On September 29, 1948, Wang Yaowu, commander of the Second Appeasement District of the Kuomintang, was captured and escorted to the Changwei Special Administrative Region Garrison Headquarters, where he was escorted to the Political Department of the East China Military Region of Qingzhou after confirming his identity. Shu Tong, director of the Political Department, personally received Wang Yaowu, and when asked what the requirements were, Wang Yaowu said to Shu Tong: "I have an old mother of seventy years old living in Nanjing, and my wife Zheng Yilan was also sent to Nanjing (Shanghai) in April this year due to the shortage of Jinan. My eldest son is studying at Soochow University in Suzhou. I miss them and worry about their safety. ”
Since he was captured, Wang Yaowu has decided to absolutely cooperate with the reform and strive for leniency, and he once told Shu Tong that as long as the Communist People's Liberation Army needs it, I Wang Mou is willing to follow the work of dogs and horses and go to the Tang Dynasty. And he has been around Chiang Kai-shek for so long, and he is also well aware of the old Chiang Kai-shek's temperament, and he will never let go of those who betray him. Therefore, Wang Yaowu is very worried about his family.
Shu Tong understood Wang Yaowu's concerns very well, and immediately promised him that he would take care of his family members through the Southern Underground Party as much as possible. Wang Yaowu knew that the Communist Party was a man of fewer worries, and he openly gave an interview to reporters, saying that if Wu Huawen said hello during the uprising, he would also follow the uprising.
Before the Battle of Huaihai began, Wang Yaowu voluntarily delivered a speech through the Xinhua News Agency radio station, shouting to Chiang Kai-shek: "Judging from the current situation, the defeat of the Kuomintang is a foregone conclusion, and it is unwise to have to make a final struggle, and it is better to order the national army of the whole country to immediately and unconditionally surrender to the People's Liberation Army, so that Peace can be restored to China and the nation can preserve its vitality." Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing was furious after hearing the broadcast, calling Wang Yaowu a "soft bone and a hypocrite" and smashing the radio on the spot.
Just half a year ago, when Su Yu had targeted Jinan, Wang Yaowu flew to Nanjing to ask Chiang Kai-shek to abandon Jinan. Chiang Kai-shek sent his confidant Chen Bray to greet him at the airport, and then set up a family banquet. Song Meiling personally cooks and stir-fries, including Wang Yaowu's favorite braised chicken nugget stew noodles. Wang Yaowu knew that the reason why Chiang Kai-shek treated him with such a high standard was nothing more than to entangle him to stick to Jinan and defend the Chiang family dynasty. Naturally, the plan to abandon Jinan could not be realized, and Wang Yaowu had to return to Jinan with a hard scalp.
According to Wang Yaowu's account after he was captured, he was originally reluctant to participate in the civil war after the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan, but under the grace of Chiang Kai-shek, he had no choice but to go to Shandong. Whether Wang Yaowu said this from the heart or not may only be known to him, but it is undeniable that this famous general who was brave and good at war during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was indeed very negative in the civil war.
When Chiang Kai-shek drew up a plan for the "Battle of Lunan" in a vain attempt to engage the North and South Forces in a decisive battle with the East China Field Army, Wang Yaowu, who had been appointed as the commander-in-chief of the Northern Front, did not personally dispatch, but let his deputy commander Li Xianzhou lead his troops to participate in the battle, and as a result, he was completely annihilated at Laiwu. Wang Yaowu, considered by Su Yu to be the most belligerent general of the Kuomintang, remained in Jinan until he was captured.
Mentally, Wang Yaowu also behaved very differently in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Civil War. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Yu Chengwan abandoned Changde, but Wang Yaowu did not approve of it, and what he recognized was that "you Yu Chengwan died on the Changde position, and you are not allowed to lose your position." When he arrived in Jinan, he also faced his subordinates, but what he said was "this is different from the anti-Japanese resistance, and there is no need to germinate the idea of having a birth." ”
Xu Shiyou besieged Jinan with fierce firepower, Wu Huawen's battlefield uprising allowed the western front city defenses to be directly opened, Wang Yaowu's request to break through was severely reprimanded by Chiang Kai-shek, and the reinforcements looked through the autumn water less than half. Before the destruction of Jinan City, Wang Yaowu did the two most correct things in his life, one was to evacuate all the civilians out of the city to prevent injuring the innocent, rather than using the common people as "human shields"; at the same time, he immediately called the Military Justice Department and the military prison and ordered the release of all detainees. For the imprisoned Communist Party and captured officers and men of the People's Liberation Army, each officer will be issued a gold coupon of 5 yuan and the soldiers will be 3 yuan, and all of them will be sent out of the city, and none of them will be harmed.
In contrast, before withdrawing from the northeast, Du Yuming followed Chiang Kai-shek's orders to blow up the Fengman Dam, the largest hydropower station in the country at that time. After Huang Wei was besieged by the double pile, he even broke through with poison gas. Not to mention that before Chiang Kai-shek's defeat and retreat, he was slaughtering people all over the country, and in Shanghai alone, Mao Renfeng had come up with a list of more than 5,000 "executions" of more than 5,000 people. It is rare for a Kuomintang clique like Wang Yaowu to release an enemy in custody knowing that he is about to lose.
In other words, Wang Yaowu is a person who understands, can see the situation clearly, and knows how to leave a way back for himself. During the peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Republic of China in 1946, when the military investigation team came to Shandong, Wang Yaowu set up a banquet. At the banquet, he met Chen Yi, then commander of the Shandong Military Region, and Li Yu, deputy political commissar of the Shandong Military Region, and treated them with courtesy. During the conversation, Wang Yaowu admitted that the Kuomintang's desire to easily defeat the Communist Party was a braggart, and that the Kuomintang was inferior to the Communist Party in terms of the cultural level of senior generals, relations with the common people, and army morale. Later, throughout the Jinan talks, Wang Yaowu demanded that his subordinates ensure the safety of Chen Yi and Li Yu.
Wang Yaowu's deeds have won him a good feeling. During the reform, Chairman Mao Zedong asked Luo Ruiqing to relay to him: "Your deeds are merits, and your deeds are excessive." Your anti-Japanese merits will always be remembered by us Communists, and as long as you are at ease with reform, you will soon return to the people. In the reform, Wang Yaowu was also a typical model, and on December 4, 1959, he became one of the first batch of war criminals to receive amnesty.
After receiving the amnesty, Wang Yaowu served as the cultural and historical commissioner of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and lived in Beijing. Wang Yaowu, who is more than half a hundred years old, could have enjoyed his old age in peace or played a residual heat for the reunification of the country, but there was one thing that he could not let go of, that is, his wife Zheng Yilan. With the help of the authorities, Wang Yaowu got in touch with his daughter Wang Luyun in Hong Kong, and then with his six sons.
Zheng Yilan was never in touch. Of course, it is not that Zheng Yilan disappeared and could not be contacted, but that she did not want to return to Wang Yaowu and filed for divorce. Wang Yaowu repeatedly entrusted people to ask Zheng Yilan to return, but the relevant personnel failed to bring back Zheng Yilan, but brought back a divorce agreement. Wang Yaowu was extremely disappointed, seriously ill, and lay in bed for half a month before getting up.
Before being captured, Zheng Yilan was Wang Yaowu's only wife, and the reason why he emphasized "the only" was because at that time, very few Kuomintang officers did not marry their aunts or did not abandon the chaff. Wang Yaowu never even touched the flowers and grass, and respected Zheng Yilan as a guest, and was once set up as a model of deep affection between the two.
Zheng Yilan is a native of Fujian and is said to have been the daughter of a large family, but Wang Yaowu's union with her was by no means because of her family lineage. At that time, Zheng Yilan, who was in a state of chaos and chaos with his family, met Wang Yaowu, who was a soldier, and the two developed feelings and married each other. From this point of view, Wang Yaowu was also a clear stream among the generals of the Nationalist army at that time. After marriage, Wang Yaowu continued to rise to a high position, but he never changed his loyalty to Zheng Yilan.
According to their daughter Wang Luyun, Wang Yaowu has been fighting on the battlefield for many years, and whenever he returns home, his mother, who is a Fujianese, will personally cook dumplings for her husband. Wang Yaowu is a native of Shandong and especially loves to eat dumplings, while Zheng Yilan is a southerner and is not interested in dumplings, but whenever her husband comes home, she always cooks dumplings for her husband herself, which shows how loving the husband and wife are.
In Wang Luyun's impression, his parents had only quarreled once in so many years together, that was because Zheng Yilan went to play cards once, and Wang Yaowu had never allowed anyone in the family to play cards, and when he came back, he accidentally said that he had missed his mouth, and Wang Yaowu had a quarrel with Zheng Yilan after learning about it. In addition, the husband and wife are respectful to each other at all times. Zheng Yilan gave birth to six boys, one woman and seven children for Wang Yaowu, Wang Yaowu has been fighting on the battlefield for many years, and Zheng Yilan is alone at home to take care of Wang Yaowu's mother and Wang Yaowu's 7 children.
In September 1948, before the Battle of Jinan broke out, Wang Yaowu specially arranged for the guards to send Zheng Yilan and his seven children and two nephews to Qingdao. Zheng Yilan went to Qingdao with her nine children and then to Shanghai. In Shanghai, they heard the news of Wang Yaowu's capture, which was like a thunderbolt on a sunny day.
Wang Yaowu once left a message for his family: "If I have an accident, you can go to Hong Kong, not Taiwan." "This is his parting instruction. So Zheng Yilan took her nine children from Shanghai to Hong Kong. This was the last time Wang Yaowu made the right arrangements for his family. It is said that later someone around Chiang Kai-shek proposed to "kill" all of Wang Yaowu's family, but fortunately, Chiang Kai-shek did not agree. The families of Du Yuming, Huang Wei, and others have all been to Taiwan, and all of them have been blinded, and their lives have been extremely difficult, and they have all returned to the mainland.
Du Yuming was reunited with his wife Cao Xiuqing in his later years
Zheng Yilan with so many children, it is not easy to go to Hong Kong, although Wang Yaowu saved a lot of money in business, but in the war environment at that time, without Wang Yaowu's power, it was not possible to do it with money. In times of crisis, one of Wang Yaowu's aide-de-camps came to their aid and sent them to Hong Kong with military aircraft.
Shen, the same group of pardoned war criminals as Wang Yaowu, was drunk, and later claimed in his memoirs that Wang Yaowu's wife was with his lieutenants, so he divorced Wang Yaowu. Shen Drunken also vividly described Wang Yaowu's reaction after learning of this incident: "Wang Yaowu immediately trembled with his hands and feet, almost died on the spot, although rescued, he also became half-dead, if he came out late, maybe he could live for another ten years and eight years!" ”
After all, this is just a rumor, Wang Luyun once solemnly refuted the rumor, and made it clear that her mother did not remarry after divorcing her father, but moved to Costa Rica in Central America with several sons until she was old. From Wang Luyun's response, we also learned that several of Wang Yaowu's sons have all arrived in Costa Rica, and their descendants also live there, and it is not very Chinese.
Wang Luyun said: "The divorce was proposed by the mother, so that the father could find someone in Beijing to serve him. The most painful thing in her heart was her child. After the divorce, she went to Central America, where she was with her sons and never married. He died on January 11, 1981, at the age of seventy-three, due to stomach ulcer and stomach bleeding. ”
While in Hong Kong, Zheng Yilan had a hard life with nine children, but she also tried to rescue the captured Wang Yaowu. Of course, the rescue plan failed, but a few scammers wanted to cheat a few money to spend after learning about the situation, and Zheng Yilan, who was eager to save her husband, was cheated of twenty or thirty thousand yuan, and there was no extra money. After all, she was still in a strange place, taking care of nine children, and she couldn't give everything she could to rescue her.
In this way, Zheng Yilan and several children lived in Hong Kong, and Wang Yaowu was first in Shandong and then transferred to Beijing Gongdelin for transformation, and the family lost contact. It was not until 1959, after Wang Yaowu was pardoned, that Premier Zhou Enlai sent someone to Hong Kong to contact his family, and they began to communicate. Wang Yaowu was very relieved to know that several of his children had grown up safely, and the only sad thing was that Zheng Yilan was always reluctant to come back.
In 1965, Premier Zhou instructed Fei Yimin, the director of the Ta Kung Pao, to find Wang Luyun's family in Hong Kong and invite them to Beijing to reunite with Wang Yaowu. Wang Luyun was also very excited after receiving the news, and he quickly left with his seven-year-old eldest daughter Huang Huizhen. Accompanied by Fei Yimin, they took a train to Guangzhou, then flew to Beijing and met Wang Yaowu at the hotel. After seventeen years of seeing his father who was obviously old, Wang Luyun was very sad, and he forcibly shouted "Daddy...", and Wang Yaowu's voice was still a Shandong Tai'an accent.
Wang Yaowu was also very happy and asked Wang Luyun a lot of things, whether his brother was good, his mother was good, and his in-laws were good to her... Wang Yaowu was in a good mental state, he was suffering from Parkinson's disease at that time, and the doctor asked Wang Luyun to buy some medicines from Hong Kong. The meeting lasted only a week. In Huang Huizhen's memory, that time "the speech was quiet, the indoor light was not enough, the clothes people wore were dark in color, their faces were dark, and their voices were low." But after all, after seeing his father, Wang Luyun was still quite comforted in his heart.
Wang Yaowu's daughter Wang Luyun (center) and her four daughters
During that week, Wang Luyun also met Du Yuming, Zheng Dongguo, Song Xilian, Liao Yaoxiang and other old uncles, invited them to eat, and bought cigarettes, soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, peanuts, candy and other things from the Friendship Store to bring to them. These former commanders, generals, and grand commanders, who had received gifts from Wang Luyun, were all happy to close their mouths.
In 1966, a year after meeting his daughter Wang Luyun, Wang Yaowu, under the care of Zhou Enlai, married Wu Bolun, a teacher at Beijing's Eighty-Two Middle School. Wu Bolun is virtuous and capable, careful and considerate, and lives happily with Wang Yaowu.
In 1968, Wang Yaowu died of illness in the high-cadre ward of Beijing People's Hospital at the age of 64. On July 29, 1980, the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held a memorial service for him, Puyi, Liao Yaoxiang and three others, and placed their ashes in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery in Beijing. Just as Chairman Mao said, the people have not forgotten Wang Yaowu's merits in resisting Japan.