Today, when we step into the Memorial Hall of the Victory of the Battle of Crossing the River in Nanjing, we will be attracted by a photo called "I Sent My Relatives Across the River".
The picture is very simple: in the bottom third of the picture, a moving wooden boat, a dozen heavily armed PLA soldiers sit on the boat, three of them looking at the photographer, the rest resting their steel guns on their shoulders and looking intently ahead.
In front of the boat, there is an endless surface of the Yangtze River, and there are 4 small wooden boats moving, although it is not very clear in the distance, but it should be the enemy's river defense position.
In the lower left corner of the picture is the back of a young girl, with waist-length braids and her hands shaking the oar.
Her figure was thin but straight, and we could see her burning gaze from her posture looking at the other side and looking at victory. This photograph shows the power of the people and the hope of welcoming victory together, as if it can travel through time and space to reach people's hearts.
However, no one may have imagined that it was the little girl in the picture who caused a craze to find her 50 years later.
Who is looking for her? What kind of mystery does she have? The matter has to start with a difficult problem during the battle of crossing the river.
Background of the war
From September 1948 to the end of January 1949, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) annihilated most of the main forces of the Kuomintang Army and liberated the vast areas north of the Yangtze River through the three major battles of Liaoshen, Huaihai, and Pingjin.
The next thing to be done is the battle to unify China.
At the beginning of April 1949, the General Front Committee of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) moved to Yaogang Village, Hefei, which opened the prelude to the battle of crossing the Yangtze River.
The Yangtze River is the largest river in China, with a total length of about 6,400 kilometers, it traverses the mainland from west to east, and the width of the river surface in the east, east and downstream ranges from 1.25 kilometers to more than 10 kilometers.
The Yangtze River not only has a wide water surface, the water flow is also very turbulent, and the river surface situation is even more complicated, so it has been called "the moat" since ancient times.
Since ancient times, it has been very difficult to break through the Yangtze River moat head-on. In the Battle of Chibi during the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao still failed despite the absolute superiority of the army, and it was difficult to forcibly break through the Yangtze River without obtaining the water source of Sichuan, and the situation faced by the PLA was more dangerous than that on the ancient battlefield.
In order to be able to hold half of South China, the Kuomintang army concentrated two large military groups, totaling more than 700,000 people, along the Yangtze River, as well as a number of naval and air forces, and laid out a defensive line of nearly 2,000 kilometers along the line between Shanghai and Yichang.
This line of defense has formed a wide-frontal, in-depth three-dimensional deployment of two echelons in an attempt to prevent the PLA from landing and seizing the beach.
Liu Bocheng said: The enemy's Yangtze River defense line is actually a dead snake formation, and as long as one of them is cut off, the whole line will collapse.
Liu Bocheng
In order to cut off this dead snake, the General Front Committee formulated the "Outline for the Implementation of the Beijing-Shanghai-Hangzhou Campaign," which divided the PLA's million-strong army into three groups, eastern, central, and western, and made use of the prominent parts of the enemy's direction to carry out a key assault on a very wide attack surface, first annihilating the enemy defending along the river, and then advancing southward.
There is nothing wrong with this strategy, and under the crushing of the PLA's strong combat power, as long as the two sides have some contact on land, there is no problem in destroying its defensive line.
Moreover, the PLA has the advantage in troops, and its offensive is bound to be like a thunderbolt, but this time the operation of crossing the river is still full of difficulties.
Most of the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army are from the north, many of them do not know how to swim, let alone water, and they do not have any experience in water combat, so it is somewhat difficult to fight on the river.
The biggest problem was that there were no boats, and during the retreat, in order to prevent the PLA from crossing the river, the Kuomintang had already grabbed and smashed the boats along the river, so that there was not a single one left.
In order to solve the problem, the Party Central Committee purchased a large number of lifebuoys, rafts, cork, military shoes and other materials from overseas.
However, the role of the ship is irreplaceable, without the ship, it is unrealistic to rely on bamboo rafts and small wooden rafts to cross the Yangtze River, but if the ship is rebuilt, it will inevitably take a lot of time and delay the time to launch an attack.
But fortunately, there are still a lot of boats hidden in the homes of some ordinary people, and these ordinary people often run the shipping industry, and the boats are their rice bowls, and it is impossible to give them away easily.
After a period of work, these ordinary people formed a special support team, which was specifically responsible for transporting troops to the People's Liberation Army with their own boats.
On the edge of the Yangtze River, there is a boatman named Yan Jianfa, who has been running boats for many years, and there is a 5-ton wooden boat in his house, and their family is very supportive of the People's Liberation Army, hoping that they can achieve a national victory.
One day in March 1949, Yan Jianfa took his daughters Yan Hongying and Brother Yan Gen to transport a boatload of wheat to Taizhou.
When they were unloading their cargo, they heard that the People's Liberation Army was mobilizing ships from all over the country to prepare to cross the Yangtze River and completely annihilate the Kuomintang reactionaries.
On March 15, the 20th Army began to assemble in the areas of Dinggou, Fanchuan, and Yiling east of Yangzhou, and began to prepare for crossing the river. According to the plan, they will cross the river from Sanjiangying, the capital of Jiangdu, and the arrival of Yan Jianfa and other boat owners has solved their urgent needs.
In order to facilitate the transportation of troops, Yan Jianfa dismantled the canopy on his ship, also made certain modifications, and then threw himself into intense training.
Like the PLA, they must command in a proper manner and enforce orders and prohibitions, and while training themselves, they have also seen the PLA's training.
Liu Fei, commander of the 20 th Army, issued an order for the troops to practice the techniques of swimming, getting on and off the boat, landing on the beachhead, shooting on the water, and landing joint operations.
In order to prevent bombing by Kuomintang planes, all the ships supporting the front had to be covered with reeds and wicker during the day, and then removed their camouflage in the evening to participate in water exercises.
One evening in mid-April, Yan Hongying went with the troops to the waters of the Jiajiang River near the mouth of the Jiangdu River to conduct a real-life river-crossing exercise.
Suddenly, a bright light shot in front of her eyes, and it turned out to be the searchlight of an enemy ship.
When the enemy spotted them, they immediately opened fire on the wooden boat, and one of the PLA soldiers on board was very alert and immediately shouted: "Pay attention to concealment!"
Don't look young, but Yan Hongying's boating skills are very skilled, at the critical moment, she quickly turned the bow of the boat, left the position just now, she just finished the action, a cannonball exploded in the water next to the wooden boat, setting off a huge column of water. Yan Hongying's ears were buzzing with the sound of the explosion, and her head seemed to be about to crack in pain, but she still relied on her strong perseverance to continue to drive the boat fast until she entered the safe waters.
This distress caused Yan Hongying's eardrum to be injured, and the leaders of the army persuaded her to be hospitalized, but the strong Yan Hongying was afraid of delaying the transportation of the troops, so she insisted on refusing, and she repeatedly begged the leaders to allow herself to participate in the transportation of the troops.
At 8 p.m. on April 20, 1949, the battle of crossing the river officially began, and the joint action of multiple arms of the People's Liberation Army launched this great battle.
On the thousand-mile front of the Yangtze River, thousands of wooden boats carried the PLA to force the Yangtze River. They quickly broke through the enemy's defense line on the Yangtze River, occupied a series of large and small cities such as Guichi, Jiangyin, and Zhenjiang, and completely destroyed the Kuomintang army's "one-word long snake formation".
Looking for the "girl in the back"
During the battle, at 5 a.m. on April 22, two divisions of the 20th Army, nearly 20,000 people, landed in the Yangzhong area, and the Kuomintang army immediately abandoned its position and fled, and Yangzhong was liberated.
In the afternoon, Yan Hongying's ferry, carrying two squads of soldiers, set off from Jiangdu with the fleet and slowly sailed into the waters of the Jiajiang River.
After a short rest, they set sail again and headed for the ferry port of Dantu Fuyuan Township on the other side, with Yan Hongying's father at the helm at the stern and Yan Hongying and her sister taking turns rocking the oar.
A girl, with her weak shoulders, shouldered the great mission of driving a boat for the People's Liberation Army, this kind of scene just complements the victory on the battlefield, constituting a unique picture of "military and civilian fish and water"!
Zou Jiandong, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency who accompanied the army, felt an impulse to create at this time, so he raised his camera and took this classic photo.
Later, he named this photo "I Sent My Relatives Across the River" and published it in the newspapers of the time, and for a time, the "girl on the back" became a symbol of the victory of the people's war.
However, at that time, due to the rapid progress of the war, a large number of reporters went to the front line with the army, and did not make detailed reports, so no one knew what the name of this girl who drove a boat for the People's Liberation Army was.
In the spring of 1998, in order to give gifts to the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Battle of Crossing the River, Nanjing TV decided to prepare for the filming of a large-scale documentary called "Wind and Rain Zhongshan Road".
The documentary will use a large number of historical documents to present the most realistic details of the battle, and objectively reproduce the historical picture of the People's Liberation Army crossing the Yangtze River and liberating the whole of China.
When determining the content of the shooting, the film crew believed that the photo of "I Sent My Relatives Across the River" was very classic and very representative of that era.
If you can find the "back girl" of the year to tell some of the experiences of the year, then the show will be more exciting and meaningful.
However, there is only a back on this photo, not even a face, and there is no relevant background information, and now that nearly 50 years have passed, how to find the "back girl"?
The task of finding the "back girl" fell to Zhang Jifu, a member of the film crew, and after contact, Zhang Jifu found the photographer of the photo.
Zou Jiandong
When talking about the story behind the photo, Zou Jiandong said with emotion: "If the Huaihai Campaign was launched by the people with small carts, then it is not an exaggeration to say that the battle of crossing the river was rowed out by the people with small wooden boats. ”
Zou Jiandong recalled a lot of details of that year, and even remembered that the old squad leader on the boat was from Shandong, and while taking pictures of himself, the old squad leader was saying to the girl who was rocking: "Someone took a picture of you." ”
However, after the battle, Zou Jiandong quickly left with the army, and he didn't have time to ask the name of the "back girl".
In this way, the first clue to find the "back girl" was broken, but Zhang Jifu did not give up, and began to investigate the old boatmen who were active in the Yangtze River back then, as well as those who knew about the battle of crossing the river.
He came to the Yangzhong area and visited a man named "Old Wharf", and according to his identification, although he did not know the name of this person, there should be one named "Little Duck".
Zhang Jifu immediately went to look for this "little duck" in high spirits, and found some clues, but when he really came to the "little duck", he was instantly disappointed.
Although this person helped the People's Liberation Army cross the river and won a first-class merit, he was a man.
After the clues were broken this time, Zhang Jifu never got more accurate information, and until the documentary "Wind and Rain Zhongshan Road" was broadcast, he still failed to find the "back girl".
However, in order to commemorate this meritorious hero of the people, the film crew deliberately added an explanation about the "girl in the back" at the end of the film, as well as a special commentary: "The girl in the photo, do you remember that evening 50 years ago, you rowed a wooden boat with a slender body, sent away the darkness, and ushered in the dawn." Where are you now, little rowing girl?"
Sometimes, it is really a coincidence that there is no book, after the broadcast of the documentary "Wind and Rain Zhongshan Road", it was quickly seen by a woman named Dong Xiaoyu, she recognized it at a glance, the back on the photo, who can it be if it is not her mother?
So, she immediately asked her mother to watch the documentary, and when the photo appeared on the screen, her mother excitedly shouted, "This is me!"
Yes, Dong Xiaomei's mother is Yan Hongying!
It turned out that after the victory of the battle of crossing the river, Yan Hongying's family participated in the celebration meeting held in Yangzhou, at which they obtained the certificate of second-class meritorious service.
Shortly thereafter, Yan Hongying married and went to Wanping Township in Wujiang County, where in 1957 their home was hit by a fire and the certificate was reduced to ashes.
Since then, Yan Hongying has no longer mentioned to others that she participated in that great battle, and after a long time, no one will remember her anymore.
In the 70s, she took the initiative to respond to the call of the country and went to work and live on the farm, and she changed several identities in a few decades, which is why no one could find her, and it was not until the documentary aired that her daughter discovered her mother's secret.
What is touching is that although Yan Hongying has been hidden in the sea of people and has not received any subsidies from the state, she still supports the PLA as always.
During the flood disaster in 1998, she used her meager income to buy towels, boil hot tea, and send them to the embankment to comfort the soldiers.
The news spread quickly, although Yan Hongying is now a 69-year-old lady, and the sequelae left by the explosion are still there, but when it comes to the past, she is still a treasure.
Later, Yan Hongying went to Nanjing and Beijing one after another, and also met with Zou Jiandong.
In 1999, during a large-scale theatrical performance, the television station invited Yan Hongying and Zou Jiandong to the performance site and introduced the situation to the people of the whole country.
Later, the state allocated a house to Yan Hongying, so that she could spend her old age in peace, and under the care of the state, Yan Hongying was nearly 100 years old and still in good health.
She supported the country with her sweat back then, and the country will naturally repay her, everyone who has paid for the liberation of the republic is a hero and hero of the country, and the country will not forget them, and history will not forget them.