordinate to the Chinese Soviet Government, was organized as the Fifteenth Brigade of the Central Column, consisting of fourteen comrades from the bank and more than a hundred transport team members, with Yuan Fuqing as the captain and Mao Zemin, governor of the State Bank (Mao Zedong's eldest brother) as the political commissar. They set out from the village of Pizi under ruijin yunshi mountain and embarked on a long journey.
Although according to Mao Zedong's opinion, Mao Zemin had already distributed most of the "belongings" in the treasury to the various corps for safekeeping and use, but due to the demands of the leaders of the left-leaning line to carry out the "big moving of the altar jars and cans", the fifteenth brigade was still equipped with more than a hundred loads when it set out, including two quintals of gold, dozens of silver dollars, dozens of "Red Army tickets", four or five quintals of silver and copper coins, as well as lithographs and ink and paper for printing money. These are the last family funds that the National Bank has painstakingly saved in the past three years. The Fifteenth Brigade was thus called the "Bank on the Flat Shoulders", and was also equipped with a guard company, which was protected by Red Army troops on the front and rear and left and right.
In the first three months of the Long March, the Red Army marched day and night, forcibly marching all the way, and hardly stopped. The transport team members of the Fifteenth Brigade each carried a burden of sixty or seventy pounds, and walked the mountain path, and the fatigue and hardship could be imagined. After Mao Zemin ran forward and after running, he did his best to take care of the "flat bank" like a long dragon. Some of the transport team members were not in good health, so Mao Zemin took over the burden and picked the most difficult part of the road. He had previously undergone surgery in Shanghai for appendicitis, and later suffered from a serious stomach problem, and his health has been very poor. When the troops entered the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, on a trip over the mountain, Mao Zemin was too heavy to spit blood because of the burden on his shoulders.
In the bloody battle on the Xiang River, the Red Army was on the verge of desperation. The Fifteenth Brigade also threw printing presses and bulky supplies into the river.
In the early morning of January 7, 1935, the vanguard of the Red Army occupied the important town of Zunyi in northern Qianbei.
Zunyi is the second largest city in Guizhou Province after Guiyang, and has always been a distribution center for various local products, with Han, Miao and other ethnic groups gathering merchants and travelers, and the market is very prosperous. The Guizhou warlord Wang Jialie opened a tobacco shop and a salt shop in Zunyi, hoarding salt worth hundreds of thousands of yuan and a large amount of tobacco soil. There was a shortage of salt in the area, and he single-handedly manipulated the market and sold it at a high price. At that time, pork was only two dimes and one pound, and salt was four cents a pound. Many ordinary people suffer from big neck disease because they cannot afford salt.
After the Red Army arrived in Zunyi, the soldiers urgently needed to rest, buying both medicines and clothing and other items. But they only had a small number of "Red Army tickets" that could not be circulated locally. At this time, the Red Army confiscated a lot of salt, and only in the salt shop run by Wang Jialie, there were hundreds of thousands of salts worth of salt; the Red Army had not yet collected a large number of "Platinum Dragon" brand cigarettes that Wang Jialie had hoarded. Mao Zemin and Lin Boqu deliberated and decided to sell the confiscated salt and cigarettes openly to the masses at an affordable price, the only condition being that they be purchased with the "Red Army Ticket", a paper currency issued by the China Soviet Bank. In this way, the common people had to exchange silver dollars for "Red Army tickets" or sell them to the Red Army goods in exchange for "Red Army tickets". This made the "Red Army ticket" a paper currency that could be circulated, and the troops could use the "Red Army ticket" to buy a lot of urgently needed materials.
Mao Zemin and others took advantage of the Red Army's entry into the city and the Zunyi Ten Thousand People's Congress to propagate the Party's industrial and commercial policy and make the Zunyi masses and industrialists and businessmen understand that the Red Army only confiscated the property plundered by warlords, bureaucrats, and gentry through exploitation of the poor, and implemented a policy of protection for the merchants, supporting them in developing trade, activating the market, stabilizing prices, buying and selling publicly, and encouraging them to cooperate with the Red Army and operate normally. Mao Zemin also paid a special visit to the home of a chamber of commerce president surnamed Yu, and then went to the home of the Brothers Liu Bozhuang, the owner of the T-character Xieji Silk Shop, to do work. The Liu Bozhuang brothers robbed their family property when the Qian army collapsed, and the Red Army's vanguard troops entered the city to protect their property, so they gladly came forward to persuade and mobilize business fans to open the door and actively help the Red Army to purchase goods. As a result, there is a corresponding market for the issuance of "Red Army tickets".
The State Bank is located in the private residence of You Guocai, deputy commander of the Kuomintang Qianjun army in the old city of Zunyi, with dozens of rooms upstairs and downstairs, and the business room and warehouse are very spacious. In order to facilitate the masses and Red Army commanders and fighters to exchange "Red Army tickets" at any time, six exchange points have been set up in the commercial center of Zunyi New City, and nineteen exchange points have been set up in Tongzi, Suiyang, Yaxi, Tuanxi, Longxi, Yuqing, Meitan, and other places around Zunyi, where Red Army troops are stationed. The Red Army not only bought and sold fairly, but the face value of the "Red Army Ticket" was also equivalent to that of silver dollars, and the merchants, large and small, were very satisfied. The credibility of the "Red Army Ticket" was extremely popular, and the market was also unprecedentedly prosperous.
In Zunyi, the Commanders and Fighters of the Red Army, who had been starving and had traveled for three months, had a hard time getting a chance to rest, and the "Frozen" "Red Army Tickets" in their hands were also restored to value, so the rubber shoes and towels in the foreign goods shops were snapped up; there were few new and old books, pencils, and copybooks left in bookstores; and the noodle shops and restaurants in the city were three times as unfavorable as the market. Most of the hotels in Zunyi are Sichuan-style, and the prices are low, and the pot meat, spicy chicken and various kimchi dishes have feasted on the officers and men of the Red Army.
Twelve days later, however, the Red Army decided to move. And the people still hold many "Red Army tickets" in their hands, and of course the National Bank cannot go away and let the people suffer losses. Therefore, they set up many exchange points in the city, put up notices, and limited them to three days, so that the people could exchange the "Red Army tickets" in their hands for silver dollars or salt at a one-to-one ratio. Due to the tight time, Mao Zemin personally picked up the silver dollars and sent them to various exchange points. In order to avoid crowding, the comrades of the National Bank specially found a house with a passage that could enter and exit the front door and the back door as a exchange office. The National Bank quickly completed the return of the "Red Army ticket".
The State Bank's practice of issuing and withdrawing "Red Army bills" in Zunyi not only enlivened the market and guaranteed the supply of the Red Army, but also safeguarded the credibility of Soviet banknotes and safeguarded the interests of the masses, thus leaving a very good influence in the local area. The masses all said that "the Red Army is good, it does not pit people, and the 'Red Army ticket' is worth money." For the few "Red Army tickets" that were still scattered in the hands of the masses, when the state issued a new renminbi in 1955, it was still redeemed at a one-to-one price.