June 2014 is the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy.
Looking back on this period of history, although the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have different understandings, they have invariably paid high tribute to this school that cultivated modern Chinese generals and held commemorative activities for it.
However, this year's commemoration is particularly noteworthy. Chiang Kai-shek's fourth-generation descendant, Chiang Ching-kuo's grandson, and Chiang Xiaowu's son, Chiang Yousong was invited to participate in the commemorative activities held at the former site of the Whampoa Military Academy on Changzhou Island in Guangzhou.
Looking back on the 100-year history of China, it took three generations for the descendants of the Jiang family to return to the motherland, and the arrival of Jiang Yousong naturally has a different significance.
After all, the Whampoa Military Academy and Chiang Kai-shek have a deep connection and are inseparable from modern Chinese history. And this event also made Jiang Yousong feel a lot of emotion.
1. The Chiang family and the Whampoa Military Academy
When it comes to the Whampoa Military Academy, one has to think of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1924, in order to revitalize China, Mr. Sun Yat-sen was determined to establish the Whampoa Military Academy, and in May of that year, Chiang Kai-shek was appointed as the principal of the Whampoa Military Academy.
Although for Chiang Kai-shek, he was not unfamiliar with the title of "student king", but the situation was stronger than people, and Chiang Kai-shek had to accept this appointment.
What's more, he soon discovered that the Whampoa Military Academy and the students who came out of the Whampoa Military Academy would become his greatest political capital in the future.
Looking back at history, the Whampoa Military Academy not only cultivated military talents, but also represented the coexistence of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
Under Sun Yat-sen's policy of "uniting Russia and accommodating the Communist Party," a large number of outstanding communists joined the Whampoa Military Academy.
Zhou Enlai, who was 27 years old at the time, became Dai Jitao's successor at the recommendation of Zhang Shenfu and became the most popular director of the political department of the Whampoa Military Academy.
The first time he met Zhou Enlai, Chiang Kai-shek was attracted by Zhou Enlai's appearance like a film star, humorous conversation, in his opinion, Zhou Enlai was not only dignified, courteous, erudite, but also full of confidence.
This made Chiang Kai-shek especially respect and appreciate him.
In addition, when the Whampoa Military Academy recruited students, the aspiring young people from all over the country were also destined for the future glory of the Whampoa Military Academy.
In 1924, a large group of young people with the ideal of serving the country participated in the preliminary examination of the Whampoa Military Academy in various places.
In the Shanghai examination area, a young man from Shanxi passed the first examination with more than a dozen fellow villagers.
On the ship bound for Guangzhou to participate in the retest, he was nervous and uneasy. Fellow villagers are talking about what if they don't pass the exam?
Someone suggested that there were many pig sellers in Guangzhou, and if they couldn't pass the exam, they would go abroad to break through.
As a result, more than a dozen of their fellow villagers in Shanxi were all tested, and the person who was apprehensive on the boat was Xu Xiangqian, the founding general of New China in the future.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Xu Xiangqian delivered a speech in the People's Daily in the name of the president of the Huangpu Alumni Association, and shouted the shocking slogan "Huangpu is one family in the world" for the first time, which is not only a shout to the alumni on the other side of the strait, but also represents that the blood between the other side and the motherland will not be cut off by time and the bay.
In the Hunan examination area, several students confidently entered the examination room and wrote down their ideals of serving the country on the rolling paper.
One of them is called Chen Geng, a handsome one is called Song Xilian, and another is from the countryside named Li Mo'an.
If you open the books of modern Chinese history, the stories of these people occupy almost dozens of pages, and they are the key figures who influenced the direction of modern China, and they all gather in Huangpu.
It was the most glorious period of the Whampoa Military Academy, and even Chiang Kai-shek himself said enthusiastically at the graduation ceremony of the third batch of students of the school in 1925: "I want to lead the members of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party to carry out the revolution, and I will die for the national revolution, I will die for the Three People's Principles, that is, I will die for communism!"
Because Chiang Kai-shek was Sun Yat-sen's staff and did not have his own troops, after becoming the principal of Whampoa, he realized that the graduates of Whampoa could become his own descendants, so Chiang Kai-shek loved this job even more and moved his family directly to the Whampoa Military Academy.
At the same time, he also had a more detailed plan for the teaching of students, from military uniforms to rifles and bayonets, from training subjects to meals in the canteen, Chiang Kai-shek personally took care of all of them, and the Whampoa students also proved their ability and value with practical actions.
In 1925, the troops of the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government were divided into three routes to attack Chen Jiongming, but as soon as the team of the Eastern Expedition set off, the Left Route Army and the Middle Route Army colluded with Chen Jiongming and came together, only the teaching regiment on the right and the student army composed of more than 3,000 people actively attacked, and it was Chiang Kai-shek who commanded this student army.
The hardest battle they had with Chen Jiongming was Tamsui City.
Chiang Kai-shek organized several sieges of the city, but he could not break the barrier and had nothing to do, so he had to form a death squad to open up the situation for the follow-up troops by storming.
At that time, among the students who signed up for the death squad were Zheng Dongguo, who fought in the bloody battle of Taierzhuang, Chen Geng and Du Yuming of the propaganda team, and Wang Erzhuo and Zuo Quan, who later commanded the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.
At that time, the Whampoa Military Academy pursued the couplet at the gate of the school: please go elsewhere for promotion and wealth, and do not enter the gate if you are greedy for life and fear of death. Sideways: Revolutionaries are coming.
And this period was also the period when Chiang Kai-shek had the closest relationship with the Whampoa Military Academy, and it also made him an unavoidable person in the history of the Whampoa Military Academy.
Second, the four generations of the Jiang family did not participate in politics
At 11 a.m. on June 12, 2014, Jiang Yousong, dressed in a black suit and gray tie, visited the former site of the Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou on behalf of the descendants of the Jiang family.
Along the way, the narrator showed him a lot of commemorative cultural relics such as graduation certificates and graduation badges left by the first graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy.
When he walked into the principal's office on the second floor, the docent told him that it was in this office that Chiang Kai-shek was interviewing students during his tenure as principal.
Looking around at the furnishings of the principal's office, Jiang Yousong felt inexplicably cordial. He looks at his desk, chair, and photographs, and can't help but think about his childhood.
He said that when he was a child, they had such pictures in their home.
When the two walked to the student cafeteria, the narrator said that the students of the Whampoa Military Academy ate with the commander, and whenever the commander put down the chopsticks, the students immediately left the table.
As the fourth generation of the Jiang family, Jiang Yousong's body exudes more of a businessman's attributes and the feeling of an ordinary person. The reason why this is so is not irrelevant to his personal choice.
In 1991, his father Jiang Xiaowu died in Taipei Veterans General Hospital, and 17-year-old Jiang Yousong rushed back to Taiwan to see his father on his last journey.
Unexpectedly, after so many years, Jiang Yousong did really fulfill this promise to the end.
Although there is no clear answer to the reason for his choice, it is certain that this choice is closely related to the influence of his father, Jiang Xiaowu.
Jiang Xiaowu was born in April 1945, as the second son in the family, he does not have the favor of his younger brother Jiang Xiaoyong, nor does he have the status of the eldest son and eldest grandson of his eldest brother Jiang Xiaowen.
But even so, after going from Shanghai to Taiwan, Jiang Xiaowu still tasted enough sweetness from his illustrious family that he regarded himself very high and had a strong sense of superiority since he was a child.
Like his brother, Jiang Xiaowu has had no intention of learning since he was a child, and he has not grown the roots of a soldier.
Since he went to school, he has either fought and made trouble outside, or he has been the king and hegemon in school, and he often takes the first place in the class, so that the Jiang family has to use power to suppress people and force them to stay in school.
Later, due to the poor performance in cultural classes, his grandfather Chiang Kai-shek arranged him to study at the Fengshan Army Military Academy.
However, unlike ordinary academies, military schools not only learn cultural knowledge, but also abide by school discipline.
This is undoubtedly a painful torture for Jiang Xiaowu.
During his studies in the military academy, Jiang Xiaowu was criticized by the instructor for violating the school's regulations many times, but each time he could rely on his family's influence to counter the other party, and even talk back to his face, so that the military academy no longer wanted to care about him.
As a result, Jiang Xiaowu spent a very good time at the military academy. He can sleep until he wakes up naturally every day, go to the cafeteria to cook when he is hungry, and ask the school chef to cook his favorite dishes for him.
If he's in a good mood or has a lesson he likes, he'll take the time to listen to it. Once on vacation, the second son can still fly completely and drive an expensive car to Taipei and Kaohsiung to spend his youth.
In order to prevent Xiaowu from repeating the mistakes of Xiaowen, the Jiang family had to send him abroad to study, trying to stay away from the protection of family forces. However, in the eighties of the twentieth century, Jiang Xiaowu still had an accident.
In 1984, a vicious incident occurred in the United States. Chen Qili, the first head of the Taiwan gangster Bamboo Federation, led Wu Dun and Dong Guisen, two gun kings, to track down and kill Liu Jiangnan, a Chinese-American writer who wrote "The Biography of Chiang Ching-kuo," in Derry, California.
After the incident, it was rumored that the mastermind behind the incident was the Taiwan Intelligence Bureau. As Napoleon famously said, "A pen is worth two thousand guns." ”
The power of public opinion has left Taiwan's intelligence bureau at a loss. On the surface, Wang Xiling, then the director of the agency, was the leader of the matter, but in fact, Jiang Xiaowu was the real person in charge of this secret department.
Therefore, speculation and rumors were intertwined, implicating many people in power in Taiwan, severely damaging the reputation of the Kuomintang, so that the Chiang family had to abandon Chiang Hsiao-wu and send him to Japan and Singapore to avoid the limelight for the time being.
Because of this incident, Jiang Xiaowu completely ruined his political future in Taiwan.
Looking back now, perhaps it was because the ups and downs in the family were too miserable that Jiang Yousong, who was the fourth generation of the Jiang family, was no longer interested in politics and lived an ordinary life.