In 1932, when the smoke of the Anti-Japanese War had not yet spread to the land of Qilu, Shandong under the rule of Han Fuyu was like a dull castle.
At that time, I was just an obscure clerk in the Jinan municipal government, and I was not involved in the swamp of power, so I didn't know much about the secrets behind Han Fuyu.
However, in order to respond to Premier Zhou's call, I would like to record what I saw and heard in those years as much as I can, and reveal a corner of that period of history to the world.
In the spring of that year, in April 1932, I was living at home in the second dormitory of the Jinan Municipal Government. Early one morning, I suddenly received a summons notice from Mayor Wen Chenglie. Also summoned was a Sichuan man named Zhuo Juzhi, who was originally a clerk of the Wen Chenglie Military Station Supervision Department, and at this time, like me, lived an ordinary life in Jinan.
The two of us came to the mayor's office with apprehension, only to see Wen Chenglie tell us with a serious face that he was going to send us to participate in an extremely important secret work - to join the special spy team under the Military Justice Department of the Third Route Army of Han Fuyu's department.
Our task is to record confessions and organize case files as the adjudicators appear in court. Wen Chenglie also stressed that this special spy team is composed of members of the Young People's Party, and their main task is to arrest the Communist Party in Shandong.
He asked us to pay close attention to every case and to Al-Shabaab's political activities, and to keep him back on the situation.
The headquarters of the special reconnaissance team is hidden in two small buildings in the south and north of the Weishi Jingqi Road in the commercial port, and the secrecy is extremely high to the outside world. Although the Judge Advocate General's Office ordered the public security bureau of the commercial port to strengthen protection, it strictly forbade them to inquire about the situation in the team.
The trial took place in the judicial section of the provincial public security bureau in the city, and the prisoners were detained in a borrowed detention center. The executioners at the time of torture were police officers seconded from the Judicial Division.
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The captain's name is Cheng Fengping, but it is said that this is only his pseudonym, and as for his real name, we have no way of knowing. The same is true of the secretary Wang Feipeng, whose real name has always been a mystery. Examiner Zhang Shouyi, whose real name is actually Zhai Canglu, is a Japanese student from Dengfeng, Henan.
On the list of team members are people with the surnames Yan, Duan, Zhang, Liu, Li, and Qi, as well as a female team member surnamed Huang, who is said to be the widow of a late Al-Shabaab leader. The whole team consisted of about fifty or sixty people, all of whom were members of the Al-Shabaab without exception. However, in this spy team dominated by the Shabaab, there are three exceptions - Han Zijing, Xu Zicai and Yu Zhisheng. The three of them were not members of the Al-Shabaab, but defected communists for various reasons. Han Zijing is a native of Tianjin, with a pockmarked face, and was the head of the trade union of the Tianjin factory on Jinpu Road; Xu Zicai is from a county town in Hebei Province, and he has some problems with his left eye; Yu Zhisheng is a native of Ninghe County, Hebei Province, a student who has just returned from studying in the Soviet Union. The addition of the three of them undoubtedly adds a bit of complexity and mystery to this special spy team.
In the lobby of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, Director Zhang Xueming and representatives of the Youth Party were engaged in a work negotiation on joint cooperation. Zhang Xueming, the former chief of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, is well-known and has successfully arrested a group of Communist Party elites with the help of the power of the Young People's Party. And today, in addition to members of the Al-Shabaab, there are also non-members of the Al-Shabaab like me and Zhuo Juzhi, and we were specially sent by Wen Chenglie to participate in this work.
Subsequently, Wen Chenglie sent two more right-hand men, Wang Zitong and Sang Pingbo. Wang Zitong is an experienced veteran officer of the Northwest Army, and his calmness and wisdom have injected a lot of confidence into our team. And Sang Pingbo, a top student from Peking University in Luxi, his knowledge and talent will undoubtedly provide strong support for our actions.
Al-Shabaab's activities within the ranks can be described as open and transparent. They regularly publish the monthly magazine "Nancheng" and vigorously propagate their political philosophy - "eliminate the thieves at home and resist the power outside". However, underneath these seemingly righteous rhetoric, there is no lack of slander and attacks on the Communist Party. They see each other, always affectionately call each other "classmates", and according to the regulations, they pay 1% of their income as a party fee every month. These actions do not shy away from our non-Shabaab members, but rather show their unity and faith.
In particular, Al-Shabaab holds one or two party meetings a month at their party headquarters on the north floor of the road. It was their spiritual shrine, which only their "classmates" could enter. Outside the party meetings, their activities are more secretive, full of vigilance and repression of the Communist Party.
The establishment of the Special Spy Unit stemmed from an alarmist remark by Al-Shabaab leader Zeng Qi. He described to Han Fuyu, chairman of Shandong Province, the extent of the Communist Party's activity in Shandong, and even claimed that he wanted to turn Shandong red. In order to calm down this turmoil, Han Fuyu decided to set up a special spy team and entrusted the Al-Shabaab to assist in its implementation. Since then, the special spy team has become a sharp blade in the hands of Han Fuyu, responsible for purging the Communist Party in Shandong.
The members of the special spy team all hold special identity certificates signed and stamped by Han Fuyu himself, which makes it very convenient for them to carry out their missions. They can ask the military and police to assist in arresting people anywhere in Shandong, they can check their mail at will, and they can even take a train or car for free. And Zhuo Juzhi and I, as monitors sent by Wen Chenglie, also started our work.
The methods used by the special spy team to arrest the Communist Party are varied. Among them, they used three traitors - Han Zijing, Xu Zicai, and Yu Yisheng as eyeliners to find traces of the Communist Party through their old connections. In addition, they ordered some party members to disguise themselves as progressives and infiltrate the Communist Party in order to obtain more information. It is said that a party member surnamed Yan had successfully infiltrated the Communist Party in Tianjin and arrested several Communist Party members. Checking letters and progressive literature was their most common method. They would conduct various potion tests on suspicious letters at the post office to check for redacted content, as well as books that were deemed progressive. As soon as a clue is found, they follow the address to arrest them.
However, in the Jinan area, the first two methods did not play a big role. And those clues obtained by examining letters and books, although it took them a lot of time and energy, did achieve certain results. For example, they used this method to find an important clue at Sijia Wharf on the shore of Daming Lake.
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Some of the suspects were arrested one after another, but after some interrogation, it was discovered that they were inextricably linked to the secret activities of the Kuomintang reorganization faction, and they had no choice but to be released. In the turbulent period after the 918 Incident, there were often some passengers on the train who were in high mood and keen to discuss national affairs were arrested. However, it turned out that they had nothing to do with the Communist Party.
The years have passed, but these agents do not seem to have achieved any substantial results. They were worried about disgrace to the party leader and fear that their roots in Shandong would be unstable. Therefore, they decided to launch an all-out attack on the Qufu Second Normal School. It turned out that the Second Division had staged a drama called "Zi Sees Nanzi", and the plot of the play was regarded by the Confucian family as an insult to the ancestors, so he started a lawsuit with Song Huanwu, the principal of the Second Division, until Nanjing, and finally Song Huanwu was replaced. In addition, rumors circulated that the Second Division was a place for the secret activities of the Communist Party.
In order to find out the details, the agents began to act. Disguised as petty traders, tourists, and students, they infiltrated Qufu. Vendors sell snacks, tourists use the excuse of visiting the Confucian Temple, and students go to the Second Division under the guise of studying at the Second Division. At the Qufu Post Office, they strictly inspected the mail of the teachers and students of the Second Division.
It was the preparatory stage for the big exam before the summer vacation, and the students of the second division gathered in groups to review their homework on the grass of Kongling. Every day, there are always some "vendors" selling snacks, "tourists" hanging out, and "students" from other places to talk to them and make friends. In this way, after more than a month of covert observation, the special spy team came up with a blacklist of sixty or seventy people and reported it to Han Fuyu.
On a dark and windy night, a special train quietly drove out of Jinan, and all members of the special reconnaissance team were dispatched, carrying a company of troops. When the train arrived at Qufu Station, it was late at night, and the team members quickly got off the train and ran to Qufu City. Because the county magistrate refused to open the door, Captain Cheng was very anxious, for fear of leaking the news. After some twists and turns, the county magistrate finally got in touch with the Shandong provincial government, and the city gate was opened.
After entering the city, the spies quickly surrounded the 2nd Division. Captain Cheng personally led the team and searched one by one according to the blacklist, and there were almost no fish that slipped through the net. Whether it is an old teacher in his fifties or sixties or a young student in his early twenties, they are all tied up and put on the train.
That night, in the judicial section of the Jinan Public Security Bureau, a brutal interrogation began. The spies used handcuffs, leather whips, bars and other torture tools to extract confessions from these weak teachers and students. Sometimes, even the well-informed old political policeman can't bear to do it. However, Zhai Chengxian showed no mercy, stopped interrogation from time to time, and coldly pressed these innocent victims.
They hysterically preach the horrors of the Communist Party, try to instill fear in the executioners, declare the Communist Party to be a ferocious snake and beast, and they claim that the Communist Party will subvert the order of the whole society. "Now you are polite to these guys, and when they are powerful, they will not be polite to you!" They shouted as if they had seen a terrible vision of the future.
"Qufu Second Division, that is the base camp of the Communist Party, the case there is a major task that we must overcome!" The members of the Al-Shabaab had a triumphant look on their faces, as if they had seen the dawn of victory.
However, when the results of the interrogation were finally announced, they were disappointed. It turned out that the so-called "important case" only involved an old Chinese language teacher named Xiao Zhiyu and a student named Pei Kangzeng. The evidence of their alleged incriminating guilt is nothing more than the words "Prolitalia" in the students' essays, the words "little bourgeois" in the teacher's comments, and the words in the diary expressing dissatisfaction with the government's retreat without a fight and the loss of the three northeastern provinces. Nothing else.
Under torture to extract confessions, Liu Nanchao finally couldn't bear it anymore and admitted that he had contact with the Communist Party's peripheral organizations; Pei Kangzeng also admitted that he had participated in the student patriotic movement. However, such a result was far from their initial expectations. Although the special reconnaissance team tried their best, they only reaped such small results.
At this time, their unscrupulous atrocities began to arouse widespread resentment and anger from all walks of life. Not only did they arrest and punish people indiscriminately, but they also arbitrarily seized letters, books, and periodicals, including some social science books, and even dictionaries and etymologies. They even detained a number of publications and books belonging to the director of education, Ho Siyuan. Their actions have seriously violated human rights and aroused strong resentment from all walks of life.
The provincial party headquarters of the Kuomintang in Shandong Province and the central party headquarters of the Kuomintang in Nanjing also questioned their behavior. Although they agreed to arrest the Communist Party, they could not tolerate such lawless and unscrupulous behavior by Al-Shabaab. What's more, at that time, the Kuomintang did not recognize this al-Shabaab, which had worked for the warlords and even killed the Kuomintang, as a legitimate political party.
At this point, the al-Shabaab's misdeeds in Shandong can no longer be sheltered. Around the spring of 1933, the Special Reconnaissance Unit was disbanded. Before the disbandment, their "captain" Cheng and "team member" Huang were even married. However, the good times did not last long, in the second half of the same year, a peach-colored murder case occurred in an apartment in Damucang, Xidan, Beijing, the victim was this Cheng "captain", and the murderer was his "classmate", the reason was to compete for Huang's "classmate".
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After the disbandment of the special spy team, although the al-Shabaab left behind some "classmates" with a relatively high level of education, such as Duan and Qi, their power was not as strong as before. What they have done has aroused widespread disgust and vigilance from all walks of life, and they can no longer act as recklessly as before.
In the bustling commercial port area of Jinan, a private school called Bohai Middle School stands quietly. The principal of this school is an elder known as Old Man Sun, who is not only the administrator of the school, but also the father of Sun Tongxuan, the commander of the highly prestigious Third Route Army. With the implicit official approval, the school became a semi-public base for al-Shabaab's activities, like an undercurrent surging through the commercial port district.
Behind Bohai Middle School, there are two key figures - Han Zijing and Xu Zicai. They were deliberately left in Jinan with heavy responsibilities. Their eyes are as sharp as falcons, and they always observe every move of the Communist Party and report every slight movement to their superiors.
Their fingers, like sensitive tentacles, maintain close contact with Counselor Jin in the city government, and convey all kinds of important information.
At the end of 1935, due to the needs of work, I left Jinan, which was full of undercurrents, and went to Baoding to devote myself to the busy work of the Hebei Provincial Government.
Since then, I have no way of knowing what changes have taken place within Bohai Middle School, and what new trends Han Zijing and Xu Zicai have. But those days in Jinan are like a mark engraved in my heart and can never be forgotten.