Chiang Kai-shek, once the supreme leader of the Republic of China, chose a resting place for himself in Nanjing when he was on the mainland. However, after his defeat in Taiwan in 1949, his wish to be buried in Purple Mountain naturally could not be realized.
After the death of his son Chiang Ching-kuo, he was also unable to fulfill his last wish to return to his hometown.
In the 90s of last century, the Chiang family sought to transport the two Chiang coffins back to the mainland, but the then leader of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui, insisted on burying the two Chiang in Taiwan.
So what does Lee Teng-hui, who has been engaged in "de-Chiangization," want to use the coffins of two Chiang Kai-shek to do with it?
Chiang Kai-shek
At the peak of Chiang Kai-shek's power, he wanted to be buried in Purple Mountain, and after his death in Taiwan, his coffin did not fall to the ground and waited to return to Nanjing
Chiang Kai-shek gradually seized the supreme power of the Kuomintang after Sun Yat-sen's death, and in 1928 he regained the chairmanship of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing.
At this time, although he was in the prime of life and full of ambition, he had already begun to plan for his future.
It is well known that after the death of Sun Yat-sen, the supreme leader of the Kuomintang, he was officially buried in the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Purple Mountain in 1929. Chiang Kai-shek has always regarded himself as the heir of Mr. Zhongshan, and naturally he also believes that it is his natural right to accompany the burial of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, and can also use this to demonstrate his orthodox status.
But Chiang Kai-shek obviously did not dare to build construction directly opposite or on the side of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Later, he commissioned a "feng shui master" to find Zixia Lake, a "treasure land of feng shui" around Nanjing.
The terrain here is lower than the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, but higher than the Ming Xiao Mausoleum. It can not only reflect Chiang Kai-shek's "emperor" momentum, but also avoid the suspicion of trespassing higher than Sun Yat-sen.
Sun Yat-sen
However, Chiang Kai-shek's defeat in Taiwan naturally made all his previous plans fail.
In 1949, he even wanted to take Sun Yat-sen's coffin to Taiwan, but he did not dare to blow up the underground tomb.
After Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Taiwan, he went to Dachen Island many times to look at his hometown in Zhejiang, but after the Nationalist troops withdrew from Dachen in 1955, Chiang Kai-shek realized that he might even have become a luxury to return to his roots.
Chiang Kai-shek was born in Xikou Town, Fenghua County, and after the death of his mother Wang Caiyu in 1921, he was heartfelt for his mother and built three bungalows in his hometown and named them "Cilu".
When he was in the mainland, he returned to "Cilu" many times to reminisce about the past, so after 1955, he was depressed due to homesickness. Even let the secret agent lurking in Zhejiang try to return to his hometown and take a few photos of him "Cilu" to comfort his soul.
Chiang Kai-shek
In 1961, when he came to the junction of Daxi Town and Fuxing Township in Taoyuan City, he unexpectedly found that the scenery and terrain of this place were very close to his hometown in Xikou.
So he ordered people to rename the Dongkou Hotel there "Cihu Hotel", and often went there to reminisce about his childhood.
By 1974, Chiang Kai-shek, who was 87 years old, was deteriorating, and administrative power was forced to be handed over to his deputy, Yan Jiagan.
Chiang Kai-shek also knew very well that he could not live to see the day when the "counterattack" on the mainland succeeded. So he asked in his will that his body first be "floated" in the Cihu Hotel, and then buried in Purple Mountain after the "restoration" of the mainland.
Chiang Kai-shek and others
On April 5, 1975, Qingming Day, perhaps missing his relatives, Chiang Kai-shek's physical condition deteriorated rapidly, and he died at 11:50 p.m. that night. The Jiang family packed his body and four funeral books into a marble coffin prepared in advance.
After a 10-day grand funeral in Taipei, the coffin was transported to the Cihu Hotel by special car on April 16. According to the custom of his hometown, the coffin is 3 inches high with bricks to show that it has not entered the earth.
By this time, his son Chiang Ching-kuo and others still fantasized that Chiang Kai-shek could be transported back to Purple Mountain a few decades later and buried as a head of state to accompany Sun Yat-sen.
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Ching-kuo failed to train the next generation to succeed him, and his last wish was to return to Xikou to accompany his mother after "restoring" the mainland
After Chiang Kai-shek's death, his deputy Yan Jiagan succeeded him as the so-called "president". But everyone could see that Yan Jiagan was only paving the way for Chiang Ching-kuo to come to power. Sure enough, in 1978, Taiwan held a "general election", and Chiang Ching-kuo became Taiwan's supreme leader as he wished.
However, at this time, the mainland began to reform and open up, and its national strength was booming, and China formally established diplomatic relations with the United States, Europe and Japan. Taiwan has completely become an outcast of US hegemony, and it is even more foolish to rely on Taiwan's own strength to "counterattack."
Chiang Ching-kuo was forced to adopt a series of measures that followed the trend, first reducing the combat readiness of the Taiwan army and the mainland strike. He also took advantage of the opportunity of Japan's industrial transformation to vigorously develop the economy, so that Taiwan soon became one of the "Four Asian Tigers".
However, unlike Chiang Kai-shek, who spent decades calmly discussing the aftermath, Chiang Ching-kuo's arrangements for his heir and even his own resting place were very unsuccessful.
In 1978, Chiang Ching-kuo was 68 years old and suffered from diabetes in the 60s of the last century because he did not control his diet.
Chiang Ching-kuo
After becoming Taiwan's supreme leader, he let go of himself, and even told the health doctor: "You are responsible for my health, I am responsible for my appetite." As a result, by the mid-80s, his diabetic complications had affected his normal work.
Chiang Ching-kuo actually seriously considered grooming the "third generation of Chiang" as his heir, and he and his wife Chiang Fangliang had three sons.[1] Who knows that the eldest son Jiang Xiaowen became a discredited son of the gangster when he became an adult, the second son Jiang Xiaowu was implicated in the "Jiangnan case" and withdrew from politics, and the third son Jiang Xiaoyong became a cripple due to a gun fire.
It was the absence of the successors of the Chiang family that made Chiang Ching-kuo publicly express his position, and the descendants of the Chiang family would no longer step into the political arena in the future. It is for this reason that he was forced to relax the party ban and repeal the "martial law" that had been in place for decades.
However, Chiang Ching-kuo did not expect that this move would make the Taiwan independence forces in Taiwan develop and grow, and the absence of descendants to enter politics also brought monstrous trouble to his posthumous affairs. Ironically, the important factor that caused Chiang Ching-kuo's sudden death was the dream of nuclear weapons that the two Chiang never died.
Chiang Ching-kuo
On January 12, 1988, Zhang Xianyi, the head of Taiwan's nuclear weapons, suddenly defected to the United States, and the US government severely rebuked Chiang Ching-kuo for carrying out nuclear weapons behind his back.
When Chiang Ching-kuo learned that the henchman he had cultivated for many years turned out to be an American spy, he was angry for a while, and his health deteriorated rapidly.
On January 13, without explaining what happened, Chiang Ching-kuo died abruptly. According to Chiang Ching-kuo's last wish, his body should not be buried in Taiwan, but in the Touliao Hotel, not far from the Cihu Hotel.
Of course, Chiang Ching-kuo had no ambition to return to the mainland and be buried in Purple Mountain, and he thought that he was also mainly raised by his mother Mao Fumei. Therefore, he always wanted to return to Fenghua's hometown to accompany his mother forever after returning to the mainland.
Chiang Ching-kuo
Lee Teng-hui was promoted by Chiang Ching-kuo to become the leader of Taiwan, and when he came to power, he suddenly opposed Chiang and proposed that the two Chiang should be buried in Taiwan
What Chiang Ching-kuo regrets the most is that he and his father's coffin will be buried today because of his own arranged successor, Lee Teng-hui.
In August 1971, when Chiang Ching-kuo set up a team in advance for his future rise to power, his confidant Shen Zonghan recommended to him Lee Teng-hui, a Taiwanese agronomist at the time.
At that time, Chiang Ching-kuo believed that he had shallow roots in the Kuomintang and needed to quickly promote new people to suppress other bigwigs in the party. Therefore, under his arrangement, Lee Teng-hui became a "member of the Central Committee" of the Kuomintang in 1976, the mayor of Taipei City in 1978, and the chairman of Taiwan Province in 1981.
After winning the "presidential election" in 1984, Chiang Ching-kuo nominated Lee Teng-hui as his deputy. However, it is generally believed that Chiang Ching-kuo did not have the will to make Lee Teng-hui a new generation of leaders, but more a transition before Lee Teng-hui came to power as his close confidant Lin Yanggang.
Lee
Unexpectedly, after Chiang Ching-kuo's death, Lee Teng-hui soon showed political skills comparable to the old Chiang Kai-kno. Many KMT bigwigs previously thought that Lee Teng-hui was just a puppet, so they had no opinion on his rising step by step.
However, after Lee Teng-hui officially became Taiwan's leader, he soon let the Kuomintang bigwigs such as Soong Chu-yu and Yu Muming out of the infighting. What surprised Chiang Ching-kuo even more was that Lee Teng-hui was actually a Taiwan independence careerist who had been hidden for decades.
To this end, he vigorously promoted the "indigenization" of Taiwanese politics and publicly liquidated the actions of the two Chiangs. Lee Teng-hui's "insanitousness" once caused a sensation in Taiwan society, but after everyone learned about his life, they said that they should take it for granted.
Lee Teng-hui was born in Taipei in 1923 and never had the concept of "China" or "China" in his childhood. In 1947, when he was in the midst of his youthful arrogance, the Nationalist government caused the "2.28" bloodshed in Taiwan.
Lee
In the following decades, he changed his hatred of the Nationalist government into hatred of the two Chiangs, and after becoming the leader of the Kuomintang, he could not wait to take revenge on the two Chiangs.
He is obviously a member of the Kuomintang, but he openly said in an interview: He was forced to join the Kuomintang and for the safety of his life.
When he noticed that the "10,000-year-old National Congress" that Chiang Kai-shek had brought to Taiwan had already aroused the resentment of Taiwan's local politicians, he pushed forward the election of new "National Congress" deputies in Taiwan, regardless of the possible loss of power by the Kuomintang. He also connived at the Taiwan independence forces on the island to openly carry out political activities, which led to the rapid rise of the DPP.
Seeing that Lee Teng-hui had openly betrayed Chiang Ching-kuo's political legacy, both Chiang Weiguo and Chiang Hsiao-yong were worried. Therefore, in 1995, the two discussed that as Lee Teng-hui carried out "de-Chiangization" in Taiwan step by step, I am afraid that the coffins of the two Chiang in Daxi Town would also be difficult to complete.
Lee
It happened that in 1992, the SEF and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) had already begun to contact, so they proposed to transport the "two Chiangs" back to Fenghua Xikou through civilian channels and bury them as civilians.
For this reason, Jiang Xiaoyong, who had already suffered from esophageal cancer, and his wife Jiang Fangzhiyi came to Beijing in May 1996 in the name of treatment.
The central government warmly received Jiang Xiaoyong and his wife, and arranged for Chinese medicine experts to treat Jiang Xiaoyong. But the doctor's examination proved that his cancer was advanced and could only prolong his life. Jiang Xiaoyong was well aware of this, and he soon returned to Fenghua, Zhejiang with the cooperation of the mainland.
At the last moment of his life, he finally paid homage to the graves of his ancestors, and visited the graves of his grandfather and father for the first and last time. According to the situation at that time, if the two Chiang Kai-sheks could be made in Taiwan, the mainland side absolutely supported their burial of the Chiang family's ancestral grave.
Jiang Xiaoyong
It stands to reason that Taiwan has always advertised itself as a democratic society, so where the former leader's coffin is buried should be a private matter for the Chiang family. But he did not expect that Lee Teng-hui, who was eager to remove the traces of the two Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan society, said that it was inappropriate for the Chiang family to transport the two Chiang's coffins back to the mainland.
He even openly accused Jiang Weiguo and Jiang Xiaowu of using this to play the cross-strait emotional card and use the two Jiang coffins to achieve political goals. He also ridiculed the Chiang family like this: "The two Jiangs should be buried in the soil as soon as possible, and it is good to be buried in Taiwan." Moreover, if the coffin does not land, it will also affect the fortunes of future generations. ”
Some people will wonder if the complete removal of the two Chiang Kai-shek coffins out of Taiwan is not more "de-Chiangization" than smashing the statue and changing the name of the road? However, as a die-hard Taiwan independence element, Lee Teng-hui's real purpose of "de-Chiangization" is "de-Sinicization."
Lee
In 1995, Lee Teng-hui's visit to the United States began to play with diplomatic fire, and in 1999, he even openly threw out the absurd remark of "two countries"[2]. The Taiwan independence forces in Taiwan's ruling and opposition parties are also desperately propagating Lee Teng-hui's "two-state theory" in an attempt to make Taiwan's younger generation no longer have feelings for Chinese mainland.
But if the two Jiang are buried on the mainland, doesn't it prove that they are Chinese? After all, no matter how the Taiwan authorities revise the syllabus, they cannot erase the era of the two Chiangs, nor can they say that the two Chiang are native Taiwanese.
Therefore, in Lee Teng-hui's view, only by letting the two Chiang enter the soil in Taiwan can it prove that their generation has been thoroughly "Taiwanized."
In other words, no matter how many people from other provinces came to Taiwan in 1949, after decades of integration, they have become Taiwanese. If we consider the stagnation of cross-strait personnel exchanges after that, then Taiwanese in the new century will only belong to Taiwan and will not belong to the category of Chinese.
Lee
However, in 1996, in view of Chiang's still strong influence in Taiwan society and within the Kuomintang, Lee Teng-hui did not dare to openly reject Chiang Wei-guo and Chiang Hsiao-wu's proposal by means of an executive order. So he pretended to support the establishment of the "Spirit Shifting Research Group", but got in touch with Song Meiling in the United States.
They persuaded Soong Meiling that she should first let the "two Chiangs" be buried in Taiwan as heads of state, and Soong Meiling actually agreed out of vanity.
But in this way, the two Jiang Lingling Continent could only be put on hold, and in 1997, Jiang Xiaoyong and Jiang Weiguo unfortunately died of illness one after another, and the Jiang family was in a hurry and had no intention of taking care of the two Jiang. Ironically, it was only before Soong Meiling's death in the United States in 2003 that she recognized Lee Teng-hui's conspiracy [3].
So she also left a will and buried herself in the Fencliffe Cemetery in the United States. In the future, after Chiang Kai-shek enters the earth, let her go to the joint burial.
Lee
In order to prevent the destruction of the two Jiang's coffins, they were almost buried in the Taipei Cemetery, and the tortuous cross-strait relations can only be resolved after reunification
In 2000, Taiwan held its first open "general election," and DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian successfully counterattacked, breaking the KMT's control over Taiwan for decades. After Chen Shui-bian took office, cross-strait relations deteriorated, and a "counteroffensive" could never be realized.
So in 2004, Jiang Fangliang and Jiang Xiaowen's wife Jiang Xu Naijin proposed that the two Jiang be buried in Taiwan. So as to avoid the "de-Chiangization" of Taiwanese society becoming more and more extreme, their coffins will be artificially damaged.
But in addition to this factor, the KMT election situation was unfavorable at that time. Kuomintang bigwigs hope to bury the two Chiang in Taiwan and attract "pan-blue" voters to vote for themselves.
This time, unlike the Lee Teng-hui era, Chen Shui-bian long ago instructed to spend NT$10 million to build a mausoleum for the "two Chiangs" at the Wuzhishan Military Demonstration Cemetery in Taipei.
Lee
But after the two went to the scene to see it, they dismissed the idea of burial. They thought it was too remote and not guarded by gendarmes like Cihu Lake. If the front foot of the coffin of the "two Jiangs" is not good, the back foot will be stolen and the tomb thief will come.
In this way, the Jiang family reconsidered using the International Red Cross and other institutions to transport the two Jiang coffins back to Fenghua, Zhejiang for burial. But I didn't expect that Jiang Fangliang and Jiang Xu Naijin actually died one after another, so that rumors appeared among the people of Taiwan that "whoever let the two Chiang into the soil in the Chiang family will die".
Moreover, Taoyuan Daxi Town has long used the two Jiang Mausoleums as a "cash cow" to attract tourists from all over the world, and naturally opposed the descendants of the Jiang family moving the coffin on the grounds of safety.
In 2008, Taiwan held another leadership election, and the Kuomintang finally regained its throne.
Jiang Fangliang
An important reason why Jiang Fangliang was anxious to let the two Jiang's coffins leave Cihu Lake before was that Chen Shui-bian had proposed to remove the gendarmes who protected the tomb there. Now that the Kuomintang is back in power, it naturally has no such concerns. However, although Ma Ying-jeou is not openly pursuing Taiwan independence like Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian and others, he does not have the courage to go further in cross-strait relations.
He also feared that if he moved the two Chiang to the mainland, he would lose the support of the island's "Deep Blue" voters. I really don't know if Chiang Ching-kuo knew underground, and whether he would grieve for himself and his father's coffin being reduced to a political tool. After almost all of the 3 generations of the Chiang family died young, the current 4 generations of the Chiang family have almost no influence in Taiwanese society.
In this way, the opportunity for the two Jiang souls to return to their hometown was wasted in this way. By 2016, the DPP authorities had made a comeback, and Tsai Ing-wen had almost returned to the political line of the Chen Shui-bian era after coming to power.
Therefore, the coffins of the two Jiangs could only remain floating in Daxi, waiting for the day when the two sides of the river were reunified before they could be buried in their hometowns.
Resources
[1] Descendants of Chiang Kai-shek: The Different Life Encounters of Chiang Kai-shek's Five Grandsons. Phoenix.com 2015-09-06
[2] Lee Teng-hui: Taiwan and the mainland are the so-called "state-to-state relations", Sina.com, 2013-10-24
[3] Ms. Song Meiling passed away in the United StatesJia QinglinTelegram·Chinese Government Net·2021-09-18