Not long ago, among the second batch of Chongqing historical celebrities approved and announced by the Chongqing Municipal People's Government, Li Weiru was on the list (200 in the first batch and 301 in the second batch).
Perhaps many people are not very familiar with Li Weiru, the commander-in-chief of the peasant army at that time, and do not know that the peasant revolutionary movement of the "Four Towns and Townships" launched by Li Weiru was vigorously and extensively carried out in the red land of Fuling, and still less do they know that Li Weiru's body was buried upright according to his last wishes. So, let me take you into that red memory today and listen to the tragic story of Li Weiru.
Li Weiru's former residence after restoration
Joined the China League in Japan
In 1883, that is, in the ninth year of Guangxu, Li Weiru was born in Dashunchang Yankou, Xinsheng Town, Fuzhou, Sichuan Province (now the central village of Dashun Township, Fuling District). His father, Li Bingran, is a well-known local traditional Chinese medicine practitioner with about 30 acres of land, and his father attaches great importance to education and sent 5-year-old Li Weiru to a private school to study. At the age of 15, Li Weiru went to Fuzhou to take the last boy's exam for the Qing court, and studied medicine with his father after failing the list.
In the autumn of the twenty-fifth year of Guangxu (1899), 16-year-old Li Weiru was attracted by the new school enrollment advertisement when he went to Chongqing to buy medicine. After reading Zou Rong's "Revolutionary Army" and other books and periodicals promoting the democratic revolution, he was greatly inspired and planned to go east to Japan to study, but his father opposed it. His father believed that treating people could also save the country and save the people, while Weiru believed that medical treatment could only relieve people's physical suffering, not backwardness and ignorance, and finally with the help of his father-in-law Luo Chunpu and his classmates, he went east to Japan, and was admitted to Chengcheng School in the spring of 1905, and joined the China League in Japan in 1906.
In the autumn of 1907, Li Weiru was ordered by Sun Yat-sen to return to Sichuan to inspect the work of the League, and later met with Xiong Kewu in Yibin to convey Sun Yat-sen's instructions on contacting the Party and continuing to organize the uprising; in Fuling, he met with Gao Yaheng, Guo Xianghan and other compatriots in Japan to discuss the development of the organization, establish the League's base in eastern Sichuan, and contact the revolutionary forces and secret anti-Qing organizations in Qianjiang, Pengshui, Changshou, Baxian and other places to prepare for an armed uprising. Later, due to the leak, he was wanted by Geng Baoxuan, the prefect of Chongqing, and was forced to go into exile in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and other places to engage in revolutionary activities. After the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising in 1911, he returned to Sichuan and served as a teacher at the Chongqing Physical Education School, secretly organizing the student army bomb team. On November 22 of the same year (the second day of the tenth month of the summer calendar), the League launched an uprising in Chongqing.
After the establishment of the Shu Military Government in Chongqing, Li Weiru was appointed as the local commander of Fuzhou. During his tenure, he did a lot of good things for the local government and left a deep impression on the people of Fuling. In April 1912, Li Weiru was transferred to the first staff officer of the Fifth Division of the Shu Army and the staff officer of the Chongqing Town Guard Embassy. In July of the following year, the war against Yuan Shikai broke out, and after the failure of the Yuan army in Sichuan, 108 people including Li Weiru and Xiong Kewu were wanted and left Chongqing and Sichuan in the starry night. Li Weiru once again went east to Japan to study military affairs and joined the Chinese Revolutionary Party in July 1914.
Soon after the end of the Protectorate War, Sichuan began a warlord melee, which brought great disasters to the people for many years, Li Weiru was very sad, and resolutely returned to his hometown in the autumn of 1924 - Dashunchang, Fuling County.
Li Weiru returned to his hometown to make a revolution
After Li Weiru returned to his hometown, the warlord melee intensified, and the local disaster became even more serious. The local gentlemen knew Li Weiru's prestige in the Sichuan army and hoped that he would come out to host a local regiment to train his armed forces in order to ensure the peace of the party. Under the repeated pleas of his old friend Gao Yaheng, Li Weiru served as the deputy director (later director) of the joint office of the four towns and townships (Junzi Town, Xinsheng Town, Tongle Town, and Longtan Township) in Fuling County. After taking over the work of the UNMIP office, he presided over justice and fought for the interests of the people. Bullies are not allowed to run rampant in the villages, and no army is allowed to pull ravrama in the defense area, and violators will be prosecuted or dealt with by force. For the bandits who were chased up the mountain, they knew the righteousness and made them change their evil ways and return to the right. These measures have played a great role in stabilizing local order.
In 1925, Li Weiru was introduced by Wu Yuzhang (a member of the old League) and exchanged letters with Yang Yangong, a member of the Communist Party of China, and began to accept Marxism, gradually realizing that only the Communist Party could save China. An old member of the League who had followed Sun Yat-sen for decades finally recognized the situation in the face of the cruel reality, completely discarded all past pursuits and illusions, and chose a bright but extremely difficult path.
In the summer of 1926, Li Weiru was introduced by Yu Lingxiang and joined the Communist Party of China in Fuling. In January of the following year, the Fuling County Party Department (leftist) of the Chinese Kuomintang was established, and Li Weiru was appointed chairman of the county party department and head of the agricultural movement. Around this time, Li Weiru actively carried out the peasant movement based on the four towns and townships under the leadership of the party. In Dashun, Baozi, Xinsheng and other places, in the name of running regimental training and training centers, they trained backbones, established peasant armies, and established the "United League and League Training and Training Institutes" in four towns and townships. At the same time, Li Weiru took the lead in reducing rents and interest rates; he also raised funds to establish and renovate the primary school and the Yiyang National Normal School, served as its principal, arranged for Communist Party members, Communist Youth League members, and progressives to teach at the school, and trained many revolutionary cadres for the party; and organized students to go to the masses to propagate and explain revolutionary principles.
Memorial Hall of the Peasant Movement in Four Towns and Townships
The peasant movement was surging
At the end of 1926, Li Weiru actively mobilized peasant organizations, and personally went to various towns to brief the masses on the peasant movement in Hunan and Guangdong, and publicized the advantages of establishing peasant associations. The organization of peasant associations continued to expand, and by the summer of 1927, peasant associations were established in Baozi, Xinglong, Dashun, Mingjia, Mawu, Huimin, Shiquan, Baitao, Miaoya, Longju and other places. During this period, Li Weiru also practiced and actively promoted the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and used the teacher-student relationship between him and Guo Rudong (Songyun), the commander of the Ninth Division of the 20th Army of the National Revolutionary Army stationed in Fu, during his early years as the head of the lecture hall, to persuade and prevent Guo Jun from following Yang Sen to attack Wuhan and support the Northern Expedition Revolutionary War.
In January 1927, the peasant armed forces in Sizhen Township were reorganized into the Peasant Self-Defense Army, and the peasants in Mawu, Huimin and other places also actively participated in this revolutionary contingent. At this time, Wang Maoqian, the leader of the Shiniuxi People's League in Nanchuan County and a member of the Communist Party, came to complain because he was squeezed out and annexed by the local group lords Zhang Maochun, who were attached to the warlords Liu Xiang and Wang Lingji. Li Weiru discussed with Xu Kangning and Yang Yuqing, graduates of the sixth batch of the Guangzhou Agricultural Lecture Institute assigned by the Chongqing Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China to work in Fu, and decided to send troops to help Wang Maoqian. After Zhang Maochun was hit hard, he pretended to make peace, and secretly flew to Wang Lingji, the director of the regimental training in southeast Sichuan, for help. Wang Lingji urgently dispatched reinforcements from Cao Xieyang, Shen Wenying, Jiangjin and Zhou Huacheng in Ba County. Li Weiru considered that the enemy was outnumbered, and retreated to Longtan after holding each other for 3 days.
The Fuling Peasant Self-Defense Army grew rapidly and was unstoppable, and the torrent of revolution was rolling forward, overwhelming mountains and seas. Not only did the garrison not dare to continue the rampant conquest in the area of Sizhen Township and Mawu Huimin, but also made Liu Xiang, the warlord sitting in Chongqing, afraid that the peasant self-defense army would cooperate with the Lushun rebel army led by Liu Bocheng to attack his lair from behind. Therefore, Liu Xiang and Guo Rudong conspired, determined to eliminate hidden dangers, colluded with the group lords in Baxian, Qijiang, Fuling and other places, and sent Xu Yaoqing, deputy commander of the Third Division, to lead troops to attack the Fuling peasant army through Nanchuan. In late June 1927, Li Weiru, Li Xiaoting, and others were holding the inaugural meeting of the county's peasant association in Dashun Township; during the meeting, upon learning of Xu Yaoqing's invasion of Lengshui Pass, they immediately convened a military meeting to draw up a propaganda program for urgently mobilizing the masses, organizing a peasant army, and preparing to meet the enemy.
At that time, in Fuling, there was such a ballad: "Chongqing Fuling Dashunchang, Maoping Mountain Township is unusual, and Li Weiru, a revolutionary aspirant, is famous for the country and the people." By the first half of 1927, the peasant movement work in the market towns and villages of Lin City, Tongle, Longtan, Xinsheng, Mawu, and Huimin in Fuling County, southeast Sichuan, was even more in full swing, and "the people raised their eyebrows and did not pay taxes, and 8,000 people were stubbornly erected." At the same time, Li Weiru set up a front-line command center in Mingjiachang, with Li Weiru as the commander-in-chief of the county's peasant army. On the one hand, Li Weiru deployed troops, and on the other hand, he contacted the revolutionary armed forces in Qijiang, Luzhou, and other places, and sent a letter to Liu Bocheng to lead his troops to move closer to eastern Sichuan, so as to connect with Qijiang, Nanchuan and other places to jointly fight the enemy and establish a revolutionary base area.
The body was buried upright according to his wishes
On July 2, 1927, Guo Rudong sent a letter to Li Weiru, falsely saying: "Liu Xiang will invade the four towns and townships, and really wants to destroy Songyun together, Songyun can only follow the teacher and resolutely resist, and there is no way out." Today, I specially ordered our Wang (Jingcheng) regiment to come and obey the command, swore to fight to the death with Liu Bandit, and hoped that after receiving the letter, he would go to Tongle Town to face the military affairs ......" (Guo Rudong before that, because of Li Weiru's prestige among the Sichuan army and the local people and the strength of the peasant army, he took advantage of the teacher-student relationship to take the initiative to cooperate with Li, donated weapons, and accepted communists to serve in the army, etc., and won Li Weiru's trust). After receiving the letter, Li Xiaoting and others believed that Guo and Liu had been in frequent contact recently, and there were signs of collusion with each other, and they should not be gullible about Guo Rudong, and hoped that Li Weiru would not go there in person. But Li Weiru said solemnly: "How can you defeat the enemy when you are afraid to work with others?" He believes that the army is pressing the border, the enemy is outnumbered, and the situation is critical, even if the joint defense against the enemy fails, Guo Rudong can be won to maintain neutrality in order to relieve his worries.
At dawn on July 3, Li Weiru disregarded his personal safety and only led a platoon of more than 40 guards from Mingjiachang to Shiyazi, which was still 5 miles away from Tongle Town. The guards were stopped by Guo Jun, and only Li Weiru and his sedan chair man, a total of 5 people, were allowed to continue to move forward, and as soon as they entered the Tongle Field, they were arrested by ambush soldiers. Li Weiru was escorted to the Lengshui Guan Xu Department and locked up in a land temple. The enemy immediately set up a court trial and asked, "Why did you want to join the Communist Party?" Li Weiru proudly replied: "How many people in Sichuan are worthy of being a Communist Party?
On July 5, Xu Yaoqing escorted Li Weiru to Chongqing. Liu Xiang and Wang Lingji considered that Li's prestige in the Sichuan army was extremely high, and they were afraid that there would be changes in entering the city, so they ordered Li Weiru to be secretly shot on the way. On the afternoon of July 8, Li Weiru died heroically at the age of 44 at the age of 44 in Huangjuya, on the south bank of Chongqing.
Li Weiru's body was transported back to his hometown Mingjiachang by his family, and with tears in his eyes, according to Li Weiru's last wishes, the body was put into the coffin and buried vertically, which means "I would rather die standing than live on my knees", showing Li Weiru's fearless revolutionary spirit.
Although Li Weiru sacrificed, the revolutionary flame he sowed in Fuling and Sichuan and Chongqing was not extinguished. The Tianbaosi Uprising in 1928 and the Anti-Donation Army Uprising in 1929 were based on the peasant masses in the four towns and townships. Li Weiru's revolutionary thinking nurtured a generation of young people, and his younger brother Li Xianzhou, his cousin Zhang Guangping, his nephew Chen Shoumin, and his niece and son-in-law Tian Heming were all communists and revolutionary martyrs, and shed their last drop of blood for the cause of the liberation of the Chinese people.
Li Weiru has transformed from a radical old democrat into an outstanding communist fighter, his life was a glorious and great life, his heroic name has long been engraved in the hearts of the broad masses of the people, and his tremendous contributions to the cause of the Chinese revolution will forever be recorded in the annals of history and will be remembered forever.
Article author: Ran Qilei
Author's Affiliation: Party History Research Office of Fuling District Committee