In 1938, an ordinary Hunan peasant woman was taken to Yan'an, where she was waiting for the education director of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University. The meeting was significant for both of them because it was their first reunion in a decade.
This woman's name was Zou Jinghua, and the person who met her was Xu Guangda, a famous founding general of our country.
Ten years ago, Zou Jinghua and Xu Guangda entered into marriage under the arrangement of their parents.
So, as husband and wife, why have they been separated for a full decade? We have to start all over again.
In 1908, a poor farmer in Hunan, the Xu family, welcomed a boy, and his father, Xu Zigui, named the child Xu Guangda.
Xu Guangda lost his mother at an early age, and with him, there were seven children in the family. In order to relieve his father's pressure, he worked in the landlord's house from a very young age.
Xu Guangda is very fond of learning, and although he cannot afford to go to school due to his family's situation, he often quietly goes to the academy to observe in the gap between cattle herding. However, a child's physical strength is limited after all, both to work and not enough to eat, in a cold weather, Xu Guangda was physically weak during the audit and fainted.
His thirst for knowledge impressed Zou Xilu, who lectured at the academy, and with the help of the latter, Xu Guangda was able to enroll for free. Xu Guangda himself was also very competitive, he has always maintained excellent results, and in 1921 was admitted to Changsha Normal School.
It is also fate that the founder of this school, Xu Teli, happens to be a classmate of Zou Xilu. When Xu Guangda entered the school, Zou Xilu also came here as a Chinese language teacher.
For Xu Guangda, a smart and studious student, Zou Xilu is very important. Just when his daughter Zou Jinghua had not yet decided to marry, Zou Xilu took the initiative to find Xu Zigui. The two adults were very satisfied with each other's children, so the marriage was settled.
However, the good times did not last long. By the time of his marriage to Zou Jinghua, Xu Guangda had become a member of the Communist Party and had participated in the Nanchang Uprising led by He Long, Zhou Enlai, and others. When he returned to his hometown of Hunan, an acquaintance who had joined the Communist Youth League was arrested drunk and confessed to Xu Guangda during interrogation.
As a last resort, Xu Guangda could only immediately pack up his things and go out to take refuge. Before leaving, he told his wife to take care of himself and promised to come back to see her when the storm had passed. Zou Jinghua agreed.
They had only been married for ten days. Neither of them expected that this difference would be ten years.
After leaving home, Xu Guangda traveled from Hunan to Beiping, Jiangsu and Shanghai, and was wounded and shot in battle when he was the commander of the Red Army in 1931. Because the bullet that was shot into his body was only ten centimeters from the heart, he underwent three surgeries without anesthesia and was sent to the Soviet Union for treatment the following year.
After separating from her husband, Zou Jinghua's life was not good. The brother-in-law who had previously sent a message to Xu Guangda was brutally executed, her father lost her post, and she herself was arrested by the reactionaries and sent to the streets. But no matter how threatened, she refused to divorce.
In fact, in the past ten years, Xu Guangda has also looked for his wife many times. But during the war years, when the homeland was under the rule of the reactionaries, it was too difficult to maintain communication. But even without the news of his wife, he never wavered, and many people tried to kiss him, but he all firmly refused.
It was not until after the Kuomintang began the second cooperation that Zou Jinghua came to Xi'an with Xu Teli's letter of introduction, met his former classmates on the street and heard the news of her husband, so the reunion at the beginning was staged.
Ten years can change so many things, but for this loyal couple in distress, it is a reunion moment they have been looking forward to for a long time.