This article is published with the permission of the public account "Memory Islands"
In the first half of the 20th century, China was full of flames. Some people say that the Chinese general Sun Liren led the "Eight-Power Alliance." Because, Sun Liren's subordinates have many graduates of famous military academies in Europe and the United States. Among them, one is Tan Zhanchao, who graduated from the Italian Military Academy.
Born in Sha Tin Village, Xinhui, Guangdong Province, Tan Zhanchao was sent to Hong Kong's Bacui College to attend secondary school after graduating from primary school, and after graduating from high school in 1927, he enrolled in the Italian Specialized Military Academy at his own expense for several years despite his family's opposition.
In Italy, Tan Zhanchao met an Italian woman, perhaps this woman named Bianca should have been a passer-by in Tan Zhanchao's life. However, an acquaintance changed Bianca's life. When he was fifteen years old, Bianca met Tan Zhanchao at the ball, and the next day, he received a large bouquet of yellow roses from Tan Zhanchao.
When Bianga was sixteen years old, he married Tan Zhanchao. On the first night of their wedding, they drank the scented black aphrodisiac, opium tea. Thus, a door to a place that Bianca never knew opened. This place is in her heart. So that when she woke up later, she felt that the human world was a miserable situation, and that place became an eternal haven in her heart.
Tan Zhanchao (second from left) with italian classmates
In 1937, the "devils" entered the Central Plains, and Japan invaded China in an all-round way. Tan Zhanchao was indignant early on, bent on serving the country, and in 1938, he graduated from the Italian Army University with honors. The young Bianga devoted himself to his husband, and did not have the slightest fear in the face of an uncertain future. Take your two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and son under the age of one on a journey to a foreign land. Soon, Tan Zhanchao was sent to Duyun, Guizhou, to join Sun Liren's troops.
As a military dependent, Bianga tirelessly followed her husband and lived in a farmhouse near the camp, isolated from all civilized facilities, and gave birth to a daughter in the meantime. Tan Zhanchao led troops to fight on the front line, and when the Japanese bombed, his family members had to take their children to avoid the alarm. But once chiang kai-shek came to inspect the troops and summon young officers, Bianga accidentally discovered her husband's extramarital affair. Tan Zhanchao's gaze at a nurse's eyes revealed everything...
Bianca (center) celebrates the New Year in Switzerland
Bianca was in his early twenties, stubborn and youthful.
In order to retaliate against Tan Zhanchao's negative heart, he did not hesitate to go east. Her mother's warning words came to mind: "Chinese men are very troublesome, if you have a wife, you must have a concubine, and if you have a concubine, you will eventually be abandoned..." Bianga took the child and the Guizhou maid, took a truck to Guilin, then transferred to a civil aviation plane to Fly to Hong Kong, and finally arrived in Shanghai.
Bianca's decision was inseparable from the influence of her original family on her. Her father was a high-ranking officer in the Mussolini Admiralty and had a high social status.
His father was not only her mother, a woman, who wrote in her autobiography: "The way of life chosen by my father did not cause me direct harm. However, during the separation, he still socialized with other women. The father sacrificed his mother's love for the indulgence of his own lust, and there is no shame to speak of. However, the father has confidence and honesty that is rare in others. Although I don't have much life experience. But I also get the following feeling: rational control of desires, and can correctly handle various relationships, will have a strong life, this is the conclusion. ”
Tan Zhanchao and the "beautiful nurse" He Yixian
Bianca was an Italian aristocrat, a descendant of the Medici family, the daughter of the Pope's niece, and grew up in high society. She was educated commensurate with the status of the daughter of a young earl. However, such an education did nothing to help her in the tragic situation she encountered. But the burdens of war, love, and life have changed everything.
Bianca gave birth to another daughter at the Shanghai Jesuit Hospital. The Hong Kong dollars she brought with her quickly ran out, and the money remitted from Guangzhou to the central bank was not enough. She decided not to ask her parents for support, and they didn't know where she was. She moved from a hotel in the concession to an apartment, handed over her children to the care of a maid, and worked as a model for herself in a clothing store owned by a French couple. After Pearl Harbor, the atmosphere in Shanghai, an international city occupied by the Japanese army, became particularly eerie.
In his later years, Bianca was still shining
Beauty is Be'anga's weapon, and it also provokes her to kill her. Since meeting a friend, Bianca has become a socialite in diplomatic situations, pushing a cup and raising a cup, true or false, deceitful. Kuroda, an intelligence officer at the Japanese Embassy, learned of Bianca's identity and showed her a picture of Chennault, the leader of the Flying Tigers, and asked her to explain how long Chennault had been in Toyun and where the airstrip was.
After she told the truth, Kuroda gave her an envelope full of banknotes and invited her to a banquet at the German Embassy the next day to celebrate Hitler's birthday. Although she has a relationship, when she comes home and sees the child, she comforts herself that she must make a living, all to make a living, for the sake of the child.
Bianga who played tennis during duyun
Bianca gradually became a socialite, and also used the gold price difference between Guangzhou and Shanghai to make huge profits. She sent a letter to the troops, but unfortunately there was no news. He also heard that Tan Zhanchao was missing during the Burma campaign and his life and death were unknown. After Japan's defeat, Bianga was persuaded to leave China, but she insisted on staying and waiting for news from Tan Zhanchao. In this case, Bianca was reduced to a prisoner of the order, and she was accused of espionage and smuggling.
Without tears in the coffin, Be'anga was 27 years old, and she began to ask her parents for help, hoping to be blessed by religion. Her parents blamed her for not hearing anything after she arrived in China, and she was in danger before she remembered her parents. People like gossip, not to mention gossip about beautiful foreign women. The "Italian female spy case" was exposed and immediately became a hot news in the press at that time. Some say she was a double agent between Italy and Japan, and had been groomed by Mussolini since childhood. Others came to compare her to Yoshiko Kawashima.
Coincidentally, Bianga and Tan Zhanchao met again. Tan Zhanchao accompanied the troops to Guangzhou on a mission, and Bianca was arrested in Guangzhou. When Bianga had an accident, Ximen, the consul of the French Vichy government in Guangzhou, who lived with Bianca, immediately went to the headquarters of the New First Army to tell Tan Zhanchao this bad news.
Tan Zhanchao publicly defended Bianga, and on March 27, 1946, the "Declaration" reported: Bianca's beauty caused trouble, and Bianca could not be a spy.
In 1938, Tan Zhanchao returned from Rome with Bianga and his two children, and placed Bianca in Duyun, Guizhou, where he lived for two years, because the planes bombed every day, he had to move to Guilin, where she was still threatened by enemy aircraft, so he sent her to Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong, because the European War had already broken out, the British government expelled Bianca, so she went to Shanghai and met Simon from then on. (There may be a mistake here, Bianca met Ximen in Guangzhou in the process of searching for a husband from Shanghai to Guangzhou)
Soon she heard the news that her husband had died in battle in Burma, and she had to live with Simon in order to live, for the sake of her children. When Japan was about to surrender, she returned to Shanghai from Guangzhou for the sake of her child's illness.
At the end of the war, she learned from a U.S. major who had fought with her husband in Burma that her husband had returned to Guangzhou, so she was happy to return to Guangzhou on November 12, 1946, but after arriving in Guangzhou, she still could not find her husband, and the hotel could not find a room, so she had to live in Ximen. But at that time, she was already considered a spy by the authorities and had long been monitored.
In the face of reporters' questions, Tan Zhanchao proposed that Bianca was involved by the French consul Simon. Because the government that Simon served was cooperating with the Japanese authorities. Bianga was also detained by the Japanese four times, only because she was the wife of a Chongqing officer and suspected of being a Chongqing spy, which shows that she had no relationship with the Japanese. Her cohabitation with Simon was also purely forced by life.
Tan Zhanchao did his best to rescue Bianga, but the investigation report still outlined the image of a female spy: in the depressed Shanghai, in and out of the entertainment venues such as hotels and nightclubs. The mother of four children, like a thousand-faced witch, has countless lovers in her boudoir, and is born and mature, rotating like a marquee. She can enter and leave the consulates of Japan, Italy, Switzerland and other countries at any time, and like an investment expert and real estate tycoon, she can grasp the source of futures, real estate price information, and the price changes of gold dollars in Shanghai and Hong Kong through special channels.
She profited from the sale of information and also used the black market to buy and sell dollars to make money. She also reported the secret information she had discovered about the illegal transfer of property by foreigners to the intelligence agency of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Shanghai Police Bureau.
Although he was arrested by the Americans for refusing to have fun: Lieutenant Gray of the U.S. Strategic Intelligence Agency at the time coveted Bianca's beauty and tried to rape him, but Bianca refused. In a fit of rage, he handed over the materials to his superiors, and Bean was imprisoned in Guangzhou for espionage. However, after two years of litigation, Chinese courts ruled that Bian was sentenced to death.
Bian jia once met Tan Zhanchao in prison, a thousand words do not know where to start, life and death, love and hate intertwined. In prison, Bianga is pregnant with Tan Zhanchao's flesh and bones again. However, at the last time of the execution, Chiang Kai-shek's pardon was announced, and Bianga finally escaped death.
Back in Shanghai, Bianca contacted Tan Zhanchao again, and learned that Tan Zhanchao had been killed in the civil war in the northeast, and all his thoughts were gray, so he had to take a boat back to his hometown of Italy.
After returning to Italy, she settled her children in a boarding school, came to post-war Paris alone to look for work, and based on her experience in Shanghai, she soon became an assistant in a clothing store of an internationally renowned brand, and the person who hired her was Christine Dior.
Christine Dior (1905-1957) French fashion designer
Founder of the well-known brand Dior
Later, Bianca did many things, and in his seventies he worked as a war correspondent, covering the gulf war news, and was invited to Clinton's inauguration.
In 1988, she married for the sixth time. On the wedding post, there are wedding photos with Tan Zhanchao and wedding photos with her current Arab husband, which are compared in four languages: English, French, German and Italian. In Bianga's house, there is a happy letter sent by Tan Zhanchao's mother from The New Society in Guangdong. Although she has been married many times, she has always been given the surname of her husband, Tan.
Bianga said that in this life, for love, away from home, and later exiled to Shanghai, for the sake of children struggling to survive, she will never regret "to do their best to pursue the goals they need in the limitations of reality." This is not a compromise, nor is it a surrender to reality, nor is it a succumbing to fate. ”