On September 27, 1955, the first conferment ceremony of the People's Liberation Army was held in Zhongnanhai, Beijing.
At the meeting, Premier Zhou Enlai personally awarded a woman the rank of major general, clasped her hands and said: "Congratulations, you are the first female general in New China!" At this time, this female general had already cried into tears, because she knew very well that the founding of New China was not easy, and she also knew very well how hard she had to go this way.
This female general was Li Zhen, and at this moment her prestige would spread at home and abroad. However, who would have thought that this female general was born as a child bride.
In 1908, Li Zhen was born in a poor family in Liuyang County, Hunan Province, ranking sixth. His father, Li Guangtian, was a poor farmer, and the whole family of 8 lived by renting the landlord's two and a half acres of land and fishing. Because of poverty, li zhen could not afford to raise so many children, so when Li Zhen was 6 years old, she was sent by her parents to a family surnamed Gu as a child bridesmaid.
In the old society, child brides were the bottom of the bottom, synonymous with slaves and inferior servants. Since Li Zhen went to the Gu family, her nightmares also began. This 6-year-old girl not only has to take care of the heavy housework of the ancient family, but also learns to take care of her future husband. If there is a slight mistake in the housework, it must be a severe beating. In those days of living in the Gu family, Li Zhen could no longer remember how many beatings she had been beaten and how much she had been scolded.
Time passed like a white colt, Li Zhen grew to fourteen or fifteen years old, and had become a beautiful girl, but she was not tall, as if the heavy burden of life and psychology had already crushed her. People grew up, and Li Zhen's courage gradually grew. Once, Li Zhen quietly discussed with several good child adoptive daughters-in-law, and wanted to secretly leave her in-laws' house and go to the city to work as a female worker. However, it was not easy to leave the ancient family.
After discovering this secret of Li Zhen, when the Gu family let their son Gu Tianshun marry Li Zhen in advance, they wanted to use this marriage to forever tie Li Zhen's heart that longed for the outside world.
The year was 1924, and Li Zhen was only 16 years old when she officially began her married life. However, this marriage that has been brewing for a full decade has not brought any happiness to Li Zhen, and her irritable husband will always be her nightmare.
Once, Li Zhen went up the mountain to cut firewood, encountered a torrential downpour, and when she returned home with the firewood, she was as wet as if she had been fished out of the water. At this time, the rest of the Gu family returned from working in the fields and were also wet by the rain. Because there was no dry clothes to replace, the mother-in-law scolded Li Zhen for not washing the clothes.
At this time, Li Zhen replied angrily: "I also went up the mountain to cut firewood, where is the kung fu to wash clothes?" However, what Li Zhen did not expect was that when she said these words, her husband was like crazy, grabbed a stick and hit her with a split head and face.
This act of her husband completely broke Li Zhen's heart, and she began to despair about her future, feeling that although the heavens and the earth were big, there was no place for her to hide. So she ran out of the house in a wet dress and prepared to commit suicide. Fortunately, the neighbor's mother-in-law pulled her aside and persuaded her with tears in her eyes:
Danwazi (Li Zhen's milk name) Ah, women are born to suffer! You see me, a man in his sixties, still has to go up the mountain to cut firewood, and he has to be beaten and scolded by his husband, this is fate, the life of a woman! We women are going to confess our fate...
However, Li Zhen refused to "admit his fate." When the tide of social change surged and rolled and a huge wave rose up around Li Zhen, she resolutely participated in revolutionary activities without yielding to fate, allowing her backward mother-in-law and husband to make things difficult, and she could not stop her determination to participate in the revolution in the slightest.
In 1926, the tide of the Great Revolution began to sweep the country. As if waking up from a nightmare overnight, 18-year-old Li Zhen quietly heard the word "revolution." Although she did not know what the "revolution" was at this time, she intuitively realized that the "revolution" might bring some kind of change to her life. She did not hesitate to join the local Women's Liberation Association.
For Li Zhen, who was born in poverty, the eldest sisters of the Women's Association paid special attention to her, and they not only taught Li Zhen to recognize words, but also made her understand what a real "revolution" is and the meaning of revolution. In order to repay the care of the elder sisters, whenever the women's association has any activities, Li Zhen always walks in front.
In this way, in the fiery revolutionary melting pot, Li Zhen's organizational activity ability has made great progress, because of her outstanding achievements, she has been elected as the chairman of the Women's Association of Yonghe Township in Liuyang County, a member of the District Women's Association, and successfully joined the Communist Party of China.
However, Li Zhen's revolutionary work soon encountered trouble. On April 12, 1927, the Kuomintang reactionaries led by Chiang Kai-shek launched the "April 12" coup d'état and raised a butcher's knife against the Communists. For a time, the white terror swept through the country, and Li Zhen and others could only hide in the mountains in order to avoid the massacre of the Kuomintang reactionaries.
Soon, the Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising broke out, and the Communists stood up from the pool of blood and waged a tit-for-tat armed struggle against the Kuomintang. At this time, although Li Zhen, who was incognito, learned about the revolutionary situation outside, he did not know how to look for it, and could only anxiously look forward to it and wait patiently.
The time finally came, and the Autumn Harvest Uprising led by Mao Zedong invaded Liuyang City. Li Zhen picked up the sole of a shoe that was being taken, rushed out of the room, and came to the scene of the battle by the Liuyang River, she found her own team, gave all the information she knew about the situation in the city, and accepted the task to deliver the letter and participated in the attack on Liuyang City. After that, according to the instructions of the party organization, Li Zhen began to go out to work, specifically responsible for contacting the surviving Communist Party members.
In 1928, because Li Zhen's activities attracted the attention of the Kuomintang reactionaries, she was blacklisted by the Nationalist government and posted a notice in the street that she was wanted. When the news came, her timid and fearful in-laws were frightened by this scene, repeatedly stating that the daughter-in-law had severed contact with the in-laws and hurriedly sent a letter of resignation to Li Zhen's mother.
At that time, Li Zhen was hiding in the mountains behind her mother's house. When the mother who delivered the meal told her about this, Li Zhen smiled with relief, and she was glad that she had finally completely freed herself from the shackles of feudal marriage and could finally devote herself to the revolutionary struggle completely freely.
In October 1934, the Red Second Army led by He Long and the Red Sixth Army led by Ren Bishi were transferred to xiangxi after meeting in Guizhou to prepare to create a new base area. At that time, Li Zhen was transferred from the organization director of the Red Sixth Army to the director of the organization of the provincial military region, and under the leadership of Ren Bishi, he mobilized the masses and carried out guerrilla warfare.
One day, Li Zhen had just returned from the countryside, and Ren Bishi's wife, Chen Chunying, found her. This time, in addition to asking Li Zhen about her work as usual, Chen Chunying also introduced her to a person, a person with whom she could spend her life. This person's name was Gan Siqi, and he was then the director of the political department of the Second Red Army.
For Gan Siqi, Li Zhen is actually very familiar. His original name was Jiang Fengwei, and he was born in 1903 to a poor family in Ningxiang County, Hunan. When Li Zhen was appointed military minister in Ji'an County, the Xianggan Provincial Party Committee intended to transfer her to the post of propaganda director of the provincial party committee, but Li Zhen took into account her lack of education and resolutely let Xian. Therefore, Gan Siqi, who had just returned from Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow in 1930, replaced Li Zhen and became the propaganda director of the provincial party committee. It was also because of this that the two were able to meet.
Later, the two worked together in the Red Sixth Army, and there were more opportunities for contact with each other and a more thorough understanding of each other. A few times, they talked about work together, about ideals, and even about love. In addition, Gan Siqi also helped Li Zhen write a report summarizing the work situation, and Li Zhen, in order to thank him, also specially accepted a pair of cloth shoes to give to Gan Siqi.
It is also based on this special experience that Li Chunying will deliberately find Li Zhen and test her feelings for Gan Siqi. But for Li Zhen, asking her to make love with Gan Siqi, or even get married, is something she does not dare to think about, because she always believes that her status as a child bride is not worthy of Gan Siqi, who returned from Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow.
When Li Zhen told Li Zhenying of her concerns, Li Chunying thought that this was not a big deal, and she seriously told Li Zhen: "Director Gan has a very good impression of you, he said that you are spicy and capable, your style is solid, you are a great female comrade, and he has long admired you. ”
Li Zhenying's words made Li Zhen's heart move--Gan Siqi made such an evaluation of her, and this person was admired by herself, and her heart unconsciously moved closer to Gan Siqi.
On New Year's Day of the following year, witnessed by Ren Bishi, Li Zhen and Gan Siqi held a simple and warm wedding. At the wedding, for this revolutionary couple, Ren Bishi once quipped: "Today, Gan Siqi and Li Zhen are married, which is completely new and has no feudal color. If they do not worship heaven and earth and do not worship their ancestors, they are devoted to revolution, and they are a very good revolutionary couple. After everyone listened, they were all amused.
Some readers and friends may know that although the couple had more than 20 children in their later years, they were all martyrs' orphans, and none of them were their own children. In fact, the two of them once had a child, but due to the harsh and harsh environment during the Long March, this child died after only ten days of birth.
After liberation, some old comrades saw Gan Siqi and said with great regret: "Old Gan, it is a pity, you have been revolutionary for more than ten years, and you have not even had a child!" In this regard, Li Zhen often feels guilty and feels sorry for her husband, but Gan Siqi always comforts Li Zhen and says: "What I want is a lover, not a child!" Although this sentence does not show any tenderness and sweetness, who can say that it does not fully express Gan Siqi's love for Li Zhen?
In September 1955, the Chinese People's Liberation Army implemented a rank system. Li Zhen and Gan Siqi were both awarded the rank of general at the same time, the husband is a general, the wife is a major general, and they are also the only pair of "twin generals" among the founding generals, which is rare in ancient and modern China and abroad. Since then, in the glorious revolutionary history of China, there has been the first general couple.
On February 5, 1964, just over two months after the age of 60, Gan Siqi was sick with overwork and ineffective medical treatment, and hurriedly left his wife who had been dependent on him for 30 years. After that, Li Zhen was immersed in grief for a long time.
In her later years, Li Zhen also always maintained a hard and simple style. An old comrade-in-arms of the Shenyang Military Region bought her a pair of large cotton shoes, which she wore for decades and still refused to change them; the clothes she wore in her later years were mostly green cloth clothes left over from the 60s, all patched one after another.
She lived in a small, cramped house, and when old comrades came to visit her on holidays, the small reception room was crowded. It wasn't until the organization repeatedly asked her to move that she moved to a cadre building in an apartment near The Zizhuyuan in Beijing. It was also here that Li Zhen spent the last six spring and autumn seasons of her life.
In 1985, on the eve of the Fourth Plenary Session of the Twelfth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Li Zhen wrote a letter to the leaders of the Central Committee and the Central Military Commission, applying to resign as the last member of the Central Advisory Committee and an adviser to the Organization Department of the General Political Department, which led to a good start for the reform of the cadre system of the Party and the army. And Li Zhen's move has also won people's heartfelt love.
On March 11, 1990, Li Zhen died of illness in Beijing. On March 22, Xinhua News Agency issued an obituary: "Flowers and cypresses are surrounded by colorful relics of Li Zhen, the first female general in New China, dressed in official clothes..." In addition, Li Zhen also explained in his will: Part of the salary saved in peacetime will be paid to the party fee, part of it will be donated to the Soong Ching Ling Children's Welfare Foundation, and part of it will be donated to her husband Gan Siqi's hometown of Ningxiang County, Hunan Province, as a school subsidy.
After reading the newspaper, everyone present wept bitterly, and the people of the world were even more touched when they learned about it.
And this was the last time she fulfilled her mission of loyalty to the Party as a Member of the Communist Party, her ardent concern for the next generation of the motherland as a proletarian revolutionary, and her endless love for her beloved husband and her hometown as a wife.