Today we introduce Xie Huaide, leader of the Hengshan peasant movement.
Xie Huaide, also known as Xiangqi, was born in 1892 to a blacksmith family in Baiguo Town, Hengshan County, Hunan Province. Due to his family's poverty, he learned to play iron with his father from the age of 10, and developed a good strength and a strong character. In 1916, at the age of 24, Xie Huaide entered the Anyuan Road Mine as a worker. Located 6 kilometers southeast of Pingxiang City, Jiangxi, the Pingxiang Coal Mine was founded in 1898 by Sheng Xuanhuai, the superintendent of Hanyang Iron Works, who introduced Western capital and technology. In 1899, the Zhuping Railway, which carried coal, was specially built. Later, people collectively referred to the Pingxiang Coal Mine and zhuping Railway as an Anyuan Road Mine. In the early 1920s, there were more than 13,000 workers in the Anyuan Road Mine. In the autumn of 1921, the 28-year-old Mao Zedong, as the secretary of the Hunan branch of the Communist Party of China, came to Anyuan to inspect and launch a strike of Anyuan workers in the name of visiting relatives and friends, and learned about the possibility of echoing the strike of the Guangdong-Han railway workers. In view of the overall characteristics of the Anyuan Road miners, he put forward the policy and strategy of "mourning the victory" in the later strike deployment. In December 1921, Li Lisan, who had just returned from studying in France, also came to the Anyuan Road Mine. At Mao's suggestion, Li Lisan established the Anyuan Road Miners' Club and worked in the name of running a school. In January 1922, China's first workers' tuition school was established in Anyuan. Xie Huaide was one of the first workers to enroll in the cram school. At that time, the teachers of the school were basically obligated to teach here, and there were Yang Kaihui, He Baozhen and others in the teaching team. In February of the same year, in a train house in the Pingxiang Coal Mine, the Chinese Communist Party established its first party branch among industrial workers. Li Li served as secretary for three terms. At this time, Xie Huaide was a young activist who was good at learning, had ideals, and pursued democracy and freedom. During the preparation of the general strike, because Xie Huaide was lively and outgoing, flexible in mind, good at thinking, strong organizational and communication skills, and particularly brave and proud, he enjoyed a high prestige among the miners, and was elected as the general representative of the workers in the machinery department and the head of the communication unit of the Anyuan Club. In the same year, he joined the Socialist Youth League and was subsequently introduced by Li Lisan to become a member of the Communist Party of China. On the eve of the strike, the club decided to set up a workers' inspection team (renamed a picket regiment) to maintain order and protect the safety of the strike leaders and the club. After careful planning and full preparation, Xie Huaide took the lead in singing the song "We are not cows and horses, we are people". His voice was loud and infectious, and the roar of hundreds of people merged into a torrent, and workers rushed to the office building of the road and mine authorities with axes and rock tips. "Once upon a time, cows and horses, now I want to be a man!" The slogans were earth-shattering. On September 13, the club issued a strike order, Xie Huaide put a pennant with the word "strike" written on it into the skylight of Zongping Lane, led the supervision team to block the opening of Zongping Lane with pit wood and coal trucks, and led the team to patrol around to ensure the smooth progress of the strike. The railway station workers took the lead in striking at 2 o'clock on the 14th, stopping the first train of the day, and the workers of the engine maintenance office immediately sounded the whistle and issued a strike signal. At 3 o'clock, the mining bureau workers cut off the mine wires, causing the tram to stop, and the underground workers knew that the strike had begun, and poured out of the mine like a tide, shouting "Strike!" Strike!" When the negotiations between the strike and the resumption of work reached an impasse, Xie Huaide came to the boiler room, issued a warning to the road and mine authorities, and if he did not agree to the conditions, he turned off the fire and blacked out the power, so that the groundwater flooded the mine, which frightened the road and mine authorities, and had to consult with the representatives of the club again and agree to the thirteen demands made by the striking workers.
The news of the victory of the Anyuan strike inspired the workers of the Lead and Zinc Mine in Shuikou Mountain, Changning, who sent Liu Dongxuan to Anyuan to find a "master". On November 22, 1922, Jiang Xianyun, Xie Huaide, and others were assigned by the party to come to Shuikou Mountain to organize the struggle of the labor movement. The mining authorities panicked and posted a murderous notice, claiming that if someone from Anyuan came here, once caught, they would immediately bring the law to justice on the spot. Ignoring the intimidation of the mining bureau and the exhaustion of the journey, Xie Huaide and Jiang Xianyun held a meeting of the backbone workers that night and agreed on a plan for organizing the club. The next day, the club was set up to prepare for the Kangjia Opera Stage, and on the 27th, the Shuikoushan Workers' Club was officially established. Due to the delay in responding to the workers' club's four demands for improving life and increasing wages, the club decided to strike, secretly organized a strike executive committee, and established a strike supervision team, with Xie Huaide as the head of the supervision team. In the early morning of December 5, after the Shuikoushan Workers' Club issued a strike order, Xie Huaide led the supervision team to strictly guard the key and key departments, and sent inspectors to patrol to ensure the smooth progress of the strike struggle. On the 19th, the mining bureau detained the club leader Liu Dongxuan and others in the name of negotiations. Xie Huaide mobilized and led thousands of workers to surround the mining bureau, and knocked the mine police who came to attack to the ground to disperse the mine police. The mine authorities were forced by the situation to release the club leaders. The strike lasted for 23 days, the mining bureau had to agree to the 18 conditions put forward by the workers, and the struggle was completely won. In January 1923, Xie Huaide was ordered to return to Anyuan and immediately threw himself into the struggle of the leaders of the Anyuan Workers' Club to demand that the Mining Bureau fulfill the agreement and pay the workers a half-month salary increase. He went to see the mine manager with several leaders of the workers' club and forced the bureau to issue a seven-and-a-half-day salary increase for each of them. On April 3, Xie Huaide was elected chairman of the club's economic committee and became the club's "red butler". In June of the same year, he was also elected to the Referee Committee.
In July 1923, the party organization decided to send Xie Huaide back to Hengshan, Hunan Province, to help Liu Dongxuan carry out the peasant movement there. In close coordination with Liu Dongxuan, he extensively mobilized poor peasants, successively established secret peasant movement groups in various places, and then imitated the method of the "ten-member regiment" in the Workers' Movement in Anyuan and Shuikoushan and the three-level representation system to prepare for the establishment of peasant associations. On September 16, the Yuebei Peasants' Trade Union, the first peasant revolutionary organization in Hunan, held an inaugural meeting attended by thousands of people at Liu Jiesangong Ancestral Hall. Liu Dongxuan was elected as the chairman of the committee, and Xie Huaide was appointed as vice chairman and concurrently served as the captain of the picket. At the inaugural meeting of the Yuebei Farmers' Trade Union, four resolutions were passed that were closely related to the lives of peasants: first, a resolution on how to improve peasants' lives; second, a resolution on rural education; a resolution on the attitude of the Association toward the government; and a resolution on how to improve the lives of rural women. After the establishment of the Yuebei Farmers' Union, Xie Huaide, together with his comrades-in-arms, made a decision not to hoard Juqi and prevented gumi from leaving the country. After hearing the news, Xie Huaide led more than 2,000 peasants to rush to Xiaolan Port and Zimu Port with shuttle labels and hoes to collect all the grain and rice on the banks of the Xiaolan Port and Zimu Port, regardless of the people's woes, and sold them all to the peasants at a price of four buckets and five liters per yuan, and all the income obtained was used as the office expenses of the peasant trade union. This action also fired the first shot of the struggle of the peasant trade unions in northern Yue. Then the peasant trade union led the peasants in a struggle against the large landlord Liao Lianyuan, Zhao Guisun, the director of the Baiguo Regiment Defense Bureau, and Zhao Hengti's brother Zhao Nianci, and the morale of the peasant workers' union was boosted. On this basis, the peasant trade unions began to brew a struggle to reduce rents and interest rates, and a revolutionary movement to liquidate the oppression and exploitation of peasants by landlords and gentry on a large scale rose vigorously in the rural areas of northern Yue. Under the leadership and planning of Xie Huaide and others, the Yuebei Farmers' Union has gained great prestige and developed rapidly. Subsequently, farmers from Hengyang, Xiangtan, Xiangxiang and other counties also enthusiastically came to participate. In just three months, the membership has grown from more than 10,000 to more than 100,000. On November 25, 1923, the authorities sent troops to suppress the Yuebei Farmers' Union, burned down the site of the Yuebei Farmers' Trade Union, arrested more than 70 members of the Agricultural Trade Union, shot and killed Zhao Bingyan, the general representative of Donghu, Zhou De'er, the general representative of Guantang, and Liao Fangbing, the general representative of Ma'anshan, and Li Yuyong, the general representative of Fenglin District, was imprisoned and tortured to death. Known as the "Four Martyrs of Yuebei", Xie Huaide and Liu Dongxuan escaped from danger under the cover of the masses. Although the struggle of the Peasants' Trade Union in Northern Yuebei failed miserably, it opened the prelude to the Peasant Movement in Hunan and became the precursor of the Peasant Movement in Hunan. In the spring of 1925, Xie Huaide and Liu Dongxuan came to Guangzhou, and according to the instructions of the party, he joined the Chinese Kuomintang and engaged in the party's united front work. In September, he entered the fifth phase of the Guangzhou Agricultural Lecture Institute, and before he could graduate, he was sent to Chenxian County, Hunan Province to lead the agricultural movement. In the spring of 1926, Xie Huaide mobilized the masses in the two districts of Liangtian and Xiuxian in Chenxian County, where the mass base was relatively good, successively set up peasant night schools, established agricultural cooperative groups, and led the backbone of the peasant movement to carry out the struggle of the agricultural movement in the whole county, such as destroying the tax card of the fertile land and fighting against the local tycoons, thus promoting the development of the peasant movement in Chenxian County as a whole. At the beginning of the summer of the same year, the Advance Regiment of the Northern Expedition of the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army arrived in Chenxian County, and Xie Huaide organized the masses to go to support. Soon, he was ordered to return to his hometown of Baiguo, Hengshan, and established the Yuebei Farmers' Association. When launching a mass struggle against the director of the Yuebei Regiment Defense Bureau, the Kuomintang right wing falsely accused Xie Huaide of "killing people and crossing goods" in the north of Hengshan Yuebei to the Kuomintang Hunan Provincial Party Department. At the end of August 1926, the provincial party department, in the name of "investigating and punishing illegal party members", called the governor of Hengshan County and ordered him to "detain Xie Huaide to the case", so that Xie Huaide could not gain a foothold in Hengshan. In September of the same year, Xie Huaide changed his name and surname from Hengshan to Nanchang, Jiangxi, and served as a soldier in the Sixth Army of the National Revolutionary Army. He was wounded twice during the Nanchang and Jiujiang battles and returned to the Anyuan Coal Mine in May 1927.
Soon, the reactionary army occupied Pingxiang and prepared to attack Anyuan, and Xie Huaide and Zhu Shaolian, who were still wounded, immediately organized the workers to carry out the struggle to protect the mines. He came to the repair shop where he had worked for 15 years, and together with the workers, he set up an iron stove and rushed to make earth guns, darts and pine cannons. On June 11, the battle against the reactionary army began, Xie Huaide carried two steel guns, commanded a part of the workers, blocked the enemy troops in the Jiuliping area, calmly responded to the battle, and defended the position. At the critical juncture when the enemy was surrounded on all sides, ammunition was insufficient, and grain was running out, Xie Huaide and others organized workers to rush to make simple grenades, and he also took a train with Yang Shijie and Shi Zuodong to break through the siege and go to the Lai Family Ancestral Hall in Danjiang to transport back two wagons of grain from the barns of the local tycoons. After 17 days and nights of arduous fighting, the enemy soldiers were finally repelled and the victory in the defense of Anyuan was won. On the eve of the autumn harvest uprising on the Border of Xianggan and Gansu led by Mao Zedong in September 1927, the Anyuan workers' armed forces were organized into the second regiment of the uprising troops, and Xie Huaide served as the deputy company commander of the Eighth Company, participated in the autumn harvest uprising led by Comrade Mao Zedong, and followed Mao Zedong to Jinggangshan, opening up the road of encircling the city with the countryside and seizing power by force. After the rebel forces were severely defeated in Liuyang, he gathered some of his personnel to fight a guerrilla attack in the area of Shangli City in Pingxiang. After the autumn harvest uprising, the Liling County CPC Committee continued to mobilize the masses in the countryside, arm the peasants, and prepare for the uprising. At the end of the same year, the three townships of Liling East, South and North successively established guerrilla units and Red Guards. An arsenal was established in Nanxiang to manufacture weapons and ammunition. The guerrilla group grew to more than 400 people and formed the 1st Regiment of the Liling Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, with Zhou Yunfu, the leader of the regiment, and Teng Daiyuan, the party representative. The County's Red Guards grew to more than 40,000 people, and the liling countryside initially formed a situation of armed division. At this time, the peasant army was in urgent need of cadres, and Xie Huaide was dispatched by the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China to Liling to participate in the organization of the Liling peasant rebellion. On January 27, 1928, nearly 10,000 armed and revolutionary masses of liling peasants marched toward the county town with weapons such as shuttle markers, thunder muskets, and pine cannons, and soon surrounded the county seat. Liling City is surrounded by water on three sides, easy to defend and difficult to attack. In the early hours of the morning, the general command of the siege issued an order to attack the city, and the peasant armies of all walks of life immediately rushed forward to kill. The Xixiang peasant army rushed to the side of the Chu River, but could not cross the river; the Dongxiang peasant army destroyed the enemy's arsenal at Yangsanshi, and the Nanxiang peasant army attacked the south gate. The Bridge of the Chujiang River was the only way into the center of the county, where the enemy was heavily defended, and after several battles, due to the fierce enemy firepower, the peasant army suffered heavy casualties, and the general headquarters of the siege was forced to issue a retreat order. On February 27, he attacked Liling County again. The peasant army first destroyed the Zhuping Railway and cut off the enemy's reinforcement route, and then concentrated all the ferries on the west bank of the Lu River for the peasant army to use for siege. At 2:00 a.m., more than 10,000 peasant troops launched a fierce attack on the county seat in four ways. The Xixiang peasant army occupied Liujia Wharf and Jinniu Lane; the Beixiang peasant army rushed through the Phoenix Mountain and occupied the area around Qiyantang; and the Dongxiang peasant army attacked the Dongmen ferry and occupied the area around Deng Gongtang. The three-way army directly approached the enemy's defensive positions. However, when the 1st Regiment of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army and the Nanxiang Peasant Army led by Xie Huaide rushed through the South Gate and hit the Bridge of the Chujiang River, they were violently blocked by enemy machine gun fire, and the 1st Regiment made several strong attacks, but they failed to work. The enemy is a steel gun and iron bullet, the peasant army is a large knife and dart, the equipment of the two sides is very different, and then attack, which is unfavorable to the peasant army, the command headquarters analyzed the battle situation, and once again ordered the peasant army to retreat. Xie Huaide offered to cover the retreat of the peasant army, and finally trapped in a small village called Lashu under the Wax Tree in Qingxi, Pingxiang. He was seriously injured, unable to break through, and fell into the clutches of the Second Regiment of the Jiangxi Security Regiment. When the enemy learned that he was Wei Zhen Anyuan's "Xie Mengzi", he immediately killed him on the spot, and Jing inhumanely cut his body into four pieces. Xie Huaide was brave and righteous, and he was 35 years old at the time.
