On the morning of May 28, 1949, a large white flag was hung at the gate of the Kuomintang Shanghai Police Station on Shanghai Fourth Road (now No. 185 Fuzhou Road).
At about 9 o'clock, two American jeeps came to an abrupt halt in front of the gate. More than 20 PLA takeover personnel with live ammunition quickly jumped out of the car and carried out vigilance at the gate and inside the compound. In the window hole in the building, some old police officers holding small white flags of different sizes stretched out their arms and shouted: "Welcome to the People's Liberation Army!"
A tall, tall man in his early 30s in a yellow cloth military uniform, wearing leggings, stepped out of the car and waved to the people who had poked their heads out of the building.
A middle-aged policeman dressed in an old police uniform stepped forward to "snap" and saluted: "Report Chief, our enemy Grand Duke Lu, there is a matter to be asked, I don't know if I can?" ”
"Please ask."
"I see that the chief is familiar with the old face, may I ask the Communist Party Li Shiying, who was sentenced in Shanghai for 22 years by the Republic of China, and the chief is the same person?"
"It was I, who was sentenced to death twice by the Kuomintang that year." Li Shiying laughed after he finished speaking.
"Oh, old magic, old magic, this is really a great difficulty not to die, there will be a blessing."
The man who did not die was Li Shiying, the first director of public security in Shanghai after liberation.
Why was Li Shiying sentenced to death by the Kuomintang, and how did he escape? Let's walk into the legendary life of Li Shiying.
Li Shiying, a native of Jingdian Town, Neihuang County, Henan Province, was born on December 21, 1912 to a family of poor peasants for generations. Since childhood, he has learned martial arts with his father and is good at plum blossom boxing. Because of his family's poverty, he dropped out of school at the age of 13 and went to work as an apprentice in a cloth shop. In 1929, he joined the Communist Party of China, and in 1930, he was transferred to the Northern Bureau of the Communist Party of China as a traffic guard, participating in the hoeing and rape work in Tianjin and Beiping. The 18-year-old Li Shiying, bold and meticulous, courageous and strategic, has repeatedly completed the task of eradicating traitors, and is deeply trusted and appreciated by He Chang, secretary of the Northern Bureau. At the end of 1930, he was selected to participate in training in Shanghai Central Special Branch.
At the end of the training, Li Shiying was organized to stay in Shanghai and assigned to the red team of the third section of the central special branch.
The three sections are also called 'operations sections'. Its subordinate red team is responsible for hoeing and rape, also known as the "dog fighting team". There are about 20 or 30 members of the team, divided into several groups, which are not connected to each other, and are contacted by the three sections and the groups. The members of the team came from the backbone of the Shanghai workers' pickets, the sharpshooters of the Northern Expedition and the Red Army, and the top pickaxes from all over the country, and each of them received strict party education and military training, becoming the "sword of Wuhao" that made the traitors and enemies feel frightened.
Because Li Shiying was agile, alert, determined and tenacious, he soon became the backbone of the red team.
In March 1931, a number of traitors appeared in the beiping underground party organization. The Northern Bureau demanded that Li Shiying be transferred back to assist in carrying out the hoeing activities. Li Shiying came to Beiping alone, stayed in the XindingGuan in Shanxi, located in Suzhou Hutong, met the comrades of the Northern Bureau, accepted the task, and executed two traitors at the Hongshan Pass and the Yuanmingyuan in the northwest of the Summer Palace.
In April 1931, Gu Shunzhang, the head of the Central Special Branch, was arrested and defected. Xu Enzeng, chief of the Kuomintang's Party Affairs Investigation Section, Zhang Chong, director general of the Investigation Section, and other secret service leaders led a large number of secret agents, with Gu Shunzhang and other traitors, colluded with the concession to patrol the houses and hunted them around, arrogantly and arrogantly, in a vain attempt to wipe out the CCP organs in Shanghai.
The Central Special Branch has decided to take resolute measures to crack down on the most vicious traitors, Wang Bin, Cao Qingcheng, and others, and to protect the security of the central organs.
Upon receiving an urgent notice from the Central Special Branch, Li Shiying immediately returned to Shanghai and formed a special group with Liu Guobao and Li Zecai to undertake the task of eradicating Wang Bin and Cao Qingcheng, with Li Shiying as the leader of the hoeing team.
Liu Guobao served in the Wuhan National Government Guard Corps and participated in the August 1st Nanchang Uprising. Li Zecai was a former worker in the Shanghai Spinning Factory and joined the Red Army.
The traitor Wang Bin, who is familiar with the laws of our party's activities and organizational relations, is currently an inspector and head of the action team of the Songhu Security Command. The traitor Cao Qingcheng, who used to work in the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, is currently an inspector and head of the intelligence group of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau of the Kuomintang. After the two defected, they became a dead-hearted Kuomintang eagle dog, and they were full of blood debts on their hands.
Since none of the members of the group knew Wang Bin, in order to avoid mistakes, Li Shiying found a photo studio on Nanjing Road and got a group photo of the personnel of the Songhu Police Headquarters based on the clues he had learned. Through the identification of internal comrades, wang bin's physiognomy characteristics are familiar. After that, go to Wang Bin's residence in Yong'anLi, BaierLu, for identification and confirmation.
After many consecutive days of stalking, he mastered wang bin's action rules. Finding that he often went to a mistress's house for a lunch break at noon, he made a plan to start.
At noon on April 2, 1932, Wang Bin went out and took a rickshaw to Theraig Road on Vermont Road, where there were few pedestrians. Li Shiying, who was ambushed on the side of the road, quickly stepped forward, drew out a barge gun and fired three shots at Wang Bin, and quickly withdrew according to the original route after winning the hand. Five minutes later, a group of French Concession patrols blew their whistles and hurried to arrive.
On April 3, major newspapers in Shanghai carried news of Wang Bin's assassination, shaking the beach. The traitor Cao Qingcheng is tall and handsome, sinister and cunning. After learning that Wang Bin had been stabbed, he had a subordinate with a similar figure and appearance live in the Cao mansion on Lafayette Road, while he hid in a nearby secret address. The French Concession also stepped up its precautions, and around Lafayette Road, patrol ambushes were arranged.
On May 16, Li Shiying led a group of three people, Liu Guobao, Li Zecai, and Yuan Lifu, to cao Qingcheng's residence at No. 41, Shunli, Lafayette Road, to wait for the ambush. At that time, the division of labor was arranged: Liu Guobao and Yuan Lifu were monitoring at the gate and taking action; Li Shiying and Li Zecai were watching the wind on the periphery to cover.
At 1:30 p.m., a man in a black suit came out of the alley, his figure and clothing were quite similar to Cao Qingcheng's. Liu Guobao mistakenly thought he was a traitor and immediately shot him. The sound of gunfire immediately led to an ambush patrol, and the sentry was in full swing. Liu Guobao was targeted during the evacuation, and when he ran desperately to No. 11 Guifuli on Baier Road, he had just thrown the gun into the trash when he was caught by the patrol that followed.
Li Shiying and the others heard the gunshots and evacuated separately as planned. When Li Shiying walked to the bend of Baier Road on Jiaqin Road, he suddenly found that there was a person in front of him in a hurry, much like Cao Qingcheng. Did Liu Guobao lose his hand? Without giving it much thought, he shouted, "Cao Qingcheng! The other party turned his head to look at it, found that it was not good, pulled his leg and fled in the direction of the patrol, while shouting along the street: "Kill!" ”
At this time, it is extremely dangerous to start, but it is not willing to give up. At the moment of a thousand gunshots, Li Shiying decisively opened fire and killed him on the spot. He was immediately arrested on the spot by Hua Yu, who had just arrived from the Song Mountain Patrol House.
In the early morning of the next day, when Li Zecai returned to his residence to get something, he fell into the ambush circle of the capture house. At this point, none of the three-man team was spared, and all of them fell into the hands of the enemy.
The French Concession Patrol Room immediately interrogated Li Shiying and the three of them, who firmly denied their identity as Communists.
The patrol house used more than 20 kinds of torture against Li Shiying, including electrocution, tiger stools, cold water, gasoline, pepper water, red-hot strips of hot body, and so on. But Li Shiying showed the iron backbone of the Communists, unyielding.
Patrolling also rarely saw such hard bones, and in desperation, on May 31, 1932, they were transferred to the "Third Division of the Jiangsu High Court" located in the French Concession for trial.
At the opening of the trial on January 17, 1933, the judge determined that Li Shiying was the main culprit based on the handprints on the gun seized when Li Shiying was arrested, as well as the warheads on the body of the deceased, and sentenced Li Shiying and Liu Guobao to death for the crime of "organizing groups to premeditate people for the purpose of endangering the Republic of China", and Li Zecai was sentenced to death, and Li Zecai was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Li Shiying and others appealed against the verdict. On February 22, 1935, the High Court upheld the original judgment.
The Central Special Branch used all kinds of methods to rescue them, and invited barristers Zhang Shizhao and Shi Liang to appeal for them again. At that time, the atmosphere of the anti-Japanese resistance was getting higher and higher, and our party and democrats called for unity in the War of Resistance, unanimously to the outside world, and to abandon their previous grievances. On July 13, 1936, the Supreme Court of the Kuomintang made a final judgment, li Shiying changed his sentence to life imprisonment, and Liu Guobao and Li Zecai changed his sentence to 10 years and 12 years' imprisonment respectively.
In the spring of 1936, Li Shiying was transferred to the newly built Kuomintang "Second Prison Directly Under the Administration of Justice" near Beixinjing, Shanghai.
On August 13, 1937, the Songhu War of Resistance broke out. At the request of the garrison, the second prison sent the detainees to Zhenru to serve as porters for the Fifth Army Security Regiment.
On August 18, Li Shiying and others sent ammunition to the front line of Jiangwan and Wusong, but on the way they were indiscriminately bombed by Japanese planes, many porters were killed, the survivors fled in all directions, and Li Shiying also took the opportunity to flee in the chaos.
After several turns, Li Shiying came to Yan'an, and after more than 5 years of imprisonment and torture, he finally returned to the embrace of the party.
In Yan'an, he studied at the Central Party School and the Central Intelligence and Security Training Class, and in February 1938, the first phase of the training class was completed, and Li Shiying was assigned to work in the Central Social Department.
In the autumn of 1939, the Central Committee sent Li Shiying to Moscow to study at the Chinese Party School run by the Communist International. In June 1941, the German fascists invaded the Soviet Union on a large scale, the Party School of the Communist International was suspended, and the students returned to China one after another.
The trainees had planned to depart from Mongolia and return to northern Shaanxi via the desert, the Mongolian-Chinese border, and Inner Mongolia. On the way, due to the tight blockade of the Japanese army, they had to turn back to Ulaanbaatar and stay for more than a year. In the summer of 1943, Li Shiying and Li Tianyou (who later became founding generals) decided to walk 4,000 kilometers west from Ulaanbaatar, bypassing the Japanese-controlled Mongolian border from southwest mongolia, entering Ningxia, and then returning to Yan'an.
The two of them slept and starved all the way through the vast Gobi Desert. It was the height of summer, the Gobi Desert was hot from the sun, and the two fainted several times due to the hot sun exposure, and they also suffered from water loss, and they were on the verge of death several times.
It was not until the spring of 1944 that the two arrived in Yan'an. At this time, the beards of the two men were pulled; the skin was dark and full of cracks; the clothes were exposed and cotton, and the strips of cloth flew around. The central authorities highly praised their feat of crossing the "Sea of Death" without fear of hardships and dangers.
After returning to Yan'an, Li Shiying continued to engage in intelligence protection work. In 1945, he was elected as a deputy to the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and later served as vice minister of the Ministry of Social Affairs in East China. After the liberation of Shanghai in 1949, Li Shiying became the first director of public security in Shanghai.
After the founding of New China, Li Shiying successively served as deputy secretary of the Shandong Provincial CPC Committee, deputy chief procurator of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, secretary of the Secretariat of the Jiangsu Provincial CPC Committee, and member of the Standing Committee of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. He died in Beijing on August 15, 2001 at the age of 89 due to illness.
Throughout his life, Li Shiying was resolute in his life, extremely resolute in his opposition, incomparably loyal to the party, endured hardships, persevered, and composed a legendary song.