Written by Yuan Guoxiang
Du Hongjian
I have known Du Hongjian for a long time, in December 1949, after our army liberated Kashgar, the capital of southern Xinjiang. At that time, he served as the political commissar of the Supply Department of the Second Army, and together with Zhou Shuiduo, the Minister of Supply and a veteran Red Army, he tried every means to ensure the supply of military supplies for the troops. At that time, except for the Kashgar troops and local governments that had already revolted, they prepared a part of the grain, oil, firewood, and vegetables to supply the PLA, mainly in response to Chairman Mao's call to carry out a large-scale production campaign. After arriving in various parts of southern Xinjiang, the units of the Second Army began to weave baskets, collect dung, and build tools. Then he went to the countryside and even the desert Gobi, lived in tents and sheepfolds, ate steamed buns and dipped in chili peppers, opened up wasteland and farmed, and strived for self-sufficiency in production. The result of such a struggle is: there are vegetables to eat in three months, melons to eat in half a year, and grain to eat after the autumn harvest. In the past three years, the company has achieved self-sufficiency in grain, cotton, oil, meat, melons, vegetables, tobacco, and sugar, and has also provided support to local governments, handed over surplus grain, and supplied non-staple food to the masses, which has been warmly welcomed by the people of all nationalities.
In 1950, Comrade Du Hongjian took a photo in Kashgar.
In the summer of 1950, during the arduous period of the army's land reclamation, I once followed Commander Guo Peng to the southern suburbs of Shule County to inspect the production of the troops. When the car drove into the wilderness of Dacao Lake, I saw the soldiers of the teaching regiment clearing the wasteland naked under the bright sun. As soon as they saw the chief coming, he hurriedly put on his shirt and trousers, and in the ninth team of this teaching regiment, the army commander convened a forum, and those student soldiers who had joined the army from Shaanxi and Gansu did not complain a word about the arduous production and labor, but they put forward two opinions: First, they had not eaten meat for three months, and some of the students had night blindness, and they could not see clearly whether the wheat seedlings or weeds were in the field in the morning; and second, they were still wearing cotton clothes in the summer, so it was better to take off their labor, which would be more brisk and powerful. Commander Guo was deeply moved, and in addition to encouraging them to reform their minds and study hard through hard labor, as soon as he returned to the city, he ordered the car to drive into the supply department. In the backyard of the only two-story building in Shule City, I found Minister Zhou and Political Commissar Du and said: "No matter how difficult you are, you must solve these two practical problems of the students of the teaching group." I remember that the Ministry of Supply immediately held a meeting and decided to take out a sum of silver dollars to buy some live sheep in the Pamir Mountains and slaughter them for the trainees to eat some meat. In particular, the lamb liver was cooked and allowed to be eaten by comrades suffering from night blindness, and the disease was cured after eating it a few times. However, it was not until July and August that Soviet-style pullover military uniforms were transported from Tianjin by train and car, and the commanders and fighters changed into single clothes. In those arduous years, thanks to the attention paid by the chiefs and logistics departments, and the hard work of the commanders and fighters of the whole army, our army was firmly rooted in the land of the frontier and shouldered the heavy task of defending the motherland and building the frontier.
In August 1949, after the troops of the Second Army liberated Linxia, Gansu, the leaders took a group photo in front of the Butterfly Building of the Great Warlord Ma Buqing Mansion.
Du Hongjian, political commissar of the Ministry of Supply, naturally also played a great role in this battle to solve the problem of army supply through large-scale production. Because I saw that after the head of the Second Army marched westward and conquered Linxia, Gansu, in a group photo in front of the Butterfly Tower of the Warlord Ma Buqing Mansion, he and Minister Zhou stood on the left, because they and Yuan Guangyu, the Minister of Health standing on the right, made significant contributions to supporting the Liberation War and fighting New China.
When I arrived in Kashgar, I met Political Commissar Du Hongjian, who was always hard, simple, and approachable, and it can be seen from a photo I took of him that he was very busy, not only to set up automobile battalions, repair shops, service cooperatives for military personnel, and tanneries, and to solve problems in the production and life of the troops, but also to organize his family members to build vocational schools, labor production, and mobilize Uygur women to participate in the activities of making cotton clothes. Otherwise, it would have been difficult to solve the winter clothes of the troops in 1950, not to mention the fur coats that the border guards urgently needed.
At the end of 1952, the Xinjiang army was reorganized, and the national defense force and the production force were separated. Du Hongjian first served as the director of the Production Management Office of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region, and then as the political commissar of the First Agricultural Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. Under the leadership of him and Division Commander Ren Chen, the battle to develop the Tarim Desert began. In the summer of 1961, when Political Commissar Du went to the Southern Xinjiang Military Region for a meeting, he also brought from Aksu a female comrade I had taught photography, Wang Jichun, who was already a photography officer of the First Agricultural Division. Because she and Yue Jiancheng, the former director of the Political Department of the Third Cavalry Regiment, have been in love for eight years. Political Commissar Du was interested in taking care of the marriage of the old comrades, and with the enthusiastic support of Commander Guo, he asked me to accompany the two of them to the Chengguan District of Shule County to register, and held a wedding banquet in the Southern Xinjiang Military Region. After the wedding, Yue Jiancheng was transferred to the Surveying and Mapping Brigade of the Xinjiang Military Region as political commissar, and Wang Jichun was also appointed as an officer of the Political Department. It was not until the couple worked continuously for more than ten years that Yue was appointed deputy political commissar of the Northern Xinjiang Military Region and Wang was appointed director of the Political Department of the 155 Hospital, that they returned to Urumqi with their three children after retirement and reemployment. At this time, I also left the Urumqi Dry Rest House, where we met and took pictures, reminiscing about the hard years of working together in southern Xinjiang, and talking about the cordial care of the old leaders for their old subordinates.
Du Hongjian, an old Red Army, is a native of Jishui near Jinggang Mountain. In 1929, he joined the Youth League and participated in the agrarian revolution, and in 1932, he joined the Red Army and transferred to the Communist Party of China. He was not afraid of hardships and fought bravely all his life, until the liberation of the great northwest. He first served as political commissar of the Supply Department of the Second Army, director of the Production Management Office of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region, and later as political commissar of the First Agricultural Division and director of the Factory Management Bureau of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. Du Hongjian learned from his old comrade-in-arms Gan Zuchang's spirit of going home to be a farmer, and he didn't care about personal fame and fortune, and only received a pension of more than two or three thousand yuan a month, and lived in a small farm house in Jiujiang City. The old husband and wife relied on each other and lived a hard and happy life.
Comrade Du Hongjian developed the scene of the Tarim agricultural reclamation area in the First Agricultural Division of the Production and Construction Corps.
In the autumn of 2001, I was appointed by the Southern Xinjiang Military Region to go to the Jinggangshan area together with Fan Jinjun, an officer of the History Office, to visit the former Red Sixth Army Corps, the 359th Brigade, and veteran cadres who had participated in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the liberation of Xinjiang. At that time, we were in the mountainous area of Lianhua County, and successively visited General Gan Zuchang to return home to become farmers, and his wife Gong Quanzhen devoted himself to improving the lives of farmers, building reservoirs, building bridges, building roads, opening coal mines, and other exemplary deeds. At the same time, he also interviewed Chen Chunlin, deputy political commissar of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region and a veteran of the Red Army, and learned about their advanced deeds of going to the countryside to work in the countryside like Gan Zuchang in Lianhua County, clearing land and afforestation for the people in their hometowns, and doing a lot of good deeds. I took pictures of all these situations and came back, and wrote an article entitled "The General Becomes a Peasant Lotus and Opens Up", which was included in the history of the Xinjiang Party and included in my published book "Yangzhi Collection".
On September 18, 1958, Vice President Zhu De inspected Aksu, front row from left: Du Hongjian, Tian Zhong, Zhang Shiqiu, Lin Haiqing, He Jinnan, Zhang Xiqin, Saifuding, Zhu De, Wang Enmao, Bao Erhan, Zuo Qi, Kang Keqing, Ma Yinur, and Seliman Talipeva
At the same time, we also went to Jiujiang to visit the old chief Du Hongjian. When we pushed open the small wooden door of Du's home, we saw a surprising scene. The two old men were climbing the dead branches of the fruit tree and taking them back to the house, ready to fold them into short firewood for cooking. When I helped the old chief into the low bungalow and sat on the sofa to drink tea, I showed him that the head of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region paid tribute and expressed his condolences to the second elder. He also asked the old chief some things that had been used in the past war period so that they could be displayed in the Military History Museum of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region. Unexpectedly, Du Lao said that the things during the war had long been thrown away. I have moved many times, I didn't bring unnecessary documents, and now I have moved here from Xinjiang, so it can be said that I have come empty-handed, and I can't find a single thing you want. I said it doesn't matter, we have collected a lot of documents, certificates, guns, clothing, and other historical relics from the old cadres in Jinggangshan and other places, and what we have gained from you now is the noble revolutionary spirit of hard work and simplicity, the arduous struggle to maintain the optimism of the old Red Army, and the noble revolutionary spirit of not caring about personal gains and losses. When we go back, we must report to the leaders of the Xinjiang Military Region and the Production and Construction Corps, hoping that they will pay attention to your situation and learn from your noble character. Practice has proved that shortly thereafter, when Comrade Wang Enmao returned to Xinjiang to preside over the work, he immediately transferred Du Hongjian back to Xinjiang to take up the post of deputy director of the Organization Department, and later rearranged for him to return to the Jiujiang City Veteran Cadres Bureau for recuperation with the treatment of a deputy provincial level.
On October 15, 2016, when I was watching a program on CCTV during the Long March, I suddenly saw Du Hongjian, a 100-year-old Red Army veteran, speaking impassionedly. He said: "During the Long March, the Kuomintang troops blocked and chased after each other, bombed planes in the sky, fought bayonets on the ground, often fought until late at night, and we also cut down pine trees as deer (obstacles used by the army to resist the enemy's attack) until we repelled the enemy's attack. These vivid words made my body warm up, and I saw the heroism of Du Lao back then. At this time, I remembered that I had sent books to Du Lao many times and had received two letters from him. Although I also called him to congratulate him on the Spring Festival, I did not write down his revolutionary experience and fighting deeds, and I also published them in the four memoirs I published, and I felt sorry for this veteran Red Army leader who had worked hard and had been revolutionary all his life. Let me now make amends, in addition to the few deeds of him that I have seen in person, and the two old photographs of the time, I would like to append here a letter he wrote to me, in order to see the sincerity and encouragement of the old chief. As for him in February 2016, when he received three more books and albums from me that I forwarded to him, he told me that his wife had "reported to Marx" the year before, despite his 101-year-old age and trembling hands. He also said that he was in good health, and asked me to say hello to his old comrades-in-arms whom he was familiar with in the Xinjiang Military Region and the Corps! I was moved by these kind and touching words, so I picked up the phone again and asked to call his residence, and it was his eldest son Du Jiangyuan who answered the phone. He said that his father is 103 years old and in good health, and he wants to talk to you, please wait. After a while, he might have helped his father to the telephone. I said to him: "I am Yuan Guoxiang, who has read you and sent books, and I have just passed the Spring Festival, so I greet you!" He suddenly became excited and said loudly: "Are you okay? I have read all the books you gave me, and it makes me feel as if I have returned to Xinjiang." I hope you will publish a new book that will educate young people. "I told him the news that Liu Faxiu, Li Shuangsheng, Liu Liangsheng and other old Red Army soldiers had passed away, and I also told him that Yan Bo was also 103 years old, but he couldn't hear it with his ears. "I hope that you two hundred-year-old comrades can take care of your health, see the prosperity of the motherland in the new era of socialism, and see the early realization of China's dream.
Unexpectedly, on November 23, 2020, Comrade Du Hongjian passed away at the age of 106. Let us, the veteran subordinates who are far away on the frontier, look at the southern sky from afar, mourn his soul in heaven, and always learn from and inherit his revolutionary spirit of arduous struggle.
A letter written by the old chief Du Hongjian to Yuan Guoxiang
Du Hongjian, Han nationality, born on May 5, 1915, from Jishui County, Jiangxi Province, joined the Young Pioneers and the Chinese Communist Youth League in Jishui County in September 1929, and worked in the Township Soviet. In May 1933, he joined the 3rd Independent Regiment of Jiangxi Province of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and in September 1933, he was transferred to the Communist Party of China from a member of the Chinese Communist Youth League. He served as a soldier, communicator, guard, squad leader, deputy company commander, and instructor of the Red Sixth Army Corps. He participated in the Western Expedition (Long March) of the Red Sixth Army and the Long March of the Red Second and Sixth Army Corps.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he served as the director, instructor and instructor of the 359th Brigade of the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army, the political commissar of the Wuqing Garrison Hospital of the Suimirui Wuqing Garrison District of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region, and the political commissar of the Ministry of Health of the Southbound Detachment of the 359th Brigade. He fought dozens of battles against the Japanese invading army in North China and participated in the Nanniwan large-scale production movement. During the Liberation War, he served as the political commissar of the Ministry of Health of the 2nd Army of the 2nd Column of the Northwest Field Army. He moved to the northwest and experienced the Battle of Qinghuatou, the Battle of Yangmahe, the Battle of Yulin, the Battle of Shajiadian, the Battle of Xifu, the Battle of Longdong, and the Battle of Fumei. In 1949, he marched into Xinjiang with the Second Army of the First Field Army.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as political commissar of the Logistics Department of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region, political commissar of the 1st Agricultural Construction Division of the Production and Construction Corps of the Xinjiang Military Region, secretary of the Battle Headquarters of the Production and Construction Corps of the Xinjiang Military Region and Jingshan Iron and Steel Plant, deputy commander-in-chief and commander-in-chief. Deputy Director of the Organization Department of the Party Committee of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Deputy Director of the Party History Working Committee of the Party Committee of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Deputy Director of the Committee on Aging of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and Member of the Standing Committee of the Advisory Committee of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. He retired in 1988. He passed away in Jiujiang on November 23, 2020, at the age of 106.