"The father of the industry in the border area" - Shen Hong
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Shen Hong was born in 1906 in Haining County, Zhejiang Province. Due to his family's poverty and his failure to graduate from primary school, he came to a cloth shop in Shanghai as an apprentice early, completely relying on his spare time to teach himself, mastering a lot of professional technology and knowledge in machines. Later, he opened a small machine factory named "Utilization" with a friend, specializing in the production of various civilian locks, and began his career as an engineering designer. When the Anti-Japanese War broke out, Shen Hong's hardware factory had developed to a scale of more than 30 people, and the scope of production had also expanded to a variety of professional machine tools.
After the "August 13" incident in 1937, Shen Hong decided to move the factory inland to serve the War of Resistance. Knowing that the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region under the leadership of the Communist Party of China was in urgent need of machinery and equipment and technicians, he decided to defect to Yan'an to support the War of Resistance. In February 1938, Shen Hong arrived in Yan'an via Xi'an with 7 workers and 10 machines, becoming the only private factory to move from Shanghai to Yan'an during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
At that time, there was only a small arsenal in Yan'an, with rudimentary equipment and a low level of personnel and technology, which was only for the simple repair of firearms and the manufacture of ammunition. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to meet the needs of the development of the situation, it was urgent to expand the scale of the arsenal. Shen Hong and the others and the machinery and equipment they carried were assigned to the arsenal as soon as they arrived in Yan'an, and a month later the factory site was moved to The Tea Fang Village in Anzhai County, officially renamed the "Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Machine Factory" (that is, the Tea Fang Arsenal), and Shen Hong was appointed as the chief engineer.
In 1939, Shen Hong (first from the right) and some technicians took a group photo at the Anse Tea House
Under the leadership of Shen Hong, based on these 10 machines, the arsenal has produced some new mother machines that are suitable for the conditions of the border area and are easy to relocate, and various machines have been manufactured successively. According to statistics, Shen Hong and others designed and manufactured 134 models of complete sets of machinery and equipment for use in bullet factories, mortar factories, gun factories, gunpowder factories and forward swimming repair plants, hundreds of sets (sets). In addition to the arsenal, it is also equipped with some civilian factories, and more than 400 pieces of general and special equipment (pieces) have been provided for 13 civilian factories, such as printing plants, paper mills and oil plants newly built or expanded in the base area.
Since the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region was blockaded by several parties, the source of raw materials for pig iron was very scarce, and it was not a way to stop production, so Shen Hong suggested to Mao Zedong and other central leaders that it was possible to make iron by himself. In 1943, the Party Central Committee asked the border areas to make their own iron, and the Military Industry Bureau assigned Shen Hong and Xu Chi to be responsible. With no materials and no equipment, the two learned and worked while relying on the only English and German books and materials they had at hand. If there is no refractory brick, it will find a white crucible magnet in northern Shaanxi to replace it; if there is no coke as fuel, it will be experimentally smelted with charcoal. One night in 1943, a cheer suddenly came from the Big Valley in Yan'an: Success! Along with the jumping flames in the ironmaking blast furnace, the excited crowd at the scene hugged Shen Hong tightly. It was an extraordinary success, and it ended the history of the border region's inability to produce iron on its own.
Shen Hong played a positive and important role in the establishment and development of industry, especially the military industry, in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. Because of his outstanding contributions, Shen Hong has been rated as "Model Worker" and "Model Worker" of Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region three times. In 1942, Mao Zedong personally wrote for him a special model worker award with four big characters of "infinite loyalty". In addition, Mao Zedong, Lin Boqu and others affectionately referred to Shen Hong as the "father of the industry in the border areas."
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