Prologue
Among the founding fathers of New China, the only couple who were leaders at the level of zhengguo were Premier Zhou and his wife, Mr. Deng Yingchao.
However, Mr. Deng did not enter the government during the premier's lifetime, but only began to serve as vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and chairman of the Sixth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference after his death.
In terms of ability and qualifications, Mr. Deng is fully qualified for such a heavy task, because she was already the secretary general of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party of China, a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic, and one of the early pioneers of the United Front cause of our Party during the Red Army period in 1933.
Elder Sister Kang Keqing, the wife of President Zhu, also began to serve as vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference after the death of the boss. As a result, it became a relatively rare pair of revolutionary partners in the history of the Party, with a husband of the right state level and a wife of the vice state level.
Premier Zhou and Deng Yingchao
In the history of the party, the second pair of leading cadres whose husband is at the level of the state and whose wife is at the level of vice state, is unknown because they are too low-key. However, this wife's qualifications are not ordinary at all, not even below her husband!
She was one of the first female members of our party (she joined the party in 1923), and the only female party members who preceded her were Xiang Jianyu, who was called "the only female founder of our party" by Chairman Mao.
Her brother is None other than Xiang Jingyu's husband, Cai Hesen, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party and one of the party's early important leaders.
In 1934, the Central Red Army began the Long March, and at the age of 34, she was the oldest female Red Army in the ranks, and the organization specially assigned her a mule, but she gave the mule to the wounded, and she completed the Long March on her own feet.
In April 1949, the All-China Women's Federation was established, she was the president (Mr. He Xiangning was the honorary chairman), Mr. Deng Yingchao was also the vice chairman, and Kang Dajie was the director of the Women's and Children's Welfare Department under the Women's Federation.
The All-China Women's Federation was established
In 1949, Mr. Liu Yazi, a veteran of the Kuomintang, a famous poet and a democrat, met her in Beijing, and Mr. Liu recalled the heroic deeds of Cai Hesen and Xiang Jingyu in those years, and gave him a poem:
"There were several revolutionary couples, and at that time Cai Xiangchengren and Sen shed blood to death, and they were majestic and respected. Death and life flow to the ends of the earth, and today the new capital is laid down. Remember the iron shoulder to bear the moral righteousness, double fly Li Cai two family. ”
In January 1975, she was elected vice chairman of the Fourth National People's Congress until September 1980, when she voluntarily resigned as vice chairman.
She was one of the main founders of the new Chinese women's movement, the outstanding proletarian revolutionary Cai Chang, and her husband was Li Fuchun, a long-term vice premier of the State Council and elected as a member of the Standing Committee of the Eighth Politburo of the CPC Central Committee in 1966 and an important leader in the field of national finance and economics.
Premier Zhou, Deng Yingchao, Cai Chang and Li Fuchun took a group photo
I. Outstanding women who aspire to explore the truth of the revolution
On May 14, 1900, Cai Chang was born in Yongfeng Town, Shuangfeng County (then called Xiangxiang County) in Hunan Province, to a small feudal bureaucratic family, formerly known as Cai Xianxi.
Her mother Ge Jianhao was a descendant of Zeng Guofan, and her father Cai Rongfeng was a small official in the Jiangnan Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, but the most prominent ancestral inheritance had fallen to his generation, and her father was frustrated and depressed, so he vented his dissatisfaction on the family.
In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution broke out, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, and the ideological trend advocating women's liberation and developing women's education swept through Hunan.
After 1912, a large number of progressive women, including Chairman Mao's wife Yang Kaihui and Cai Hesen's wife Xiang Jingyu, entered the girls' school, and 12-year-old Cai Xianxi also went to the First Girls' School in Xiangxiang County with her mother.
However, the good times did not last long, and soon reactionary ideas came back, girls' schools were closed, Cai Xianxi had to go home, and the feudal father not only opposed his daughter's further study, but wanted to sell her to the rich landlords in the village and treat her as a profit-making commodity!
Early Years Cai Chang
After all, the young Cai Xianxi had received several years of new-style education, and had also heard teachers talk about the principles of equality between men and women and freedom of marriage, and at this time a strong idea sprouted in her heart: I want to fight against fate!
With the support of her mother, Cai Xianxi resolutely ran away from marriage and left Yongfeng County, leaving the place where she grew up, leaving the familiar environment, and she also had a momentary confusion: The heavens and the earth are vast, where can I be accommodated?
She came to the provincial capital of Changsha, where the new atmosphere of society refreshed her, and soon she found a school for female students: Hunan Private Zhounan Girls' High School (Zhounan Girls' School).
Overjoyed, Cai Xianxi applied for the Zhounan Girls' School, and in the name column of the registration form, she wrote her new name "Cai Chang" in a dignified manner, and from this day on, she bid farewell to the old era and said goodbye to Cai Xianxi, who was taught "three from four virtues" since childhood!
Today's Changsha Zhounan Middle School (formerly known as Zhounan Girls' School)
Founded by the modern educator Zhu Jianfan against all odds, the Zhounan Girls' School is a school with progressive ideas, and the teachers hired are famous scholars who received advanced ideological education in modern Western thought at that time, such as Xu Teli, Zhang Weiyi, Zhou Yili and others.
For a time, feminism, women's liberation, equality between men and women, and socialist revolutionary ideas flourished in Southern Zhou, which was also known as the "cradle of female revolutionaries."
At the Zhounan Girls' School, Cai Chang met many remarkable women, including The famous female writer Ding Ling, who was later praised by Chairman Mao as "one pen worth three thousand Mauser guns", and Tao Siyong (Tao Yi), the "first talented woman south of the Yangtze River". Their knowledge and learning greatly impressed Cai Chang.
However, the biggest influence on Cai Chang's life is still the sister-like Xiang Jingyu, Xiang Jianyu's family is superior, and she is one of the earliest women in Hunan to receive a modern systematic education. With the heart of worrying about the country and the people, she organized her classmates to oppose the "Twenty-one Articles" of losing power and humiliating the country, and threw herself into the torrent of the "May Fourth Movement".
In the later period of the "May Fourth Movement," a wave of revolutionary youth in Sichuan and Hunan surged up to explore the truth of the revolution in Europe, and Cai Chang was led by Xiang Police to organize and launch the Hunan women's work-study movement to France.
Revolutionary martyrs warned
The living conditions of Chinese students in France are not abundant, and the main food used for feeding is only brown bread and potatoes, but Cai Chang does not think it is bitter.
On the contrary, she felt that it was a great joy to listen to the students passionately expound the ideal of national salvation at the revolutionary rally.
At that time, the October Revolution in the Soviet Union had just been victorious, marxism and anarchism and other ideological trends spread throughout Europe, Cai Chang's brother Cai Hesen chose Marxism, and Xiang Jingyu and Cai Chang were also influenced by it and joined the flow of people who propagated Marxism.
At a young age, Cai Chang was responsible for distributing Marxist leaflets at a rally of students studying in France, and at one rally, Cai Chang, who was holding a stack of leaflets, accidentally bumped into another young Chinese worker who had come to listen to the lecture.
The two hurriedly picked up the leaflets scattered on the ground, and Cai Chang couldn't help but glance at the boy twice: only to see that he was black and thin, with a high forehead, and did not look much outstanding, but he was very sharp in doing things, and he folded the leaflets in three strokes and divided them by two and took them back to her.
Cai Chang and Li Fuchun in their early years
After the rally, Cai Chang was about to go back, but he didn't expect that the boy just now caught up with him again and said I will send you home! As soon as he opened his mouth, Cai Chang heard it, which was the Hunan township tone he was accustomed to hearing.
The two walked all the way home, Cai Chang knew that the boy's name was Li Fuchun, he talked about it, and the views discussed by the other students were quite reasonable, which made Cai Chang look at him with astonishment.
Li Fuchun is also a Chinese student who came to France to work and study, but he came early, the cost of living was exhausted, and he had been a worker in the factory for more than a year, and had also worked as a fitter and train driver before.
After a few more words, Cai Chang was surprised to find that the two were still born in the same month of the same year, but Li Fuchun was a week younger than his birthday. This Hunan fellow is really clever, and not long after knowing him, he called "Sister Chang" and "Sister Chang".
Soon, Cai Chang learned that Li Fuchun had several like-minded good friends in France, including one named Chen Shijun, one named Deng Xixian, and one named Zhou Enlai.
Zhou Enlai, Li Fuchun, Nie Rongzhen, Deng Xiaoping and others were in Paris
What she didn't know at that time was that later Chen Shijun read the sentence "A scholar can't fail to carry out His duties" in the Analects, and he was touched, so he changed his name, called "Chen Yi", and Deng Xixian also changed his name, called "Deng Xiaoping".
Born in 1898, Zhou Enlai was handsome and handsome, Yushu Linfeng, eloquent, and the best among the students studying in France, he was two years older than Cai Chang, but when he heard Li Fuchun call Cai Chang a "big sister", he was also called "big sister", which made Cai Chang feel embarrassed.
Cai Chang and Li Fuchun engaged in revolutionary propaganda activities in France together, and experienced many difficult tests, and in March 1923, the two married in Paris as revolutionary partners, and the witness at that time was Deng Xiaoping.
2. Born and died for the revolutionary cause
In 1923, Cai Chang joined the Communist Party of China in France, and since then, she has worked tirelessly for the party's cause for sixty-seven years until the end of her life. Even if there are many difficulties and obstacles ahead, she has no remorse.
In 1925, the situation of the great domestic revolution was turbulent, and according to the needs of the party, Li Fuchun and Cai Chang returned to China one after another, and Li Fuchun served as the deputy party representative of the Second Army of the National Revolutionary Army (actually responsible for the responsibility of party representatives) and the director of the political department and the director of the Military Justice Department.
Cai Chang joined the Women's Department of the Kuomintang Central Committee as an officer and director of the Women's Movement Training Institute.
He Xiangning, an elder of the Kuomintang and a famous democrat
The head of the Women's Department of the Kuomintang Central Committee was He Xiangning, the wife of Liao Zhongkai, who was also a fierce and daring strange woman.
With the assistance of Cai Chang, He Xiangning mobilized female textile workers in Guangzhou to actively participate in the provincial and Hong Kong strikes. Since the striking workers had no wage income, Cai Chang went deep among the workers and organized the workers' families to run a shoe factory and a sewing factory, and used the income from the sale of straw shoes and clothes to relieve the striking workers.
At the beginning of the Northern Expedition in 1926, she and He Xiangning called on the women of Guangdong Province to unite and support the Northern Expedition, thus driving the awakening and autonomy of women in Guangxi.
As a result, the Liangguang area became the first and best area in the country where women's rights and interests were guaranteed, and thus opened up a precedent for the national women's liberation movement.
However, the good times did not last long, and in 1927, just as the Northern Expedition was victorious and the revolutionary situation in the whole country was in full swing, Chiang Kai-shek colluded with imperialism and capitalists to openly betray the revolution, launched the "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup, and wantonly hunted down Communists and progressive Kuomintang figures.
Provincial and port strikes
The Communists did not yield and launched the Nanchang Uprising, the Autumn Harvest Uprising and the Guangzhou Uprising in a tit-for-tat manner, opening the prelude to the armed resistance to the Kuomintang's reactionary rule.
Compared with the Red Army soldiers who threw their heads and spilled their blood in the front, Cai Chang, who worked in the white area, was in a more dangerous situation, but she did not yield and still actively campaigned for the organization of workers' strikes, thus becoming a thorn in the eye of the Kuomintang reactionaries and a thorn in the flesh.
Due to overwork, one day Cai Chang suddenly fainted on the way home, and the onlookers talked about it, just as Premier Zhou passed by here, he quietly squeezed into the crowd to take a look, and found that the person who fell down was Cai Chang.
Premier Zhou knew that the police and agents would soon arrive, and immediately stopped a rickshaw to take Cai Chang to the hospital, and sure enough, the agents arrived shortly after Cai Chang was sent away, but the scene had dispersed, and the gang had found nothing.
Due to the increasingly bad situation of the struggle in the White Area, in 1931 Cai Chang entered the Central Soviet District of Jiangxi According to the arrangements of the Party organization, and served as the Women's Minister and Organization Minister of the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee, and also served as the Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the Chinese Soviet Government.
Cai Chang (left) in the Central Soviet District
Cai Chang's first job in the Soviet union was to advocate the women's liberation movement, because many young men joined the Red Army at that time, and the labor force in the Soviet area was in short supply, and it was necessary to mobilize women to go to the ground to plant seedlings.
The peasant women in Jiangxi are industrious and capable, but it is all kinds of excuses for them to go to the ground, and Cai Chang went deep among the women and finally learned that the saying that "women plough the fields will be struck by lightning" widely circulated in Jiangxi.
This is superstition! Cai Chang knew that only mobilizing the masses was the best way to break the superstition, so she invited many female comrades to take the lead in taking off her shoes and rolling her pants legs and ploughing the paddy fields in full view of everyone.
Sure enough, nothing happened, and after a month, Cai Chang was still fine.
Under the encouragement of the soviet government's policy, Cai Chang extensively mobilized the counties to organize women's ploughing teams, effectively overcoming the difficulties of labor shortage and ensuring that the crops were harvested on time, which gave great support to the Red Army fighting on the front line.
In October 1934, the Central Red Army began the Long March, and Cai Chang was one of the 30 female Red Army officers who completed the Long March.
On the Long March, as the "big sister" of her comrades, she organized an "experience sharing meeting" in addition to the battle march, talking about her studies abroad, the good things she had eaten and the places she had been, and encouraging everyone to overcome the long journey.
Group photo of the Long March female Red Army
During the Long March, from time to time, Cai Chang would be heard singing the "Internationale" with a clear voice, pushing everyone to summon up the spirit to cross the mountains. In order to take care of Cai Chang, who suffers from a serious stomach problem, the organization gave her some rare barley, but she distributed the barley to other female comrades, and secretly ate some bitter and astringent boiled wild vegetables herself.
The guard looked very distressed and advised her not to do this, but Cai Chang smiled and said:
"We have come together for the cause of the revolution, and the revolutionary comrades must care for each other. At present, it is good that we have wild vegetables to eat, and some comrades can't even eat wild vegetables! ”
Iii. Pioneers of women's liberation in New China
In October 1935, when the Red Army triumphantly arrived in northern Shaanxi, Mrs. Snow, an American progressive writer, wrote admiringly after interviewing Cai Chang: "No other country in the world can produce a better female revolutionary and a more beautiful personality than her." ”
In July 1936, Cai Chang was appointed director of the United Front Work Department of the Shaanxi-Gansu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, director of the Organization Department, and director of the Women's Department of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Government.
Cai Chang in the northern Shaanxi period
However, women in Gansu were deeply influenced by feudal ideology, and there were some difficulties in carrying out women's work.
Cai Chang, who already has rich experience in the masses, went from house to house to talk among local women, used his own experience to show up and say things, and encouraged them to bravely break through the feudal customs of "male lord outside female lead" and take the initiative to stand up to resist bad trends.
In addition, under her presidency, women's schools were set up, teaching courses on Chinese, arithmetic, and politics, and propagating the ideas of resisting Japan and saving the country and equality between men and women.
The scale of the women's school has developed rapidly, enrolling hundreds of students in one year, and has also trained many outstanding women's work cadres of the party.
Cai Chang's outstanding contribution to the formation of the new Chinese concept of marriage and family was the "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on the Current Work Policy for Women in the Anti-Japanese Base Areas" in 1943, also known as the "April 3rd Decision".
In response to the erroneous trend of overemphasizing marriage freedom and equality between men and women at that time, which led to frequent marriage and divorce of women, and many children were born without being taken care of, Cai Chang quickly corrected this erroneous tendency and advocated family harmony and saving babies in the "April 3 Decision".
During the Revolutionary War, Li Fuchun, Cai Chang and their daughter Li Tete were together
She called on women to be self-reliant and self-reliant, to actively participate in social activities and productive labor, to achieve real equality between men and women on the basis of achieving economic independence, to be responsible for the family and to their children, and to play a great role in realizing social stability and economic development in the anti-Japanese base areas.
Because the third brother Cai Hesen, sister-in-law Xiang Jingyu, the second brother Cai Linsheng and many other relatives died young for the revolutionary cause, during his time in northern Shaanxi, Cai Chang, who served as the director of the Organization Department of the Shaanxi-Gansu Provincial Party Committee, paid special attention to the children of the martyrs.
The martyrs' orphans who had been successively cared for by her included Liu Husheng, son of Liu Bojian, Zhang Zhiming, son of Zhang Tailei, Peng Shilu, son of Peng Pan, Xiang Suyun, daughter of Xiang Ying, and Xiang Xuecheng, many of whom later became the pillars of the construction of a new China.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the domestic situation was very tense, and the Kuomintang, under the pretext of "peace negotiations," was actually preparing to launch a civil war in an intense manner.
In order to do a good job in women's work in the northeast, Chairman Mao personally ordered Cai Chang to preside over the Women's Committee of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC.
At the end of 1945, Cai Chang and 100,000 cadres and fighters broke into the Guandong, because the Kuomintang soldiers were well fed and equipped, and in the early stage of the war, our Northeast Democratic United Army was defeated one after another, and successively lost Shenyang, Changchun and other important towns, and the situation was very critical.
Cai Chang and Li Fuchun are in the northeast
At this time, the Northeast Bureau came up with a key move to turn defeat into victory: mobilize the masses and implement land reform!
In order to implement the party's land reform policy, Cai Chang set up the Women's Committee of the Northeast Bureau from scratch without any foundation, so that all the women in the northeast quickly organized themselves and embarked on the road of turning around and liberating.
Women can hold up half the sky! The tens of millions of northeastern women mobilized by Cai Chang not only vigorously supported the Democratic Coalition Army logistically, but also invested in agricultural production, liberating a large number of young and middle-aged men to join the army to defend the fruits of the revolution!
From 1946 to 1949, the number of young men and women who joined the People's Liberation Army in the three eastern provinces reached an astonishing 1.6 million, and they also organized a logistics team of millions of people.
In November 1948, the Liaoshen Campaign won a complete victory, and behind this, Cai Chang presided over the northeast women's work and Li Fuchun presided over the financial and economic logistics work.
Young people from the northeast join the People's Liberation Army
At the end of November, a million troops of the Northeast Field Army entered the customs, and on January 31, 1949, Peiping was peacefully liberated, and the comprehensive victory of the Chinese revolution was just around the corner.
Fourth, the simple and low-key "chairman"
In April 1949, Cai Chang became the first president of the New China Women's Federation, and has been re-elected for three consecutive terms, and has been the honorary chairman of the Women's Federation ever since.
In 1954, Cai Chang made a famous "constitutional speech" at the first session of the First National People's Congress, which was the first time after the founding of New China that he put forward the idea of protecting the rights and interests of women and children.
Article 49 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China clearly stipulates that marriage, the family, mothers and children are protected by the State.
Cai Chang made a speech on the Constitution
At the beginning of the founding of New China, there were many wastes to be rebuilt, and the diplomatic front was even more blank, and Cai Chang, who was elegant and personable, unexpectedly turned women's work into a new platform for expanding the diplomatic cause of New China.
Taking advantage of her early years of studying in France and being proficient in French, she has received and met with women delegations from more than 40 countries in Asia and Europe, as well as many well-known figures in the international women's community, opening up a new sky for New China in the world.
Premier Zhou said with admiration: "Our eldest sister Cai, she is the most daring person to interact with foreign friends, and she has made important contributions to the friendly exchanges between Chinese women and women from all over the world." ”
At that time, Li Fuchun was a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and vice premier of the State Council, and Cai Chang was the chairman of the All-China Women's Federation (at the ministerial level), both senior cadres, and their monthly salaries together were more than 800 yuan.
But cai chang of the "housekeeper" has never been willing to spend it at will, and the clothes she and Li Fuchun usually wear are washed and washed until the colors have fallen off, revealing that the white background is still wearing.
Premier Zhou, Comrade Xiaoping and Cai Chang waited together
In 1954, Cai Chang made a set of Zhongshan suits for Li Fuchun, and as a result, Li Fuchun wore this set of clothes for twenty years, sewn and sewn, patched and repaired, and someone in the organ joked at that time: Sister Cai, you see that the guards are dressed more than you and old Li!
The state gave them both a special car, but Cai Chang, if time permitted, would "rub" Li Fuchun's car, if Li Fuchun had a job, she would rather get up early in the morning to walk to work by herself, and then simply returned her car.
After Li Fuchun's death in 1975, Cai Chang paid a special membership fee together with the salaries they had accumulated over the years, totaling 100,000 yuan. Later, he paid the party fee of the 30,000 yuan he had saved.
The secretary asked Cai Chang if the second elder's savings were all paid for the party fee, should he leave a little for the children? She said no, the children should be self-sufficient.
Cai Chang's family style is extremely strict, daughters, grandchildren, and relatives are not allowed to borrow her and Li Fuchun's name for convenience, let alone seek personal gains, and their daughters Li Tete and grandson Li Yong all went to the grassroots level to suffer hardships as soon as they became adults, looking for jobs on their own, and did not receive any care.
Cai Chang and Li Fuchun after liberation
In 1980, Cai Chang took the initiative to resign from the Party Central Committee as vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, and in 1982, in order to let young comrades come up, she resigned from all the party positions she held.
Cai Chang never made a fuss or given an interview, and the only "quotation" she was recorded was: "My only wish is to continue the unfinished work of these and many other martyred comrades, to realize our unfinished revolution and save our China!" ”
On the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the Party, I would like to pay tribute to Cai Chang, a good daughter of the Chinese people, a good cadre, and an excellent and loyal member of the Communist Party of China!