On May 27, 1949, Shanghai was completely liberated.
When the citizens opened the gate in the early morning and saw rows of PLA fighters sleeping on the streets and never disturbing the people, they understood that the era of the Kuomintang in Shanghai was over.
The next afternoon, Chen Yi walked into the Shanghai Municipal Government Building on the side of the Huangpu River and took charge of the mayor's office. Here, not long ago, Zhao Zukang, the acting mayor of the Kuomintang, was now cleaned up.
According to Chairman Mao's instructions, in the coming days, Mr. Chen, who is capable of writing and martial arts, will fight a beautiful "battle of urban management" here, so that the international community can see the ability of the Communists to manage big cities.
The office is 80 square meters and has several telephones of different colors in front of the desk. The phone kept ringing, and Chen Yi was also very busy. Shanghai is known as the "adventurer's paradise", how many celebrities, how many gang bosses, all kinds of relationships are intertwined. To deal with these well, Chen Yi needs to spend a lot of energy.
On this day, a letter of help was placed in front of Mayor Chen Yi, and the letter was written by the wife of a major general of the Nationalist Army, her name was Ling Weicheng. The content of the letter can be summed up in one sentence:
Explain the history of the three-story building at No. 466 Wusong Road in Shanghai and a vacant lot near Jiaozhou Road, and ask the government to approve them for her to continue to use.
Before the liberation of Shanghai, the families of the Nationalist army basically managed to escape, and the mansions and residences they left behind will also be taken over by our army one after another. At this juncture, the wife of a major general of the Nationalist Army did not cooperate with the handover work and wrote a letter to the government to make a request, and if she did not have a reasonable reason, it was obviously excessive.
However, when Chen Yi carefully read the contents of the letter, he immediately ordered the Housing Management Office and the Finance Department to agree to all her requests: the three floors were for her to use, and the rent did not have to be paid; the land was also used by her, and the land donation was not collected.
Why did Chen Yi agree? Why would this lady be treated like this? There are only two reasons:
First, her husband is Xie Jinyuan;
Second, she wrote it rather than a letter of request as a letter of help. Through this letter, Chen Yi learned that there were still more than 100 impoverished anti-Japanese heroes in Shanghai. They once had a resounding name: Eight Hundred Heroes.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="10" >: After the battlefield became famous, their misery had just begun</h1>
In October 1937, when Xie Jinyuan decided to stay and "pretend" to fight the Japanese army with 414 people "pretending" to be 800 people, he and his soldiers were destined to become the focus of Shanghai and even the whole country.
In 4 days and 4 nights of fierce fighting, they killed more than 200 Japanese troops. After round of onslaughts, the Japanese army was never able to move forward. On the night of October 30, 1937, when the Japanese army was exhausted, all the fighters retreated into the concession under the cover of 3 machine guns and completed the breakthrough.
Most of the film and television drama works about "Eight Hundred Heroes" end here.
What happened after that seemed to be a scar in people's hearts, and people couldn't bear to open it.
Before the brave men withdrew into the concession, they were heavily armed, and the British concession had agreed in advance that it would give them a certain amount of shelter. But as soon as they crossed the bridge, they asked the brave men to disarm. Later, General Xie received orders from Shangfeng to disarm them first, and said that the British would find a way to escort them out of Shanghai and back to the front.
However, the nationalist top brass was still too naïve. After obeying the order to disarm, the brave men were not released, but detained. The British set aside a 15-acre wasteland in the Public Concession, which was overgrown with weeds. They then set up barbed wire around them and sent a group of White Russian soldiers to guard them.
Since then, the former "Eight Hundred Heroes Battalion" has become a "lone army camp" in the true sense.
From 1937 to December 1941, more than 300 heroes were imprisoned for more than four years.
Inside, how are they doing? A Shanghai female student who had entered the "LoneLy Barracks" and joined the troupe recalled:
When I stepped through the camp door, I was very surprised by what I saw... On the right side of the road are rows of barracks with reed mats, thick bamboo supports, and mud walls... The most striking thing is that on the side of the playground near haiphong road, there is a flag-raising platform, and on the high flagpole, the national flag of the Republic of China is still flying with the wind. This is something we could never have imagined, and this flag could not be seen in the whole concession...
Yes, during the years of imprisonment, General Xie has been trying his best to maintain the daily life of the soldiers. With donations from the community, they built barracks. In addition to military training and boxing training, they also opened workshops for towel making, socks weaving, and soap making to maintain their daily lives.
Of course, there are many Shanghai residents who come to visit and comfort them, and every day there are people here. After all, the slogan "Down with Japanese imperialism" written on the wall here was difficult to see elsewhere in Shanghai at that time.
Xie Jinyuan was waiting, waiting for the day when he would lead his troops to fight again. During this period, he repeatedly refused the persuasion of the Wang puppet government, and once scolded Chen Gongbo, who came to "persuade with good words.".
In 1939, as the Japanese became more and more arrogant in China, Xie Jinyuan seemed to have a premonition of something. Therefore, in a letter to his parents, he wrote: The day of the abduction of the enemy, that is, the time when the man becomes a benevolent man.
When he said "enemy", he referred to the Japanese army, but unfortunately he died at the hands of his own people.
On April 24, 1941, he led the troops to practice as usual, and 4 soldiers were late. So he called 4 people aside for a lecture. As a result, the 4 men took out the dagger they had prepared long ago and stabbed him, and General Xie lost too much blood on the spot and died. Later, it became known that these four people were all traitors who had been bribed by the Japanese puppet government.
A generation of famous generals, did not fall on the battlefield, but died at the hands of rats. What else can we say except a sigh!
He was alone and helpless before his death, and he was honored after death. After General Xie's death, the Nationalist army held a grand funeral for him, posthumously promoted him to major general of the army, and more than 300,000 people in the concession went to mourn.
A few months later, the Pacific War broke out, the soldiers of the "Lone Army Camp" lost their last guarantee, and the Japanese took over the concession. The Japanese puppet government gave them two ways: first, to join the puppet army, not only to regain their freedom but also to soar; second, they were sent to work as coolies, and they never saw the light of day.
No candidate for the first article.
As a result, more than 300 fighters were divided into four teams by the Japanese: the first team was sent to Xiaoshan to work as coolies, the second team was sent to work in the Anhui coal mine; the third team was sent to Nanjing to raise horses; and the fourth team, the most "disobedient" group, was sent to work on an island in Papua New Guinea.
Since then, the fate of these more than 300 anti-Japanese heroes has been very different: some people successfully escaped from under the eyes of the Japanese and then hid in Tibet; some were used by the Japanese as "tools" for playing wrestling and tortured to death; some were sent to the bacteriological laboratory and never came out; some people survived until the Japanese surrendered in 1945 and were released.
After Japan's surrender, the more than 100 lone soldiers who survived were reunited in Shanghai. The only thought of this group of veterans is: in this city, live well.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" > two: The wife of the regimental commander appeared in Shanghai</h1>
The veterans who returned to Shanghai were unaccompanied in the big city. In fact, most of them are from the former Hubei Security Corps and have no background in Shanghai.
Luckily survived at the hands of the Japanese, they did not want to get involved in the civil war waged by the Kuomintang again: on the one hand, they did not want to turn their guns on the Chinese; on the other hand, the indifference of the nationalist military top brass over the past few years really chilled their hearts.
Thinking about it, they thought of a key person who could lead the lone army again: General Xie's wife, Ling Weicheng.
Welcoming the regimental commander's wife back to Shanghai is the wish of the veterans, and returning to Shanghai to pay homage to her husband is also Ling Weicheng's greatest wish in the past few years.
Ling Weicheng is a native of Shanghai, and his parents have been doing business in Xujiahui, Shanghai. Although it is not a home of great wealth and nobility, it is certainly a home of food and clothing. Moreover, the Ling family's parents still have the strength to send their daughter to the academy to study and learn music. Playing the violin at school and shopping with female classmates was Ling Weicheng's life when he was young.
When he was 20 years old, because of a friend's wedding, Ling Weicheng met Xie Jinyuan, who was two years older than himself. At that time, Xie Jinyuan was only a young general in the nationalist army, and he was born in a rural area in Meizhou, Guangdong Province.
At first, Ling Weicheng's family did not agree to the two people's interaction, and his parents thought that in the chaotic world, marrying a soldier would definitely suffer in the future. It was Ling Weicheng's insistence that made it possible for them to have a relationship.
In September 1929, the two were married at the Majestic Hotel in Hankou. In this year, the 24-year-old Xie Jinyuan was also appointed as a lieutenant company commander for his excellent performance.
The 7 years since then have been the best time in Ling Weicheng's life. Other national generals often lingered in the outside world of flowers and flowers, and Xie Jinyuan was the only one. They lived opposite the Longhua Temple in Shanghai and gave birth to two daughters and a son.
In 1936, Xie Jinyuan was appointed as a staff officer of the lieutenant colonel of the 88th Division to prepare for the all-out War of Resistance. Seeing that the great war was coming, Xie Jinyuan planned to send his wife and children back to his hometown in Guangdong.
For a Shanghai girl like Ling Weicheng, letting her return to rural Guangdong with her children is undoubtedly a challenge. The Ling family's parents disagreed, they thought: Why did Xie Jinyuan let his wife go to the countryside alone to suffer, not to mention that she was still pregnant with her fourth child in her belly.
Ling Weicheng understood Xie Jinyuan, she didn't say anything, silently packed up her things and bid farewell to her parents. Xie Jinyuan personally sent them back to Guangdong, and when he was leaving, he said to his wife: If you are uneasy and good, I will not be able to kill the enemy with peace of mind... On the day of victory, I will pick you up and take you back to Shanghai.
For Xie Jinyuan, this arrangement is reasonable. However, for Ling Weicheng, the tribulations of life have just begun.
Soon after arriving in the countryside, Ling Weicheng gave birth to a son, Xie Jimin. At that time, the Xie family consisted of 8 people: an elderly mother-in-law, a 6-year-old eldest daughter, a 4-year-old younger daughter, a two-year-old eldest son, and a second son who had just been born, plus an orphan daughter of the uncle's family and Ling Weicheng himself.
A family of 8 people, there are only two sources of livelihood: one is some money sent by Xie Jinyuan on time, but with the tightness of the war, this is already a cup of water; second, the money earned by Ling Weicheng from farming.
In order to survive, Ling Weicheng took off his cheongsam, changed into peasant clothes, and carried a hoe to the ground. The hands that used to play the violin were grinded out of calluses. Every day before going out, she would cook a pot of rice for the child, and the old man and the child would be hungry and would serve it herself. It wasn't until she came home at night that the children could see their mother.
In the cold, summer and spring and autumn, Ling Weicheng had nothing to complain about, or she didn't know who to complain to. The only wish is only one point: the husband must do what he says, and come early to pick her up and take her back to Shanghai for a reunion.
Sadly, five years later, in April 1941, she waited for a death. The day he got the news, Ling Weicheng was disheartened. She sat paralyzed on the ground and cried, and the old man and the child also cried.
The children's cries finally made Ling Weicheng stand up: for the sake of the children, we must live. After that, she lost her family support and lived in the countryside of Guangdong until the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, when her husband's old subordinates invited her back to Shanghai.
In April 1946, Ling Weicheng, who had traveled from Guangdong to many places, finally appeared in Shanghai and met several of her husband's former subordinates.
With 4 children, she stood in front of her husband's grave, tears pouring down her face. After 10 years of separation, she kept her promise to him, took good care of her children, and honored him before his parents; he lay in this small grave.
On the same day, a newspaper in Shanghai published a message: The wife of the head of the Xie regiment has returned to Shanghai. Time has passed, and not many people will pay attention to such a small communication. But the lone veterans who were wandering around noticed. Soon, more and more lone troops came to Shanghai from all over the world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" >3: Why did Ling Weicheng ask Chen Yi for help after liberation? </h1>
Since he and her husband's old subordinates were reunited, why did Ling Weicheng ask Mayor Chen Yi for help after the liberation of Shanghai in 1949? The reason is simple: they have been really poor for the past 3 years.
After General Xie was martyred heroically, lao Jiang did promise to take care of Ling Weicheng's family in order to buy people's hearts, and said that he would properly place these anti-Japanese veterans.
Even, in the autumn of 1941, Ling Weicheng made a special trek to Chongqing. Obviously, this has become a good opportunity for Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling to propagate. Both of them openly received Ling Weicheng. Old Jiang very firmly promised Ling Weicheng: "After the victory of the War of Resistance, the state will definitely take care of you!" ”
And Song Meiling, who has always thought she is smart, has also played the emotional card. In front of everyone, she tightly grasped Ling Weicheng's hand and used the Shanghainese dialect specifically: "Weicheng, Nong rest assured, the country will not forget Nong." In the future, you can come to Chongqing once a year to give a lecture with Nong. ”
Then, they gave Ling Weicheng 50,000 French dollars, which was a pension, and sent her back to her hometown in Guangdong first. This money, Ling Weicheng divided into two parts: one to the in-laws, for the elderly, and the other, he kept it himself to ensure that the children can go to school in the future.
But before long, inflation put the money out of the way. Four years later, when she was going to take her children back to Shanghai to join the lone soldiers, she couldn't even get the travel fee. If someone in Shantou hadn't heard that she was Xie Jinyuan's widow and spared her and her children's boat fare and accommodation, she would not have been able to rush to Shanghai.
As soon as she arrived in Shanghai, she was invited by several lone soldiers to a building at No. 466 Wusong Road and stayed there.
It was originally the territory that the Japanese had seized, and after the Japanese left, Shanghai was in chaos. The local officers of the Nationalist army were busy scrambling to receive the enemy's property, and the Three Youth Regiments of the Nationalist Army also took a fancy to this house and wanted to grab it with the lone soldiers.
Later, forced by the fame of the "Eight Hundred Heroes" and the veterans' saying that The Wife of Commander Xie was still alive and needed a mansion, this was saved.
It is a small 3-storey building. The veterans cleaned the second floor and left it for Ling Weicheng's mother and son to live in; in other places, they divided them into many small compartments and distributed them to the veterans. In such a fiery era, these foreigners from the north and south of the world who have suffered a lot have a "home".
Unwilling to fight for the reactionaries anymore, they are veterans, but they have no one to take care of them and can only earn a living on their own. After all, Ling Weicheng is a native of Shanghai and the wife of the regimental commander, so she has been trying to find a way for the veterans.
At first, she thought of letting the veterans take over a pier on the Huangpu River, which had previously been controlled by the Japanese. But they have no background, and they can't rob the gangs with backgrounds. As soon as they made a rash move, the police came to the door.
Later, she also found a relationship to open a bus line on the Bund so that veterans could have jobs as drivers and conductors. Unfortunately, after everything was ready, several policemen came out to stir up trouble again.
These things are obviously deliberately aimed at the veterans, but they are only trying to force them to go to the battlefield to fight a civil war. Ling Weicheng could only rush from Shanghai to Chongqing again to meet Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling, hoping that they would give an explanation.
This time, the old Jiang couple did not give Ling Weicheng a good look. Old Jiang didn't see her, and Song Meiling said coldly: You go back first, and the Shanghai Municipal Government will arrange for the Shanghai Municipal Government to take care of you.
There was no way, Ling Weicheng could only return to Shanghai and consult with the Shanghai Municipal Government at that time. Unfortunately, Song Meiling's verbal promises are doomed to be empty talk. The Shanghai side played the trick of "throwing the pot" with Ling Weicheng, and the city pushed it to the Social Bureau, and the Social Bureau pushed it to other departments, and no one in the circle was willing to care about the lives of these veterans. After all, these veterans have no use value anymore.
After recognizing this fact, Ling Weicheng could only ask for acquaintances everywhere and separate the veterans to solve the employment problem one by one. She went to the leadership of the Shanghai Railway Bureau and arranged for a few slightly educated veterans to become railway policemen; and then asked the owners of some private enterprises to let them work in the company. The veterans are all very competitive, and their reputation in the society is very high, which makes Ling Weicheng quite pleased.
But even so, there are some veterans with little culture. They either had gunshot wounds, were left with lifelong disabilities, or couldn't read a single one, and it was too difficult for these people to survive in Shanghai at that time.
Ling Weicheng and such veterans thought of a way to pick up more than sixty acres of land near their husband's cemetery and rent it to refugees who fled to Shanghai from all over the world to live in a tent. They are responsible for protecting the safety of these refugees while charging a small amount of rent of one or two buckets of rice per household. In this way, the refugees are given a place to live, and they can also have a little income.
The rent was all managed by Ling Weicheng. Ling Weicheng left only a very small part for the children to use in school, and the rest were all taken out. She recorded the names of all the veterans, and every month, each veteran could come and receive the money.
Veterans who have a good life basically do not receive this money, and from time to time they bring some food and use to their brothers; veterans who work as coolies outside and are poor will come to receive it.
After 1948, the Nationalist army was gradually defeated and retreated, and it was even more unscrupulous to loot the people, and everyone's life became more and more difficult. Since then, more than 100 impoverished veterans have come to collect money every month, which makes Ling Weicheng's life more and more difficult.
In 1949, Shanghai was liberated, and the people rejoiced. The small 3-story building where Ling Weicheng and the veterans lived, as well as the land they had circled, had previously been considered assets of the Nationalist Army, and it was reasonable to say that the People's Liberation Army was going to take them all over and make unified arrangements.
Ling Weicheng had long heard that the People's Liberation Army was benevolent and righteous, and Chen Yi was also a fair general, so he wrote a letter for help with the attitude of trying it out. I hope that Chen Yi can think of a way to let these crippled veterans have a way out.
So, there is this scene at the beginning of this article.
Chen Yi made several arrangements at that time:
First, the house and the land were given to them as usual.
Second, arrange work for Ling Weicheng. Since then, Ling Weicheng has served as the deputy director and nursery staff of a nursery school, and the family's life has been guaranteed, and the children can study with peace of mind.
Third, formal work is arranged for veterans who can still work, and if they want to return to their hometowns, they are also given preferential arrangements.
By the 1950s, most of the non-Shanghainese veterans were ready to return home. Before leaving, they would come to say goodbye to the captain's wife. Every time, Ling Weicheng would take out some money and tell them to go home to live a good life and reassure Commander Xie. After the veterans dispersed, Ling Weicheng stopped collecting rent.
In his later years, Ling Weicheng lived a life of children and grandchildren around his knees. She was very relieved to see that there were many talents in her children and grandchildren. On January 6, 1991, Ling Weicheng died of illness in Shanghai at the age of 84. According to her last wishes, the people buried her next to Xie Jinyuan.
In 2005, Yang Yangzheng, a 91-year-old veteran of the "Lone Army Camp", returned to Shanghai on behalf of his former brothers.
In front of General Xie's tomb, he stood up and saluted. "Report Leader, Yang Deyu has come to see you," his words made everyone present cry. At that time, his name was Yang Deyu, and he was only 23 years old when he insisted on the Sihang warehouse. In 2010, under the protection of his children and grandchildren, Yang Yangzheng passed away peacefully at the age of 96.
The wheels of history rolled forward, and the 4 days and 4 nights of the Sihang warehouse were already 84 years ago. But the flowers that did not break in front of General Xie's tomb for a day proved that the common people had not forgotten him. With this article, I would like to commemorate General Xie and his wife, the heroes of that year, and Chen Yi, the first mayor of Shanghai in New China.