Editor's note: 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China and the 111th anniversary of the establishment of International Women's Day on March 8. Across the century, Xiangnu has always been the most beautiful style of the times, accumulating and forming a unique Xiangnu spirit. Hu Xiang is a hero, and there are heroes. For more than 100 years, the vast number of Xiang women have continuously struggled and made unremitting efforts to fight for freedom and equality and their own development.
After the founding of New China, Xiangnu shone brightly and achieved extraordinary achievements in various industries, interpreting the hard-core value of "Half the Sky" with blood, sweat and fanghua. On the occasion of the "March 8" International Women's Day in 2021, the Hunan Provincial Women's Federation and the Red Network jointly launched the column "Centennial Ode to the Dream of Xiang Women" to feel the surging pulse of Huxiang women's unremitting self-improvement and hard work in the past 100 years.
Cai Chang. Infographic
Red Network Moment reporter Li Lu sorted out the report
She refused to tie her feet as a child, accepted progressive ideas at the age of 13, lectured on the podium at the age of 14, ran away from marriage at the age of 15, and embarked on the Road of the Long March at the age of 35 (the oldest female Red Army in the Long March), which is Cai Chang. Cai Chang is an outstanding proletarian revolutionary of the older generation of the Communist Party of China, who devoted his life to the women's movement led by the Communist Party of China, integrated the Marxist concept of women with China's reality, opened up the road to the liberation of Chinese women, changed the fate of the vast number of women, and became an outstanding leader of China's women's movement and a famous activist of the international progressive women's movement.
Born in the old society, in the new era, she worked for the liberation of women all over the world, leaving a strong mark. The famous American progressive writer Nime Wells commented on Cai Chang in the book "Continuing to Travel west", "No country in the world can produce a better female revolutionary than her, and a more beautiful personality than her." ”
Find the right path to women's emancipation
Cai Chang, formerly known as Cai Xianxi, was born in May 1900 in Shuangfeng County, Hunan Province, with the nickname "Mao Meizi". Speaking of Cai Chang's family, although it is not a family of great wealth and nobility, the Cai family can be described as a heroic martyr, and they are all revolutionary talents. Cai Chang's second brother, Cai Linsheng, graduated from the Whampoa Military Academy and was one of the early members of the Chinese Communist Party. The third brother, Cai Hesen, and Mao Zedong were close friends and one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. And her sister-in-law, Xiang Jingyu, Cai Hesen's lover, is the only female founder of the Chinese Communist Party and the party's earliest feminist leader.
Born in such a family, Cai Chang came into contact with revolutionary ideas very early. However, Cai Chang has a distinct personality since childhood, is brave and stubborn, and never gives in. At the age of 6, at the age of wrapping her feet, she did not want to bear the imposed pain, and even cried and desperately resisted, and finally won the privilege of not binding her feet. At the age of 15, her father was ready to give her a promise to a landlord as a daughter-in-law for 500 yuan. She angrily chose to run away from home, rebelled against the sale and purchase of marriage, and was admitted as a free student at The Zhounan Girls' School in Changsha, and finally gained independence and freedom. At this time, she felt extremely relaxed and comfortable, so she changed her name to "Cai Chang". These two anti-feudal victories also became the germ of Cai Chang's later thinking that "women's liberation needs to be fought on their own".
In order to further pursue the truth of women's liberation, Cai Changhe launched a work-study campaign for Hunan women to study in France and personally went to France to study work-study. During her stay in France, she studied French and read the classic works of Marxism, and constantly deepened her understanding of Marxism and the path of the October Revolution in Russia.
The arduous study abroad life and the complicated practice of struggle made Cai Chang undergo tempering and enrich his thinking, and in 1923 he joined the European branch of the Communist Party of China and began to firmly link the communist belief with the cause of women's liberation. In 1924 and 1938, she was sent by the Party to the Soviet Union for study and inspection, which made her more convinced that if Chinese women wanted complete liberation, they could only unite and actively participate in the revolutionary movement.
From pursuing the liberation of individual women to advocating the advancement of women's liberation through revolution, Cai Chang found the correct path of women's liberation and became the pioneer of China's women's liberation movement.
The advancement of women must adhere to the "production-centered"
Economic ineptitude is the real source of women's oppression, which in turn must be achieved through participation in social labour. It was precisely because women in old China were expelled from the main spheres of production and economically deprived of anything that they were doomed to a subservient position of manipulation.
Cai Chang used Marxist ideas to analyze the women's problem in China, believing that the so-called "women's liberation" in the past only emphasized "equality between men and women" and "freedom of marriage", but did not touch on the economic root causes of women's oppression, so those who understood women's liberation were one-sided, emphasizing that women's participation in social production and labor was the central link in improving their own status. Therefore, in all the periods of leading the women's movement, she has always adhered to the "production-centered" approach.
During the second civil revolutionary war, most of the young and middle-aged men in the revolutionary base areas in Jiangxi joined the Red Army and went to the front, and the rear production had to rely mainly on women to bear it, but there was a superstitious saying in the local area that "women plough the fields and rake the land, and they will be struck by lightning", which brings great mental pressure to women to participate in production and labor. So Cai Chang took the lead in ploughing the fields and harrowing the fields, breaking the feudal superstitions and setting off a climax of women's participation in production management in the local area. The bumper harvest of agricultural production in that year not only strongly supported the revolutionary war, but also won social status for women.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Cai Chang further clarified the relationship between women's liberation and women's labor and economic independence theoretically, and drafted the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Current Work Guidelines for Women in The Anti-Japanese Base Areas. The decision pointed out that "to improve women's political status, cultural level and life in order to reach the road to liberation, it is also necessary to start with economic abundance and economic independence" and gradually break free from feudal oppression.
It can be seen from this that Cai Chang's logic on women's liberation, that is, "production → economic independence→ the improvement of political status→ get rid of oppression and liberation." Practice has proved that this path of women's liberation is a major contribution to the sinification of Marxist women's emancipation ideology, effectively promoted the Chinese women's liberation movement, and laid a theoretical and practical foundation for women to strive for equal status.
Mao Zedong commented on Cai Chang: "Peach and plum are all over the world"
During the Period of the National Revolution, Cai Chang presided over the Women's Movement Training Center; during the Agrarian Revolution, there were girls' night schools and rotational training classes for women cadres; during the War of Resistance Against Japan, he vigorously advocated the establishment of schools for women cadres. In 1940, the China Women's University was a school dedicated to cultivating outstanding women's backbones, and students spread like fire all over the country.
Once, when Cai Chang asked Mao Zedong to give a report to the Yan'an Women's University, Mao Zedong said humorously: "Big sister, you want peach and plum to be full of grins!" This is a high affirmation of Cai Chang's emphasis on cultivating female cadres. In addition, Cai Chang often emphasizes the importance of cultivating female cadres in some important conferences and books. In 1951, in her speech at the First National Organizational Work Conference, she pointed out that "the number of female cadres is too small, and even fewer are responsible for important work", which she considered to be a very noteworthy issue for study, and subsequently published an article entitled "Developing Female Party Members and Cultivating Female Cadres".
Towards the stage of the international women's movement
Cai Chang's early experience in France and the Soviet Union gave her an international vision, which laid the foundation for her to lead Chinese women to the international stage. In February 1947, Cai Chang represented the women of the Liberated Areas at the first council meeting of the International Women's Federation, at which he made a report entitled "Chinese Women Striving for Independence, Democracy and Peace", introducing the current situation of the Chinese women's movement to the world for the first time.
In November 1948, Cai Chang led a delegation to attend the Second World Congress of Women and was elected vice president of the International Federation of Democratic Women, which greatly promoted exchanges between Chinese women and women in the world. In December 1949 and April 1956, New China hosted the first Asian Women's Congress and the International Women's Federation Council Meeting, which allowed women representatives from all over the world to see a new look of women in New China. Cai Chang received visits from women from many countries and organized many foreign visits, expanded exchanges between Chinese and foreign women, opened up the international vision of Chinese women, integrated the Chinese women's movement into the world women's movement, embarked on a broader international stage, and made important contributions to the international progressive women's movement.
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