In October 1959, the Beijing Writers Publishing House launched the novel jointly created by Li Xiaoming and Han Anqing, "Gunshots in the Plains". Once this excellent work on the theme of the War of Resistance was published, it became a popular red classic.
As the only novel reflecting the heroic history of the anti-Japanese war of the people of southern Hebei (Hengshui Zaoqiang), "Gunshots in the Plains" is the same as the previously published "The First Record of the Wind and Clouds" (author Sun Li), "The Biography of the Heroes of the New Sons and Daughters" (author Kong Jie and Yuan Jing), "Fire Golden Steel" (author Liu Liu), "Armed Forces Behind enemy lines" (author Feng Zhi), and other famous works of similar themes, writing a magnificent epic depicting the eight-year War of Resistance in the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region, constituting a magnificent anti-Japanese picture of the entire Yan-Zhao land.
"Gunshots in the Plains" portrays a series of anti-Japanese elites, such as Ma Ying, a young eighth route army cadre, Su Jianmei, a lover, Du Ping, political commissar of the county brigade, Wang Erhu, a tough man in iron fighting, Zhao Zhenjiang, a sharpshooter, Zheng Jingzhi, an underground worker, and Lao Meng, who drives a big cart. It also depicts the shameless, sinister and cruel faces of villains such as the bully Su Jinrong, the traitor Liu Zhongzheng, Yang Baishun, the leader of the faction gang, Wang Jinlan, and the leader of the Rikou Kou, Nakamura.
The main author of this novel, Li Xiaoming, born in 1920, is a native of Cheng yang Village, Zaoqiang County, Hebei Province, during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, successively served as secretary of the Xiaozhang Town District Committee of the CPC, secretary of the Youth Committee of the Five Prefectures Committee in Southern Hebei and commander of the youth battalion, chief of the brigade propaganda and education section, secretary of the Zaobei County CPC Committee, and political commissar of the county guerrilla brigade. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he successively served as secretary of the Party Committee of the Wuhan Municipal Party Committee, deputy director of the Organization Department of the Wuhan Municipal Party Committee, director of the Hubei Provincial Bureau of Culture, and director of the Literary and Art Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department. It is an old "38-style" revolution with both culture and martial arts.
Li Xiaoming during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
In "The Sound of Guns in the Plains", Li Xiaoming takes his own combat experience as a model, blends the images of himself and his comrades-in-arms, and creates the artistic image of the guerrilla leader Ma Ying, from Which Li Xiaoming's own shadow can be seen more. Taking guns, fighting Bai Jihui with wisdom, fighting in prison, seven dozen Xiao Zhangzhen, plotting rebellion... These battles were personally experienced or commanded by Li Xiaoming.
The story of "Three Dozen Xiao Zhang Town" in the book is familiar to everyone, but the real history is seven dozen Xiao Zhang Town. As the main commander, Li Xiaoming participated in the various battles against Xiao Zhangzhen, among which the classic battles with the greatest impact were the battle of outwitting xiao zhangzhen stronghold and the annihilation battle of Xiaozhangzhen.
According to the "Local History of Zaoqiang County of the Communist Party of China (Volume I)":
In the late spring of 1944, the prefectural party committee held a meeting of county party secretaries to call for the "hundred gun campaign" and demanded that each county party committee seize 100 guns during the period of the green yarn tent. At the meeting, Li Xiaoming actively expressed his position and said that he would definitely complete the task.
At that time, the Zaobei County Brigade only had thirty or forty people, so how could it capture 100 guns from the enemy? The enemy has one or two thousand men, and it is certainly not possible to fight hard. Li Xiaoming took Advantage of the night to wade over the wall to reconnoiter the Xiaozhangzhen stronghold, which was rebuilt by the Japanese army by forcibly occupying the original Xiaozhangzhen Church, surrounded by a high wall, and a deep ditch outside, which was easy to defend and difficult to attack. Li Xiaoming found that there was an abandoned house outside the inner wall of the stronghold and decided to set up an ambush here to conquer the stronghold. The county brigade deployed suspicious troops in the direction of the Liuchang stronghold, led the militia to march openly during the day, deliberately opened fire to lure the enemy, and also sent several village chiefs to the stronghold to lie about the military situation, so that the enemy in the Liuchang stronghold mistakenly thought that the regular Eighth Route Army troops had arrived, and the turtle cowered in the stronghold and did not dare to come out. The county brigade attacked the west and drove to Xiaozhang Town at night, and in the early morning of July 15, 28 fighters lurked in abandoned houses outside the wall gate of Xiaozhang Town's stronghold. At dawn, the northeast wind was blowing, the dark clouds were rolling, the sky was dark, and the puppet army on duty thought that the Liuchang stronghold was in a hurry, and the stronghold was safe, opened the gate on time, lowered the suspension bridge, and unexpectedly 28 commanders and fighters rushed in. After a fierce battle, the puppet army saw that the general trend had gone, so they had to throw down their weapons and raise their hands to surrender. 64 guns were captured in this battle, and the county brigade did not suffer a single casualty...
Since the advent of "Plain Gunshots" for more than half a century, it has been reprinted and adapted into comic strips, TV series, movies, reviews, etc., which have been widely disseminated throughout the country and can be said to have influenced generations. Just saying that the first sentence of the book: "There is a person hanging from the old locust tree", let the author have endless memories and admiration.
A reader of the screen name "Blind Master" recalled:
When I was a child, one day I was extremely bored, I tossed around at home, and finally found a yellow book, very yellow, yellow to no cover, no back cover, not even a spine, and it was traditional characters. I was mesmerized by the story and characters in it on a sunny afternoon when I read the book with no head and no tail and no name, and I was fascinated by the stories and characters in it—Ma Ying, an anti-Japanese hero, Su Jianmei, a beautiful heroine who loved Ma Ying but finally sacrificed a heroine, a traitor named Yang Baishun, an underground party member named Zheng Jingzhi, a somewhat reckless guerrilla fighter named Wang Erhu, and a place called Xiaojiazhen
The adults in the family didn't bother to pay attention to me, no one told me what the name of the book was, and it remained so lonely in my teenage memory.
At that time, as now, just search for any of the above items on the search engine of the Internet, and you will understand everything. So it wasn't until I was in college that I found the book in the vast library and didn't know its name was Gunshots on the Plains.
Although novels belong to literary and artistic creations, the characters in many classic novels with anti-war themes basically have archetypes, and the same is true of "Gunshots in the Plains". Let's talk about the archetypes of the book's characters, and how they came to be.
A story about the archetype of a hero
Xiaozhang Town, Zaoqiang County, Hengshui, Hebei Province, has a historical exhibition hall of gunshots in the plains.
Mr. Ma Weiche wrote in the article "The Gunshots of the Plains That Never Gone Away":
When I learned that there was a plain gunshot history documentary exhibition hall in Xiaozhang Town, I immediately decided to visit the museum as soon as possible.
Xiaozhang Town is also 50 or 60 kilometers away from the small village of Jingxian County, my hometown, which is quite mysterious in my mind. Under the pen of writers Li Xiaoming and Han Anqing, Xiao Zhangzhen became Xiaojia Town, and how many stories could be sung and wept! "Plains Gunshots", what a familiar and unforgettable name! When I was a child, the book was worn out or even missing the cover in the circulation of the friends, the adults "swung the ancient" book on the hot kang of the field and the production team's livestock shed, the storytellers who came from the small village in the summer and autumn continued to broadcast this book, and the rare wooden box radio in the family in that era was also popular... The positive characters in the book, such as Ma Ying, Su Jianmei, Zhao Zhenjiang, Wang Erhu, Lao Meng who drove the big car, Hou Laokui, who opened a steamed bun house, Zheng Jingzhi, who broke into the enemy's interior, and the hateful traitor Liu Zhongzheng and the traitor Yang Baishun, all left an indelible impression on my soul. In my memory, these people are the villagers who live around us, that is, our three miles and five villages, and their smiles and every move draw my eyes. This book has also been adapted into comic strips, movies, TV series, and Hebei Zizi dramas, which I can't get tired of watching.
As soon as you step into the door of the exhibition hall, you will be greeted by a group of pictures of the predecessors who led and participated in the War of Resistance Against Japan. I saw a predecessor named Liu Ying, and did not leave a photo, the introduction in white characters on a red background read: "Liu Ying, one of the prototypes of Ma Ying in "Gunshots on the Plains". Born in 1925 in Gaocheng, Hebei Province, he joined the Eighth Route Army in 1938, joined the Communist Party of China in 1940, and was named a combat hero in 1944. Brave in battle, resourceful, disguised as a latent end of the artillery tower, wisely capturing traitors to eliminate scourges, killing ghost squadron leaders and other deeds are widely circulated. "Yes, many revolutionary predecessors fought in the South and the North, born into death, but they were indifferent to fame and fortune, low-key people, coupled with the restrictions of the environmental conditions at that time, not even a single photo was left.
Ma Ying, an anti-Japanese hero portrayed by writers Li Xiaoming and Han Anqing, is witty, brave, heroic and tenacious. They combined the deeds of many heroic and exemplary figures in their hometown at that time, making Ma Ying's image more tall and heroic, so that readers will never forget it. In the exhibition hall, the deeds and pictures of Wang Renzhong, Liu Jianzhang, Wang Bosheng, and other revolutionary predecessors in Jingxian County, their hometown, are impressively listed.
I read the biography of Liu Jianzhang, who was the secretary of the Jingxian County Party Committee and later the minister of railways. It records that Liu Jianzhang, the young commissioner of the Fifth Special Bureau of Southern Hebei, fought fiercely with the enemy during a breakout operation, was seriously injured, and was carried by the militia to a hospital run by foreigners in Zaoqiang County for treatment. Who knew that just after settling down, the Japanese devils broke into this hospital and searched. The resourceful foreign doctor quickly carried Liu Jianzhang to a broken bed and placed him in the courtyard of the hospital, covered with a white cloth sheet. The foreign doctor calmly said to the ghost who came to search, "This is a man with an infectious disease, and he is dying." The devil was quite alert to open the white cloth and look at it alone, Liu Jianzhang's face was bloodless, his eyes were closed, and he covered his nose and withdrew. The hero escaped.
Wang Bosheng, who came out of Zhengguzhuang in Jingxian County and was the secretary of the Ji'nan Prefectural Committee and the political commissar of the Sixth Military Subdistrict, was surrounded by Japanese devils on October 27, 1942, when he convened a meeting in Qiyang Village, Zaoqiang County. Wang Bosheng was wounded during the breakout, covering the wound with one hand and raising a gun in the other hand to return fire, killing two devils on the spot. When he was about to raise his gun again, a ghost suddenly shot from behind, and Wang Bosheng was shot and killed, at the age of 27...
In April 2021, Hengshui TV also broadcast a news: "Plain Gunshots" Wang Erhu's character prototype - Qi Cunxiu"
The report said: Wang Erhu's prototype Qi Cunxiu, (1917~1974), also known as Qi Zhong, the village nickname Hu Qi Er, a native of Qiguantun Village, Weitun Town, Hengshui Binhu New Area. In 1941, he joined the Eighth Route Army, successively served as a squad leader, platoon leader and company commander in the Zaobei County Brigade, and in 1946 he was appointed chief of staff of the battalion.
Plains gunfire comic strip.
After liberation, he served as the director of the Revolutionary Committee of the Hengshui County Carriage Society, the deputy director of the County Industrial And Communication Bureau, the deputy director of the Industrial Bureau, the leader of the tractor station machine ploughing team, and the chief of the civil affairs section. He died in August 1974. Nowadays, Heng Oak Technology has become a well-known business card in China's engineering rubber industry.
Qi Cunxiu during the Liberation War.
The true ending of the two villains
In the novel and TV series "Gunshots in the Plains," the two negative characters, Wang Jinlan, the head of the "Baijihui" association, and Liu Zhongzheng, the traitor of the Great Han Dynasty, are both given real names and real surnames. However, his experience, ending, and time are far from the historical facts, which has aroused the objections of insiders in this county and other counties. Mr. Gao Zunzeng, an expert in literature and history, has written an article detailing the real situation, which is also quite tortuous and wonderful.
In the novels and TV series, it is said that Wang Jinlan was killed by the Eighth Route Army before the Japanese army occupied Zaoqiang County (March 1939), but this is not the case. Wang Jinlan is a native of Wanglutun Village, EnXian County, Shandong Province (assigned to pingyuan, Xiajin and Wucheng counties in 1956). During the Spring Festival of 1938, Ge Guizhai, the leader of bandits in Jingxian County, led the crowd to occupy zaoqiang county town, looting everywhere and harassing the people, which was even more serious in the northeast of the county seat. In order to protect their villages, the squires of the villages around Nanjili invited the "Baijihui" and set up an altar. Therefore, Wang Jinlan and several huishou came to Zaoqiang together.
On April 26, 1938, after the "White Ji Society" and the "Red Gun Society" drove out the Ge bandits, when several assemblies from EnXian county were carrying the booty away, Wang Jinlan was left behind and set up a general altar in Nanjili, and people called him master brother. Not long after, Shi Dengyu, the head of the meeting from En County, wanted to compete for the position of master brother of the Jili General Altar, and developed with Wang Jinlan to fire. Shi Dengyu was killed, and Wang Jinlan was also injured in the shoulder, so he went to the Hospital of Jesus Church in Xiaozhang Town to recuperate. Since Wang Jinlan was the target of the Communist Party's struggle for unity, in order to prevent people from coming from Enxian County from retaliating and injuring his life, Li Hengfu, head of the civil affairs section of the county War Committee, personally went to the church hospital to explain the situation and did a lot of work, transferring Wang Jinlan to the county town of Tongde Hospital for treatment, and later transferring him to the location of the Nanguan Peasant Rescue Association for treatment, and took his mother-in-law and wife to live with him.
By this time he was cut off from the outside world. On November 7, 1938, when more than 10,000 "Baijihui" disciples were instigated by Lu Zhonglin, chairman of the Kuomintang Hebei Province, and his subordinates to besiege Zaoqiang County, the seat of the county anti-Japanese government, they were led by Wang Depu, the head of the Enxian County. The eighth route army's eastward column rushed to Zaoqiang, and when persuasion was ineffective, it killed several disciples, and the others scattered, thus relieving the siege of the county seat, and the "Baijihui" gradually disappeared. Later, after Wang Jinlan recovered from his injuries, he returned to his hometown with his mother-in-law and wife, and died of illness in the village in 1963.
As for the traitor Liu Zhongzheng, in the novel and TV series, he was originally a Kuomintang officer, and later defected to the Japanese army and was arrested when he liberated the county town, but this is not the case in history. Liu Zhongzheng, who had changed his name to Liu Jiazhen, Liu Yuting, Liu Yanzhang, and Liu Enyou, repeatedly changed his name to escape capture.
On March 13, 1910, Liu Zhongzheng was born in a landlord family in Dasongzhuang Village, Jiusi District, Ninghe County, Tianjin City. In 1923, after studying for a year in junior high school, he studied in dim sum shop for a year, and then joined the unit of Zhang Zuolin of the Northeast Army. Later, he felt that it was too hard to be a soldier, so he sneaked home and became a salt dealer. In 1933, he joined Feng Mazi's bandits, and in 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned for kidnapping tickets and sentenced to life imprisonment. After the July 7 Incident, the Japanese army occupied Tianjin, the prison was left unattended, and Liu Zhongzheng was released home and became a salt dealer. After a short time, he participated in the coalition army organized by the 13th Army at the small station and became the deputy of the second team. Suspecting that the army was too strict, he escaped and joined Liu Fangting's bandit team and became the leader of the squad. In 1938, he felt that it was not worth it to do anything with others, so he left Liu Fangting and organized a bandit team of more than 200 people on his own, named it the "North China Autonomous Army," and declared himself the leader of the brigade. Because of the forced collection of 30,000 yuan of river road taxes from Japanese water conservancy consultants and the extortion of 15 horses, he was crushed by the Japanese army, so he fled to Cangxian county to join the troops of Liu Peichen of the "suppression of the communist" army in Bohai Province, and became a squadron leader. In the spring of 1939, he was promoted to the commander of the Fifth Brigade and stationed in Dulin Village, Qingxian County. In the winter of 1940, he was transferred to Nanguan, Gucheng County, and his troops were reorganized into the Third Regiment, with Liu Zhongzheng as the regimental commander.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, zaoqiang County's Japanese puppet regime came under the jurisdiction of Bohai Province. In January 1941, Liu Zhongzheng was transferred to Zaoqiang, where he arrived with 500 puppet troops. He was stationed in rural strongholds such as Wang Jun, Tunhetou, Bianzhuang, Encha, Liuchang, and Daying. In March 1944, Liu Zhongzheng was transferred to the county seat by the Japanese army adviser Sanpu and appointed as "the commander of the Zaoqiang County Garrison and the commander of the third district of the 'Suppression of the Communist' Army."
Liu Zhong was a hardcore traitor who recognized the thief as his father and loyally served the enemy. During zaoqiang's period, he committed countless crimes of slaughtering anti-Japanese compatriots, maiming innocent people, raping women, and burning and plundering. Liu Zhongzheng in historical facts is worse than Liu Zhongzheng in the novel "Gunshots in the Plains", and his crimes are even worse.
On June 25, 1945, Liu Zhongzheng detoured through Chengxi Ji County with puppet troops and looted supplies, fled to Hengshui, and was appointed as the commander of the wing by Dai Yubo, the leader of the Japanese puppets. After the surrender of the Japanese army, our party carried out work in various ways against the puppet army belonging to the former Japanese army and let it change its evil ways. However, they realized that they had followed the Japanese army before, committed evil deeds, and committed the most heinous crimes. In addition, Kuomintang agents Lei Jinglong and Han Yumin wandered to Hengshui to lobby several puppet army leaders, such as Hengshui, Jixian, Wuyi, and Zaoqiang, and made wishes to appoint officials, which is catering to the psychology of several puppet army leaders. Dai Yubo, commander of the Hengshui pseudo-wing, was named commander of the Fifty Columns of the 11th Theater of operations of the Kuomintang, Zhang Ziyao, captain of the Jixian Pseudo-Wing, was the first regimental commander, Li Degui, captain of the Wuyi Pseudo-Wing, was the commander of the second regiment, and Liu Zhongzheng was the commander of the third regiment. The four men also divided their work and guarded the south, east, west, and north gates respectively.
In October 1945, the Ji'nan Military Region decided to liberate Hengshui, and transferred the independent brigades of the military region to the units of the 4th and 5th sub-districts, as well as the county brigades of Zaoqiang, Jixian, Wuyi, and other counties, and surrounded Hengshui. In the early morning of December 14, 1945, the Eighth Route Army broke through the North Gate, and Liu Zhongzheng, seeing that the general situation was gone, fled from the West Gate separately with Zhang Ziyao in disguise. Liu Zhongzheng fled to a peasant family in Lima Village, northwest of Hengshui, disguised himself as the Eighth Route Army, cheated him into gaining trust, cheated him into wearing torn cotton pants, torn cotton robes, and a broken pocket, loaded more than 10 kilograms of wheat, and traveled from Shenxian to Baoding by train back to his hometown in Ninghe County. A few days later, he went to Cangxian to join Liu Peichen's troops, which had already defected to the Kuomintang. Since he escaped from the battlefield while stationed in Hengshui, the Kuomintang Military Command Bureau wanted to arrest him. After hearing the news, he only stayed for more than ten days, and then he ran back to his hometown, fearing that the Kuomintang would arrest him, so he ran to Jinzhou in January 1946 and wanted to run further, but because it was not open to traffic, he returned to Tianjin. When the wind of arresting him disappeared, he disguised himself as a farmer to cultivate the land, and at the same time ran a business to sell cigarettes, beef and mutton, and mixed for more than 3 years.
After the liberation of Tianjin, Liu Zhongzheng joined the southwest corner branch of the Seventh Branch of the Porters Union and pedaled a tricycle for more than a year. In 1950, our Party began to suppress the counter-revolutionary movement, and Liu Zhongzheng and Dai Lianting, the former military quartermaster of Liu Peichen, partnered to sell tea. Dai shipped in Tianjin, and Liu sold in Kaiyuan, Wangyemiao, Baichengzi, Taonan and other places in the northeast. After the people of Zaoqiang County exposed Liu Zhongzheng's crimes, the comrades of the Public Security Bureau went to Tianjin to arrest him, but they did not succeed. After Liu heard the news, in order to hide himself, he burned his face into hemp with an incense stick, and often moved his residence, sometimes changing places every day. Later, Zaoqiang public security personnel went to Shenyang to hunt him down. He changed to selling knives in the slaughtering industry, secretly returned to Tianjin to buy goods, and stayed at the station box office for three nights. After returning to Shenyang, he went to various butcher shops and slaughterhouses to sell during the day, and stayed in the hotel in front of the station at night or spent the night at the box office.
On November 28, 1951, the Public Security Department of the Hebei Provincial People's Government issued an order to arrest Liu Zhongzheng. Li Guanjin of the Zaoqiang County Public Security Bureau went to Shenyang to arrest him. Because Zhongzheng changed its name, it did not often live in a place, and it threw itself into the air again. To this end, public security personnel Yin Xiantao and Li Zhongzhong, who knew Liu Zhongzheng, were sent to Tianjin, Shenyang, and other places to secretly investigate. In 1952, due to the quarrel in the Kaiyuan area, the slaughtering industry was no longer successful, and Liu Zhongzheng's life was lost and he lived a wandering life. He sold extra clothes to buy food, then used poker as a gambling method to defraud a few dollars, then bought stuttering food, and sometimes went to restaurants to ask for food. At night, I went to sleep at the station box office.
In July 1952, our government issued an order prohibiting poker gambling, prohibiting vagrants, and arresting vagrants. Liu Zhongzheng can no longer rely on gambling to cheat money and mess around. Coincidentally, I met Dai Lianting, and I agreed to go to Fushun to sell knives together. Liu Zhongzheng changed his name to Liu Yuting, and after going there, the two sometimes sold together, sometimes separately. In March 1954, when Liu Zhongzheng was selling knives, the tax officials asked him about the source of the knives, and he was too frightened to sell them openly, so he bought a grinding wheel, in the name of sharpening knives, and secretly still sold knives.
On November 3, 1954, Liu Zhongzheng and Dai Lianting secretly returned to Tianjin to buy goods, because the goods were incomplete, Liu went to Shanghai to buy, lived for 5 days, bought goods, got on the train on the 14th and arrived in Tianjin on the evening of the 15th, stayed overnight at the box office, and went to Dai Lianting's house early on the 16th to talk about going to Shanghai to buy goods. Liu Zhongzheng did not know that Dai had been arrested, and while Liu was eating, Dai's wife had gone to the police station to report him. Liu was taken to the Public Security Bureau and handed over to Li Guanjin, Yin Xiantao, and Li Zhongzhong of the Zaoqiang County Public Security Bureau, and on February 1, Liu was taken to the Zaoqiang County Public Security Bureau. The Public Security Bureau has set up a special case team and set up a team for internal investigation and external investigation. When Liu saw that hou Jie, a former underground anti-Japanese worker among the public security personnel, said viciously: "I suspected that you were a member of the Communist Party before, and it would be better to kill you at that time!"
During the interrogation of Liu, Liu was unreasonable and cunning about his crimes, had a very bad attitude, and spread counter-revolutionary remarks in prison. After reporting his crime to the Shijiazhuang Special Bureau (zaoqiang county was returned to Shijiazhuang district at that time), the death penalty letter was returned. On January 21, 1958, on the occasion of the Zaoqiang Gathering, the Zaoqiang County People's Court escorted Liu Zhongzheng to the tomb of the Thirty-six Martyrs according to law, and after a gunshot, it paid tribute to 36 heroic souls!
This is exactly what skynet is restored, and it is not leaked. Evil has evil retribution, and when the time comes, everything is reimbursed!