Excerpt
70 years later, we have visited some of the key places that liberated shanghai and took over shanghai. With the vicissitudes of time, these landmarks that have left key footprints have not stopped telling the story of that legend.
Text | Liu Zhaohui
70 years ago, the main force of the Third Field Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army conducted a city offensive against Shanghai, which was heavily defended by the Kuomintang army, and with the combat method of "fighting rats in the porcelain shop" and the fearless spirit of revolutionary sacrifice, the largest city in the Far East finally returned to the hands of the people intact. 70 years later, we have visited some of the key places that liberated shanghai and took over shanghai. With the vicissitudes of time, these landmarks that have left key footprints have not stopped telling the story of that legend.
23 days and nights in Danyang
▲Memorial Hall of the Former Site of the General Committee of The Sultan Yang of Jiangsu Province.
The footprints of liberation and takeover of greater Shanghai began in the small county town of Danyang, Jiangsu.
On April 23, 1949, Danyang, a small city in southern Jiangsu, hundreds of miles away from Shanghai, was liberated. Chen Yi, then a member of the Standing Committee of the General Front Committee, commander and political commissar of the Third Field Army, and Deng Xiaoping, then secretary of the General Front Committee and first secretary of the East China Bureau, came to Danyang from Nanjing on May 3 and May 6, respectively. Danyang, the ancient city that has just gained a new life, has become the base camp for our party and our army to liberate and take over Shanghai. Subsequently, hundreds of cadres received notices and rushed from the liberated areas to Danyang to concentrate and prepare to participate in the takeover of Shanghai. Little Danyang gathered 8 CPC Central Committee members and alternate members, as well as elites from the party, government, military, finance, and cultural circles, as well as more than 30,000 people who took over and guarded the troops. Shanghai's first party newspaper, Jiefang Daily, was founded in Danyang, and various takeover seals, appointment letters, seals, and a large number of documents and propaganda materials were also printed in Danyang.
The former site of the Danyang General Front Committee was completed in January 1998 and officially opened to the public in February of that year, and is now an important patriotic education base and national defense education base in Jiangsu Province. The former site of the Danyang General Front Committee, formerly known as the Dai Family Garden, is a two-storey small building with green and gray brick walls, and the bronze statues of Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yi stand on one side. The two rooms of less than 7 square meters upstairs and downstairs are the bedrooms of Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yi. Across the street from DaiJia Garden, the courtyard of No. 61 Chenghe Road is an elegant two-story building with well-preserved pink-walled dewa red window ledges, which is the office address of the Financial and Economic Committee of the East China Bureau. The Haihui Temple, where Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yi used to walk and study, is now the seat of the Party School of the Danyang Municipal Party Committee. On the bustling Wanshan Road of Danyang East Gate, you can see the beautiful Wanshan Pagoda.
It was in the Dai Family Garden that the General Front Committee made it clear that the important spirit of not using heavy weapons in the military to ensure that The big city of Shanghai would not be destroyed was discussed; it discussed a series of major issues such as how the Shanghai underground party cooperated with the People's Liberation Army in attacking Shanghai and taking over Shanghai. During this period, the back-and-forth electricity between the General Front Committee and the Central Military Commission, as well as the power-up with the Sanye Command and the corps, was also carried out here.
From May 4 to 6, the East China Bureau held a special meeting to take over Shanghai with the participation of 180 cadres from various ministries and commissions. After Chen Yi delivered a speech, the cadres discussed the policy of entering the city and the discipline of entering the city. Chen Yi solemnly stressed two points: First, heavy weapons are not allowed to be used in urban combat, and second, troops are not allowed to enter people's homes after entering the city. Chen Yi insisted: "Our field army can not be wild in the city, this article must be unconditionally implemented, saying that if you do not enter the people's houses, you will not be allowed, and the Heavenly King Lao Tzu will not be able to do it!" This is the best 'meet and greet gift' that our People's Liberation Army has given to the people of Shanghai! ”
From the moment he entered Danyang, Chen Yi officially entered the role of Mayor of Shanghai where he was about to take office. In this small building, he personally issued the first order of the Shanghai Municipal Military Control Commission. On May 23, the day of the general attack on downtown Shanghai, still in this small building, he called Nie Fengzhi, commander of the 27th Army of the Ninth Corps, who was on the offensive mission, and solemnly instructed: "We must win all military and political victories, and we must reduce the people's losses to a minimum." ”
From the time Comrades Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping arrived in Danyang one after another, until May 26 of that year, when Deng Xiaoping led the General Front Committee and the Organs of the East China Bureau to leave Danyang and enter Shanghai, the General Front Committee stayed in Danyang for a total of 23 days. In the past 23 days, all-round preparations have been completed in eight aspects, including ideological preparation, organizational preparation, affairs preparation, material preparation, military preparation, news takeover, RMB preparation, and social and cultural economic strategy.
Two school buildings are still in use
▲Friendship Building of East China University of Political Science and Law. Photography / Shen Lin
After the publication of Shanghai Jiao Tong's professor Liu Tong's book "Fighting Shanghai", in March this year, he took the new book to the friendship building of East China University of Political Science and Law and gave Hua Zheng a vivid party lesson. This teaching building, which was important during the liberation of Shanghai, is still in use today.
On May 26, 1949, Chen Yi led the organs of the East China Bureau and the cadre team to Nanxiang by train from Danyang, Jiangsu, and he and other leading comrades of the East China Bureau, Zhang Dingcheng and Zeng Shan, and Secretary General Wei Wenbo, took a jeep from Nanxiang directly to St. John's University on the banks of the Suzhou River in western Shanghai, and the friendship building here also became the "first camp for the liberation of Shanghai".
Completed in December 1929, the Friendship Building, just 100 metres from the entrance, was built to commemorate the late wife of St. John's University President Bu Hangji, the first principal of St. Mary's Girls' School, Ms. Huang Su'e. The whole building is a two-storey mixed structure of reinforced concrete and brick and wood, and the four corners of the large roof are curved, and the whole building is magnificent, which is one of the famous buildings of the school at that time. The reason why Chen Yi chose St. John's University as the first foothold to enter Shanghai is not unrelated to the geographical location of St. John's University in western Shanghai and the strong strength of underground party organizations. It is close to the Songhu Railway and Suzhou Creek, and the transportation is convenient. In 1948, under the leadership of the St. John's General Branch of the underground Communist Party of China, students of St. John's University launched a student protest movement aimed at "opposing the United States and resisting Japan."
From the early morning of May 26 to the afternoon of departure, Chen Yi stayed here for less than 24 hours, but the Friendship Building recorded an unforgettable moment in the extraordinary history of liberating Shanghai. The Friendship Building is now the conference center of East China University of Political Science and Law and an important cultural protection building in Shanghai. Not far from here, the location of the original Songhu Railway has become Shanghai's overhead rail transit line 3, and the light rail train rumbles through, as if the wheel of history is rolling forward.
The engineering hall of the Xuhui Campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University is the site of the East China Bureau on the first day of its entry into Shanghai. From the night of May 25 to the morning of May 26, 1949, the organs of the East China Bureau and the cadres who took over the cadres went from Danyang to Nanxiang by train, and Nanxiang entered Shanghai by car in batches. Liu Tong revealed such a detail when Chen Yi asked Zhou Lin, the new secretary general of the Shanghai Municipal Government, "Where is the team that took over the Shanghai Municipal Government stationed?" You are familiar with it. Zhou Lin said: "Advanced stationed in Xujiahui Jiaotong University, and then take over separately." "It was drizzling and the roads were muddy. The motorcade arrived at Jiaotong University, did not occupy the dormitories for teachers and students, but lived in the lecture hall on the second floor, spending the first night of entering Shanghai.
Completed in 1932, the Jiaotong University Engineering Museum is a modern Art Deco style building designed by the master architect Hudak, an early representative of the Art Deco style. The Engineering Museum of Jiaotong University not only left a historical footprint of taking over Shanghai, but also faithfully recorded the development process of engineering higher education in modern China. Today's engineering hall, the first floor is a boiler room, machinery, hydraulics, metalworking, materials, electrical and specimen laboratories, and the second floor is a classroom, drawing room, lecture hall, instrument room, model room and professor's lounge. In the late spring of 2019, in Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the reporter saw that this teaching building is still in use. Young students walked through the shade of the trees and entered the classroom, looking forward to the future.
▲The engineering hall of Shanghai Jiao Tong University Xuhui Campus. Photography / Shen Lin
Former enemy strongholds are now in the business district
On May 27, 1949, the task of liberating downtown Shanghai was only one area in yangshupu, the northeast corner. More than 8,000 defenders of the 230th Division of the 21st Army of the Nationalist Youth Army, guarding the power plant and water plant, had not yet laid down their weapons. In order not to affect the normal life of the citizens, the People's Liberation Army hoped to solve the Kuomintang troops in the water plant without firing guns.
Just when Nie Fengzhi, commander of the 27th Army, and others were struggling to eliminate the enemy army and protect the water plant, Commander Chen Yi and the responsible comrades of the East China Bureau came to the headquarters. Lieutenant General Nie Fengzhi once recalled: Commander Chen Yi asked about the enemy's number and commander and reminded: "If the enemy's deputy division commander Xu Zhao is in command, you can find out the whereabouts of Jiang Ziying; he must have lived in Shanghai, had served as a professor at the Kuomintang Army University in the past, and Xu Zhao was a very good student of his." This man has had sinful activities in his history, and this is the time for him to make meritorious atonement for his sins. Commander Chen Yi's words were like a key, and he solved this problem at once.
Nie Fengzhi found Jiang Ziying by a phone call, and after Jiang received a call from the People's Liberation Army, he very cooperatively dialed Xu Zhao's phone to persuade him to surrender. On the afternoon of the same day, Xu Zhao's troops did not fire a single shot, but all laid down their weapons, and the waterworks safely returned to the hands of the people without firing a single shot. In fact, throughout the Battle of Shanghai, water and electricity were supplied as usual, which is a miracle in the history of urban warfare.
The Yangshupu Water Plant was completed in 1883 to deliver water, and during construction, the then Ministry of Works bureau incorporated the decorative style of classical Chinese architecture into Western-style architecture, which is extremely rare in Shanghai factory buildings. Nowadays, after walking through Yangshupu Road, the most eye-catching thing about Yangshupu Water Plant is the rusty red buildings lined up in the style of ancient castles in England, which is already the Shanghai Water Science and Technology Museum. Such a beautiful building, such a historic water plant, was once under the shadow of war clouds, but fortunately there was no danger in the end, intact.
Thousands of Nationalist defenders surrendered, as well as the former Songhu Garrison Headquarters in Hongkou. Ruan Wuchang, the former deputy political commissar of the Shanghai Garrison District at the age of 90, recalls the Battle of Shanghai that he personally experienced, and he still remembers the battle of the Songhu Garrison Command. He recalled: "On the 26th, we arrived at the Songhu Garrison Headquarters, which is the place of Tang Enbo. But by this time, Tang Enbo, commander of the Songhu Police Command, had already run away. "According to Nguyen Đại Đồng Đồng Đ It was very chaotic, and all of a sudden, we caught more than 400 people in a platoon alone. After a night of fighting, more than 7,000 enemies surrendered.
The Songhu Garrison Headquarters at No. 1 Jiangwan Road, remembered by Nguyen Wu Chang, is now No. 2121 North Sichuan Road. This is the new building of the Headquarters of the Japanese Special Marine Corps built by the Japanese aggressors in 1935, an important stronghold and headquarters of Japanese imperialism in Shanghai, and also the base camp of the Japanese invading army in Shanghai before the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan. The building covers an area of about 6130 square meters, in the middle of the barracks is a playground of 2200 square meters, and the entire building is like a warship sailing on the sea. This building, which is now the location of a certain unit of the army, is opposite the Navy 411 Hospital. This former enemy stronghold is now part of the bustling North Sichuan Road business district.
▲Yangshupu Water Plant.
From the state guesthouse to attracting customers from all over the world
Chen Yi left the Friendship Building of St. John's University and headed to Mitsui Garden. This is the current Ruijin InterContinental Hotel (Ruijin Hotel) on ruijin second road. Ruijin Hotel was built in 1917 from Ruijin 2nd Road in the east, Maoming South Road in the west, Yongjia Road in the south, and Fuxing Middle Road in the north. In the early 1920s, it was the garden villa of the old Shanghai realist and financier Malis, known as the Marius Garden, a large 7-hectare garden with green grass and towering camphors, and the houses were all in the style of a European mansion, tall and spacious. The garden is also lined with pavilions, grapevine promenades and marble fountains, making it feel like you're in a downtown park. For various reasons, in 1924 Marius sold three buildings northeast of his villa to the Mitsui Foundation in Japan, thus changing its name to Mitsui Garden.
On May 28, 1949, the heads of the East China Bureau of the Communist Party of China, the East China Military Region, and the various departments of the organs arrived here one after another, and Mitsui Garden became the organ station of the East China Bureau, thus becoming the first party, government, and military organ after the Communist Party led the People's Liberation Army to liberate Shanghai. The homes of Deng Xiaoping, the first secretary of the East China Bureau, and Chen Yi, the first mayor of Shanghai in New China, also lived here, and both lived in the current Building 4. It was later a state guesthouse, hosted by Mao Zedong and other state leaders, and renamed the Ruijin Hotel in the 1980s.
For the vast majority of old shanghainese, the Ruijin Hotel was once one of the most mysterious places in the city. After the 1980s, the state guesthouse inside the high walls began to open to the public. After 1989, the buildings in Ruijin Hotel were successively included in the list of outstanding historical buildings in Shanghai. Today, InterContinental Ruijin still attracts guests from all over the world with its exotic architecture and old-fashioned brick walls and furnishings, bringing people back to a distant era. But compared to the liberation stories that once took place here, those extravagant details are obviously insignificant.
▲InterContinental Ruijin (Ruijin Guesthouse) Mitsui Garden. Photography / Shen Lin
The place where the national flag was first raised is awaiting comprehensive transformation
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, the old Shanghai Municipal Government moved to the former Shanghai Public Concession Ministry of Works Bureau Building. On May 25, 1949, the defense of the southern part of the Suzhou Creek in downtown Shanghai was taken over by the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and the representative of the Chinese Communist Party took over the handover with Zhao Zukang, then the acting mayor of Shanghai of the Kuomintang. Prior to this, a team led by an underground party organization of the Communist Party of China had formed a 25-member "Municipal Government Building Picket Team" in the Municipal Government Building, which made a unique contribution to the smooth handover of the protection of the building and assets.
On the afternoon of May 26, the Chinese People's Liberation Army marched into the building and took over the security work. Xiong Zhongjie, a representative of the Communist Party of China and the new director of the General Affairs Department of the Shanghai Municipal Government, came to the Shanghai Municipal Government with Chen Yi's handwritten instructions and informed Zhao Zukang that the Communist Party of China would hold a handover ceremony with the old Shanghai Municipal Government of the Kuomintang on the afternoon of 28 July. On the afternoon of May 27, the Shanghai Municipal Military Control Commission of the Chinese People's Liberation Army was established in this building and issued a proclamation, which was also the highest military power organ during the Shanghai municipal military administration period.
The Shanghai Ministry of Works Bureau Building, located between present-day Jiangxi Middle Road and Hankou Road, Henan Middle Road and Fuzhou Road, began construction in 1913 and was put into use on November 16, 1922. The building covers an area of 13,467 square meters, with a construction area of 22,705 square meters, a total of more than 400 offices, designed by architect Dana. The entire building is a reinforced concrete three-storey structure with four floors in part, all of which were added to four floors in 1938. The building is arranged in a perimeter layout along the above four roads, forming an inner courtyard. The main entrance is a concave fan-shaped porch with a platform on the top, which can be used for viewing and viewing. The interior of the building is also expensive, with marble or colourful glazed tiles in the hallways and walls. The main entrance and staircase to the boardroom are made of black and white marble, and the offices are generally paved with poplar and willow eucalyptus floors. The sanitary equipment, elevators, and hot water tanks used inside are all imported brand-name brands and are of great value. Its scale, architectural luxury, and advanced facilities were the most in the Far East at that time. Because the façade is made of granite, it is commonly known as a "stone house" by the public. When the building was built, Einstein also came to give a speech.
At 2 p.m. on May 28, 1949, the red flag fluttered on the Shanghai Municipal Government Building, and well-dressed SOLDIER soldiers and people's pickets wearing red armbands stood solemnly at the door. The new Mayor of Shanghai, Chen Yi, together with Vice Mayors Zeng Shan, Pan Hannian, and Wei Wei, accompanied by Liu Xiao, deputy secretary of the Shanghai Municipal PARTY Committee, and Zhou Lin, secretary general of the Shanghai Municipal Government, arrived by car and entered the office from the main entrance of the building to participate in the ceremony of formally taking over the Shanghai Municipal Government.
Room 145 on the second floor of the building is the mayor's office of about 80 square meters, the room is fan-shaped, the east is a floor-to-ceiling window, a large desk facing the door in the center, on the table is a carved lamp and several telephones of different colors, and the floor is a dark red carpet. Here, in the morning, sat Zhao Zukang, the last acting mayor of the Kuomintang. At this time, it had been cleaned up again, waiting for the arrival of Chen Yi, the mayor of Shanghai of the Communist Party of China.
Zhou Lin, then deputy secretary general of the Shanghai Military Control Commission and secretary general of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, once recalled: "In the mayor's office of about 80 square meters, Chen Yi sat in the mayor's office seat, surrounded by Vice Mayor Pan Hannian, Song Shilun, commander of the Songhu Garrison District, and me, as well as Sha Qianli, Zhou Erfu, Liu Dan and others. Zhao Zukang was introduced by Xiong Zhongjie as the acting mayor and sat down in front of Mayor Chen Yi. Mayor Chen Yi announced the ceremony of taking over the old municipal government both cheerfully and briskly, and Zhao Zukang handed over two seal letters of the old municipal government to Mayor Chen Yi on behalf of the mayor. Zhou Lin said, "Mayor Chen Yi made a brief speech, saying: 'Mr. Zhao Zukang led the personnel of the old municipal government to fly the white flag, handed over the old municipal government's anti-seal letter to the People's Liberation Army, and preserved the documents and archives. ’”
Chen Yi then went to the conference room to hold a meeting of section chiefs and uttered touching words to the public officials of the old Shanghai Municipal Government: "Today Shanghai has become a city of the people, and our taking over of Shanghai is to establish people's power, transform the old Shanghai, and build a new Shanghai, which is the fundamental purpose of the people's government." He exhorted everyone in a serious tone: "Each of them should fulfill their duties, study hard, transform their world outlook, and make more contributions to the revolution."
On this day, Chen Yi solemnly announced the establishment of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, and the Shanghai Municipal People's Government was officially listed in this building on the same day. From this day on, the takeover deputies appointed by the Shanghai Municipal Military Control Commission began to take over the various systems and departments in Shanghai in an orderly manner. As the central organ that takes over all the work in Shanghai, the Shanghai Municipal Military Control Commission issued one takeover announcement after another and a series of takeover orders in this building.
On October 2, 1949, the Shanghai Municipal People's Government held a ceremony to raise the national flag here. In front of the building hangs a portrait of Mao Zedong that is more than one person tall, and equally eye-catching is the huge red star hanging at the top of the building, the rising five-star red flag, and the back of a row of soldiers on the second floor platform who face the red flag. This flag-raising ceremony shows that the new Shanghai is ushering in a new era! The building of the Ministry of Works and Bureaus behind it has become the best witness of the historical moment when the new Chinese flag was first raised in Shanghai.
In 1955, the Shanghai Municipal Government moved out of the Ministry of Works Bureau Building and moved into the former HSBC Bank Building on the Bund, which continued to be used as office space for some committees, offices and bureaus. In 1989, the buildings in this area were listed as the first batch of outstanding historical buildings and municipal cultural relics protection units in Shanghai. In February 2019, the protective comprehensive renovation project of 160 neighborhoods in Huangpu District, Shanghai was launched, and the former Ministry of Works Bureau Building, as the core building of the project, started the preliminary work of the protective comprehensive renovation, and it is planned to revitalize the building in 2022 when it celebrates its centenary. In the future, the building will become an office space, and the square will be open to the public, where citizens and tourists can rest and exercise.
On the afternoon of May 19, Chen Yi's eldest son, Chen Haosu, former president of the Chinese Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, and Lieutenant General Su Rongsheng, the eldest son of Su Yu, came to Shanghai to commemorate the great moment 70 years ago. Chen Haosu also came to the site of the 160 Neighborhood Conservation Comprehensive Renovation Project.
At the end of the evening, when the Lights of the Bund and Lujiazui are reflected, the old building is speechless, just watching generations of Chinese creating legends.
▲ Chen Yi's son Chen Haosu returned to Chen Yi's office. Photography / Shen Lin