In October 1936, after the end of the Long March, the Red Army, consisting of the Red First and Red Fourth Front Armies, formed a force of about 20,000 people, crossed the Yellow River, and marched into the Hexi Corridor in Gansu and Ningxia, preparing to open up the Hexi Corridor and the land communication line of the Soviet Union, and consolidate the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo base area!
There are also many women in this Western Route Army, among which the highest position is Zhang Qinqiu, member of the Northwest Bureau and head of the Organization Department.
Zhang Qinqiu, born in 1904 in a well-off family in Shimen Town, Tongxiang, Zhejiang, received a good education from an early age and began to come into contact with revolutionary ideas.
While studying at Shanghai Patriotic Girls' School, Zhang Qinqiu met Shen Zemin, the younger brother of Kong Delan's husband Contradiction (formerly known as Shen Yanbing), through his friend Kong Delan.
In 1924, under the introduction of Shen Zemin, Zhang Qinqiu joined the Communist Party of China, during which Zhang Qinqiu and Shen Zemin also formed a deep friendship, and married in November 1925!
In November 1925, shortly after getting married, Zhang Qinqiu, Zhang Wentian, Wang Jiaxiang and others went to study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and became a member of the famous "Twenty-eight and a Half Bolsheviks" at that time!
At the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1931, Shen Zemin was elected as a member of the Central Committee, and later served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Branch and Secretary of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Provincial Party Committee. Zhang Qinqiu is the director of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Political Department, and both husband and wife are high-level cadres of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui revolution.
In 1932, after the failure of the anti-encirclement and suppression in the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet Region, Zhang Guotao, Xu Xiangqian, Chen Changhao and others of the Red Fourth Front Army decided to evacuate people, but Shen Zemin resolutely chose to stay in the base area, and the husband and wife parted in life and death and never met again.
In November 1933, Shen Zemin died of serious illness!
In October 1932, the Red Fourth Front Army began to move to the west, and Zhang Qinqiu was appointed as the director of the Political Department of the Red Fourth Front Army because of his excellent organizational and propaganda skills, but after the Red Fourth Front General gained a firm foothold in Sichuan and Shaanxi, Zhang Guotao settled accounts after the autumn, suppressed Zhang Qinqiu, who had put forward opinions to him, and transferred her to the secretary of the county party committee of Hongjiang County (now Fuyangba, Tongjiang County).
After that, Zhang Qinqiu successively served as the director of the Political Department of the General Hospital of the Red Fourth Front Army, and later served as the head and political commissar of the Women's Independent Regiment, and the head of the Organization Department of the Political Department of the Red Fourth Front Army.
In July 1936, before crossing the grassland for the third time, Zhang Qinqiu married Chen Changhao, the political commissar of the Red Fourth Front Army, and began her second marriage! Of course, she also began her tragic life experience in the Western Route Army!
Before the establishment of the Western Route Army, the Central Committee established the Northwest Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Zhang Qinqiu served as a member of the Northwest Bureau, and her husband Chen Changhao served as the political commissar of the General Headquarters of the Western Route Army.
After the Western Route Army crossed the Yellow River, Zhang Qinqiu served as the head of the organization, and Zhang Qinqiu was pregnant at this time, but she still followed the troops to the west and served as a heavy cadre deployment work.
Her husband, Chen Changhao, asked Li Zhuoran, director of the Political Department of the West Route Army, to send Zhang Qinqiu to the Linze West Route Army General Hospital so that Zhang Qinqiu could give birth safely.
But soon Linze was surrounded by Ma Jiajun, and the logistics troops of the Western Route Army were forced to evacuate, and on the way to evacuate, Zhang Qinqiu gave birth, but due to the special and cruel war environment at that time, the baby did not survive, and Zhang Qinqiu also left a serious gynecological disease and lost her fertility forever.
Because the Western Route Army fought alone, without support, compared with the Ma Jiajun Army, there was a huge disparity in strength, and there was no support from the masses in Gansu and Qinghai, so the Western Route Army was quickly defeated in Qilian Mountain!
On March 13, 1937, when the Western Route Army was left with little left and was in danger of annihilation, the Military and Political Committee of the Western Route Army held its last meeting, which was attended by more than 20 regiment-level cadres, including Zhang Qinqiu.
At the end of the meeting, it was decided that Xu Xiangqian and Chen Changhao would report back to northern Shaanxi alone, and the others would form several troops to disperse and break through!
Zhang Qinqiu was unfortunately captured by Ma Jiajun in the scattered breakout.
Of course, Ma Jiajun knew that Zhang Qinqiu was a senior leader of the Red Army, so he tried every means to find Zhang Qinqiu, but his comrades-in-arms who were captured together came forward to protect Zhang Qinqiu at a critical moment.
During the interrogation, the comrades-in-arms were afraid that her southern accent would be exposed, so they rushed to say that her name was Gou Xiuying, a 45-year-old native of Sichuan, and she was a husband.
Under the cover of her comrades-in-arms, Zhang Qinqiu's identity was not exposed, and she was sent to Xining Yiyuan Wool Factory to sort wool.
However, the living conditions of female prisoners of war were extremely harsh, many were abused to death, and some young and beautiful were raped and given to the officers of the Ma Jiajun as concubines.
These atrocities made the Kuomintang a little dissatisfied, so Ma Bufang pretended to let the female prisoners of war arrange plays for the public!
Huang Guangxiu, a female soldier of the Red Army, was relatively beautiful and was accepted as a concubine by Ma Bufang, but she was still passionate about the revolution and was always looking for an opportunity to rescue Zhang Qinqiu.
She took advantage of the opportunity of the soldiers to rehearse the drama and arranged a fake marriage for a pair of lovers Yang Wancai and Zhao Quanzhen among the prisoners of war, and then used the marriage to discuss the marriage and called the prisoners of war to a meeting to discuss how to help Zhang Qinqiu escape.
But Yang Shaode, a platoon commander of the Red Army Women's Regiment, defected after being captured and married Lu Cheng, a section chief of the Kuomintang Qinghai Provincial Party School.
Yang Shaode quickly reported Zhang Qinqiu to her husband, and Zhang Qinqiu was in a catastrophe!
However, there was also a contradiction between Ma Jiajun and the Kuomintang, and Zhang Qinqiu knew that it had been exposed, so she took advantage of the contradiction between the two to pretend to express to Lu Cheng that she was willing to submit to the Nationalist government, waiting for an opportunity to escape on the way to Nanjing.
Lu Cheng and others were of course very happy to catch Zhang Qinqiu, a senior leader of the Red Army, so without alarming Ma Jiajun, they hid Zhang Qinqiu in a nest and quietly escorted Zhang Qinqiu and a group of other prisoners of war onto the train to Nanjing.
On the way to Nanjing, when Zhang Qinqiu was at the Xi'an Railway Station, she even had the opportunity to escape alone, but she was unwilling to abandon her comrades and escape alone, and in August 1937, she was sent to the Nanjing Provincial Institute for detention.
After Yan'an learned the news that Zhang Qinqiu was sent to Nanjing, they began to actively organize a rescue.
Soon after, Zhou Enlai negotiated with the Kuomintang side many times, and finally rescued Zhang Qinqiu and others, who were imprisoned in the Nanjing Provincial Hospital, and Zhang Qinqiu returned to Yan'an.
After returning to Yan'an, Zhang Qinqiu continued her revolutionary work with great enthusiasm, serving as the director of education at China Women's University, while taking care of Chen Changhao and his ex-wife's young son.
After Chen Changhao returned to Yan'an from the Hexi Corridor, his physical condition was very poor, and he was later sent to the Soviet Union for treatment and could not return to China for a long time.
Considering that Zhang Qinqiu and Chen Changhao's marriage actually existed in name only, the organization agreed that Chen Changhao and Zhang Qinqiu would dissolve their marriage.
In 1943, with the consent of the Organization Department of the Central Committee, Zhang Qinqiu and Su Jingguan, a comrade-in-arms of the Red Fourth Front Army, began her third marriage.
After the liberation, Zhang Qinqiu served as the vice minister of the Ministry of Textile Industry, and was the first female party member and vice minister of New China.
But Zhang Qinqiu's identity as Chen Changhao's wife and her experience of being captured in the Western Route Army still brought disaster to her later life!
During the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Qinqiu was characterized as a counter-revolution by the Gang of Four, and suffered unjustly injustice, and in 1968, Zhang Qinqiu committed suicide by jumping off a building!
In 1979, Zhang Qinqiu's grievances were rehabilitated, and Li Xiannian, Wang Zhen, Yu Qiuli, Chen Xilian, Hu Yaobang, Xu Xiangqian and other party and state leaders attended Zhang Qinqiu's memorial service!