It is hard to imagine that a warlord who has dominated Yunnan for 18 years has a lofty position in the hearts of the people of Yunnan, and this status naturally does not come from power and bullying, but from Longyun's contribution to the people and Yunnan.
Presumably, everyone has heard of the Burma Road, the "lifeline" that supports the mainland troops to resist Japan, but you don't necessarily know the story behind this road.
What kind of miracles are contained in the seemingly simple data of "200,000", "9 months", and "959.4 kilometers"?
Chinese can do it yourself
The reason why the Burma Highway, which is nearly a thousand kilometers long, was built because of an agreement between Chiang Kai-shek and Long Yun.
After the July 7 Incident, Chiang Kai-shek officially declared the War of Resistance and summoned military and political chiefs from all over the country to Nanjing to hold a national defense conference, at which he was specially invited
"King of Yunnan"
Long Yun was to solve a big problem for the Kuomintang troops - logistical deficiencies.
"Long Yun, as the saying goes, the soldiers and horses have not moved, the grain and grass have gone first, it is indispensable to fight this material support, the current situation at home is somewhat difficult, in order to be able to smoothly transport the materials supported by foreign countries, we must build a road in the southwest border ..."
Chiang Kai-shek went straight to the point, and Long Yun did not make a polite deal with him, directly nodding his head and undertaking this arduous task, and at that time the agreement between the two sides was very clear.
Long Yun's Yunnan government was responsible for the construction of the Burma Highway full-time, and the Kuomintang government provided certain financial subsidies.
In order to smoothly carry out the construction of the highway, the Kuomintang government also specially invited experts in this field
But after the field assessment, those experts shook their heads, and then said to Long Yun,
"It's too difficult to build roads on your side, and even with American machinery and technology, it will take at least three years..."
Hearing this, Long Yun immediately frowned, after the outbreak of the July 7 Incident, the domestic situation was extremely tense, seeing that Shanghai had the possibility of falling at any time.
"No, three years is too long."
Long Yun directly rejected the opinions of the experts, and consulted the experts on whether they could save time to build a highway, even if it was to pay more costs, it did not matter, and the American experts shook their heads in unison, and said to Long Yun very firmly.
"Three years is already the shortest, and if the construction period is shortened, we can't do it, no one can do it."
At this time, if others were afraid to give up, because American experts often represented "advanced" and "erudite" at that time, and the possibility of them making a wrong judgment was very small.
But Long Yun didn't believe it, only to see him firmly say to the American experts,
"The Americans can't do it, Chinese can do it themselves!"
As the king of Yunnan, Long Yun was not an indecisive person, and after making up his mind, he directly summoned the county magistrates of the counties in Yunnan, first explained the stakes to them, and then made them make military orders with a strong attitude.
Local officials who were still a little lazy and lazy were forced to do their best, so that for a while the road construction cause in Yunnan was in full swing, and countless people could be seen trekking to the construction site every day, which can be said to be day and night, and the road construction is not embellished.
When Long Yun first said that he wanted to build his own highway, the American experts were skeptical, but they never expected that the people of Yunnan could burst out with such great enthusiasm and strength.
According to statistics, the number of people attending the work every day was at least 100,000 at that time, and when the road construction boom reached its peak, more than 200,000 people worked overtime there.
In this case, the 959.4-kilometer-long Yunnan Burma Highway was successfully completed in just 9 months, and everyone was shocked when the electric highway was fully opened to traffic at the end of August 1938.
When leading the people to build roads, Long Yun did not let his troops sit idle, and he mobilized 200,000 troops from his own hands to support Chiang Kai-shek's resistance to Japan.
This support can be said to be unique at the time, and anyone who looks at it has to raise a thumbs up and praise him.
"It's really worthy of being the king of Yunnan!"
From grassroots to Yunnan King
Long Yun's "Yunnan King" was not easy to come by, but at the same time it was extremely gold-rich, because this was what he had worked hard from scratch and with one knife and one shot.
At that time in 1884, Long Yun was born in Zhaotong, Yunnan, although his family was still a landlord family, but as early as Long Yun's father's generation, their family had already declined.
And because his father died early, this Yi teenager could only rely on his own hardships to survive, and it was also the tempering of that period that developed a strong and strong character for Long Yun.
At that time, it was still the late Qing Dynasty, and local bandits were quite rampant, and sometimes they would openly run to the village to plunder, so that the villagers were always afraid.
The young Long Yun was not small, and he had always liked to ride horses and shoot arrows, and he directly pulled out more than 20 men from the village and set up a bandit team to take the initiative to attack and try to restore stability to the local area.
Unfortunately, due to lack of experience and lack of preparation, those men were finally sacrificed, and only Long Yun floated in the river and finally survived.
Long Yun, who felt ashamed of his fellow villagers, decided to go with his cousin to the Xufu area of Sichuan to sell wood, but he did not expect that
Xie Ruji, the commander of the new army who happened to come to the land of Sichuan and Shu to support him at that time, heard his story and was very optimistic about him, so he simply recommended him to his school, Yunnan Daowutang, to study.
Although Long Yun did not like to study private school, he was still very interested in fighting wars and defending his family and defending the country, so he went there, and this became the starting point for him to take off.
In the Yunnan Wu Tang, Long Yun not only learned a wealth of military knowledge, but also met a group of like-minded friends, and after quickly completing the transition from a Wu Tang student to an army soldier, Long Yun quickly became the commander of the Fifth Army, and was the right hand and left arm of Tang Jiyao, the second generation of Yunnan Wang at that time.
Tang Jiyao admired Long Yun very much, but Long Yun slowly developed an opinion on Tang Jiyao.
Because although Tang Jiyao was nominally the king of Yunnan, he did not rule Yunnan effectively at all, nor was he responsible to the people of Yunnan, it can be said that he did not occupy the position.
Therefore, he and Hu Ruoyu, Li Xuanting, Zhang Ruji and others launched the "February 6 Coup" and ousted Tang Jiyao from power, and at this point, Tang Jiyao's 14-year ruling career in Yunnan was officially over.
At this time, the take-off of the dragon cloud was already unstoppable, although there was a middle
"June 14 Coup"
This kind of twist and turn, but still has not been able to change the end of Longyun group leader Yunnan Daquan.
Therefore, soon after, Long Yun officially became the 3rd King of Yunnan.
If the story ends abruptly here, then perhaps everyone's impression of Long Yun is just one
"The Great Warlord"
The so-called King of Yunnan is nothing more than a joke.
Just like Tang Jiyao at the beginning, but since Long Yun chose to overthrow Tang Jiyao, he naturally would not become the second him, and in his 18-year reign in Yunnan, he became a well-deserved "King of Yunnan" with his own contributions.
Time has passed, and contributions are immortal
After successfully replacing Tang Jiyao, Long Yun did not have a corpse vegetarian meal, but instead began a drastic reform in Yunnan.
First of all, he encouraged the people of Yunnan to develop industry, and even he himself specially funded an enpu to organize the Zhaotong People's Industrial Company, allowing him to reclaim the Zhaotong area, and also helped him to mine and run a lighting field, which formed a good atmosphere in the local area.
Secondly, in order to establish a stable financial order for the Yunnan region, Long Yun vigorously promoted the reorganization and establishment of the Fudian New Bank, and successively promoted Li Peiyan and Liao Yuntai and others to manage it, which was of great significance for controlling the prices in Yunnan at that time.
In addition, Long Yun attaches great importance to education, and he not only promoted the establishment of educational institutions such as the United Girls' Middle School, Yanshan Primary School, Zhaotong Girls' Junior High School and the People's Education Center, but even took the initiative to fund the construction of these schools when there was no money to build them, and contributed his share to the education of children in Yunnan.
Finally, in order to completely improve the living environment of the people in Yunnan, he also vigorously supported the development of local water conservancy projects, and when the Zhaolu River water conservancy project had no money to continue to be built, it was also the money he took the initiative to stand up and take the lead in donating, and these contributions should not be forgotten by people.
In the course of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he not only mobilized 200,000 troops to cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Japanese resistance, but even gritted his teeth and led the Yunnan government to build the extremely critical Yunnan Burma Highway.
Because of this, it will be conspicuous in his personal evaluation later
"Patriotic Generals of the Anti-Japanese War"
。
At a time when Chiang Kai-shek exposed his dictatorial intentions and vainly attempted to realize his dictatorial ambitions, it was also in Hong Kong that he issued "Our Understanding and Propositions on the Chinese Revolution at the Present Stage", officially announcing that Chiang Kai-shek had broken with Chiang Kai-shek, and at the same time mobilizing the Yunnan officials at that time to revolt against our party.
It can be said that Long Yun's life is wonderful and full of twists and turns, from a poor child in an ethnic minority family, to a step by step grown into a king of Yunnan who is admired by thousands of people and left a name in future generations, Long Yun has won people's heartfelt affirmation with his own efforts and selflessness.
Even now, the people of Yunnan are deeply remembering the contributions that Long Yun made to them, which is unique among the warlords of that era and is particularly worthy of respect.