This article is excerpted from "Between the Tiger's Den in Longtan: Jing Renqiu's Memoirs".
In the twelfth month of the old calendar, I was sent to Xi'an. In short, during my stay in Luoyang, the Military Judge Advocate General's Department did not convict me, and no one from the Political Department talked to me about my problem. Before Xi'an, Yue Zhuyuan went to see me again. I asked Yue: How do I send it to Xi'an? He said, "I sent someone there to deliver it, but there was nothing." "When I was delivered, I was not handcuffed. There is an armed escort who looks like an adjutant, I don't know what he is doing in the secret service, he has **, the bus he sits, and he has chartered a soft room, just me and the escort sit, which is finally polite. On the day I was relieved, Mr. Li Xijiu and my two correspondents also came to the station to see me off (of course, they would also know that I was escorted off that day), and let us talk casually. Yue Zhuyuan said with a reassuring word, "It will be solved when I get to Xi'an", and I still have to think about how to deal with various situations. As soon as he arrived in Xi'an, he first stayed in a small hotel for an hour or two, and then sent to Hu Zongnan's headquarters, where Hu's chief of staff sent someone to Hu Zongnan's office (Hu did not live in the headquarters of the commander of the First War Zone, he took the confidential staff officer to live in another place). I'm familiar with this place! When I went to Chongqing, I met Hu and had dinner. Go through the guards at the door, enter the door, put down your luggage, this time I went to prepare for prison, of course Hu Zongnan will not meet me at this time. He lives in the south room, and the confidential staff officer who lives in the north room. I went into the room of the confidential staff officer, who was about 30 years old at the time, and his attitude was very unnatural, as if he was very hesitant and did not dare to say anything when he went in. I was a "prisoner" at that time, although he was only a staff officer, but he was in power, he should have been a little arrogant, at least a little magnificent. Why is he so unnatural? It seems that he has something to say but is afraid to say it.
At that time, I only thought it was strange, and when the ** task force examined me, I found this confidential staff officer of Hu Zongnan at that time, and it turned out that he was our ambassador to Mexico, Xiong Xianghui, and later the head of the Second Department of the General Staff. It is said that when Xiong was in the northwest, he provided a lot of military information to the party.
I had only been waiting for the confidential secretary for a minute or two before the guards came and asked me to leave. When I got to the confinement room, I learned that the cell here was very small, a south room, which was divided into three or four, or at most five small cells, which was a place for their cadres at and above the regimental level. Shut me in, and the door was locked. There was no paving, only some grass, so I stayed here for the night, and the next day I was sent to a prison in Daoyu Village, Xi'an. During his stay in Xi'an, there was no trial, let alone a verdict.
In this prison I was locked in a single room. In this prison, I met an acquaintance in custody, named Huang Universe, a native of Northeast China, who killed Li Fuhe, the commander of the puppet army, in Shuiye Town, near Linxian County, in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, and led a small team to revolt in Linxian. The doors of their rooms are not locked during the day, they can move indoors and outdoors as they please, and when the guards are not there, they can come to the door of my cell and say a few words. The next morning, escort me to Daoyu, where I was going to escort one of my guards, who was already familiar with me and probably a squad leader. He introduced me to meet with this squad leader and entrusted him to take care of him on the way, and it was through his introduction that I gave this squad leader a watch, which made it very convenient along the way and when I arrived at Daoyu Prison. This person is probably surnamed Yan, in his twenties, above average height, with a very strong body, and a northerner.
Around 1965, a letter from the Ministry of Communications was forwarded to me by Ma Wanjie of the Organization Department. The content is a general greeting, and it also mentions the meeting in Xi'an Prison, and there is no other content, nor does it say that he is in **, only the words "nursing home" are seen on the envelope. I didn't reply after that.
Daoyu Village is sixty miles south of Xi'an (there is only one Tangyukou on the map). The man who escorted me was an orderly with a box gun. I still have some luggage and bedding, and as soon as I got out of the confinement room, I told the escort that I was going to the diner to have a meal and hire a carriage before leaving. He did not object. When I was walking on the street to hire a horse-drawn carriage, in front of the small shop selling soy milk baked cakes, I happened to meet Hu Gongmian (*** counselor after liberation). He was a member of the Communist Party at the time of the Great Revolution, worked as a teacher in Hangzhou, and taught Hu Zongnan. Hu Zongnan's admission to the Whampoa Military Academy was also helped by Hu Gongmian, and he had these personal relationships with Hu Zongnan. During the Northern Expedition, he served as the deputy chief of the General Headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Army, Chiang Kai-shek rebelled, the Great Revolution failed, he broke away from there, and later in Shanghai, the party sent him to Zhejiang, probably in 1930 to organize a riot in Zhejiang, failed**, it may be Hu Zongnan who bailed him out (I don't really know about this, I heard about it). Most of the time I met him in Xi'an, he had already disassociated himself from the party organization. Because of Hu Zongnan's connections, he worked as an administrative commissioner in Shanxi or Gansu, and when I met him in Xi'an, he was already an official in Xi'an, and they still had old feelings for each other. I met him in Shanghai in 1929, and I met his wife Peng Yilan early, and she was a deputy captain or instructor in the women's team of Wuhan ** Military Academy in 1927, and I met at that time. She was very friendly with Peng Wen, and after the failure of the Great Revolution, she met them again in Shanghai in 1929, and she went to their home to see Peng Yilan and met Hu Gongmian. Peng Yilan has not heard of **, nor has she heard of turning herself in, and may have left the party organization. I came back from Chongqing to Xi'an to know that Hu Gongmian was in Xi'an, and I went to his house once. When I saw him this time, I said a few words to him suddenly, and then I grabbed him and asked him to send a letter, I told him about the ** and other conditions and the imminent escort to Daoyu Village Prison, and asked his wife Peng Yilan to write to Peng Wen. In the future, Peng Wen will know a little bit about my news, which is this relationship. Later, a medical officer in Daoyu Prison sent a letter to his home, asking him to try to rescue him, but there was no reply, and there was no result. Later, I also used Hu's relationship to write letters to Peng Wen. The escort had already hired a car, and when he saw Hu Gongmian talking to me, he didn't interfere, and we walked in the car for a day until we arrived at Daoyu Village.
Daoyu Village is located at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain. Here mountains are mountain after mountain, mountain after mountain, through the canyon in the lofty mountains, to the south can go directly to Hanzhong. "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" talks about Zhuge Liang's five expeditions to the Central Plains, the road is difficult, Wei Yan suggested that he should go out of Baozhong, follow the east of the Qinling Mountains, and throw himself north when the Meridian Valley, but in ten days, you can get to Chang'an, which is close, but the idea is risky. Zhuge Liang said: "This is not a foolproof plan", if the other party takes advantage of the difficulty of the road and arranges a little soldiers in advance, it will suffer. From here to Baoji, Qingshui, a out of Baoji, is the so-called plank road, Zhongnan Mountain is the plank road, from Shaanxi to the edge of Gansu, all build the plank road to walk, so Zhuge Liang repeatedly sent troops, using the method of "Ming Xiu plank road, secretly crossing Chen Cang". We started from Xi'an, hit the southwest and walked to Huilong Town in Lantian, and arrived at Daoyu Village after more than 60 miles. It was late to escort me here, and they gave me a pretty good meal. After eating, they sent me to a cell and locked me up.
When I arrived at this prison, it was already different from Luoyang, although it was a little more preferential than ordinary prisoners, but the prison door was closed, and I couldn't come out. There are a lot of prisoners here, there are more than twenty or thirty people locked up in a south room, I live in the east room, there is only one person, there are some adobe in the room, the cushion is slightly higher than the ground, add some firewood and grass, and I hate that I can't urinate after closing the door. I left Luoyang after January 1, my birthday, and I entered this Dongfang prison, which was the Chinese New Year's Eve of 1942. The doors of the cells are made of sticks, so you can see from the outside, and you can see from the outside. At the foot of Zhongnan Mountain, there are no doors and no windows, sleeping on the grass, you can see the top of Zhongnan Mountain from a distance, the snow is silver and white, it is really freezing to death, "thousands of miles of ice, thousands of miles of snow drifting", although it is not appropriate, but, the door is open to meet the cold west wind, this scene is true. In the old calendar year, they still hung a red light in the prison, and I went to the new one, and hung a red light on the eaves in front of my door.
The scale of this prison is not small, it is a big temple to change, the temple is close to the mountain, the door is to the north, as soon as you enter the temple, it is the main hall, there is a courtyard, the wings on both sides, it is the people who guard the stewards, the main hall is empty and there is no Bodhisattva. There are two small courtyards to the east and west, which are considered two detention centers, and I was first locked up in the east courtyard, and then moved to the west courtyard, and finally escaped from prison in this west courtyard. Entering the gate to the west and then south to east, there is also a courtyard where people are being held, and there are two rows of guards who also live there, and there is a large open space between this courtyard and the west courtyard where I live. There were three bunkers around the prison, one outside the wall, one in the northeast corner, one in the southeast corner, and one diagonally opposite the one in the southwest, which was the one I was in. The prison organization is a detention group, and the leader of the group may be surnamed Zhu. There are at least two, possibly three, of the prison guarding the prison with two platoons of arms, two platoon commanders and two chiefs, and two platoons of guards who take turns as guards. When I first arrived, the platoon leader of the prison guard was surnamed Bian, and his accent was from the north, and the other was from Zhejiang. This surname Bian is the director I met as soon as I arrived. When I first arrived, I had to check the clothes I had brought with me. I knew about the Kuomintang's set, so I gave Bian Platoon Commander a gold pocket watch and a Parker pen by asking him to keep it for him during the inspection. Therefore, he was kind to me and gave me a lot of convenience. My door can be locked all the time, let me come out and let the wind out, I don't let out the wind during the normal release time, and I can go out when the wind is not released. The general prisoners here are called soup with two steamed buns and a bucket of water sprinkled with chili noodles, and there are no vegetables, so they generally do not have enough to eat. I was there, eating the food that was made for me by the person who specially cooked for the guard platoon leader, steamed buns to fill me up, and sometimes some dishes. I remember that one time I was serving a dish of seven beans, which was already a preferential treatment compared to eating chili water. There is also an advantageous condition, they all know that I am a division commander, and they are polite to me, unlike those prisoners, who shout loudly and even beat people. Let me not live with everyone, live alone, good intentions, God knows. I have taken advantage of these favorable conditions to do several "illegal" things. The first time was when I first entered, a guard sent a letter to Peng Wen to Luoyang, which was discovered, and the "preferential treatment" conditions were canceled for a time, and it was restored after a while. There were also doctors in prison, and there was a young doctor with a sense of justice, and he saw that I was not an ordinary prisoner, so I asked him to send a letter to Peng Yilan and ask him to forward the letter to Peng Wen. This time it was not noticed. Peng Yilan's address was known to me when I passed through Xi'an on my way back from Chongqing to Luoyang in 1941, and I told the doctor that the doctor would send it to her home. Later, he got in touch with the guard Chen Lichao, and the third and fourth letters were sent by Chen Lichao. In addition, he also wrote a letter to Yue Candleyuan, asking him to try to rescue him. The letter asked him for help purely on the basis of personal relations, and the letter was handed over to the detention center. As far as I understand they did not give **.
When I was imprisoned in Daoyu Village Prison in 1942, I saw that Zhu Yalin had been imprisoned in this prison. When I first arrived, I was locked up in the East Courtyard of this prison, and when I moved to the West Courtyard, Zhu was already locked up in the prison of the West Courtyard. In this prison (West Courtyard), there are generally several people locked in one cell, and some individual ones are also single, such as one who has gone crazy; There was a woman; There is another person, possibly the lover of this woman, who is all single-ended. Zhu Yalin and I are both one-offs. Zhu Yalin and I met during the Revolution. During the Nanchang Uprising, he was a section chief in the Political Department of the 11th Army, and after the failure of the Great Revolution, we had no relationship, and we only saw it again in prison this time. I only know that his name is Zhu Yalin, and he only knows that my name is Jing Dakang. Sometimes the guards are not there, and everyone still calls them by their old names. This prison is only closed, and the behavior of the "prisoners" is not very visible. Only in terms of style, sometimes I see that he has a bad attitude towards the female "prisoner", such as the woman's quilt, and he deliberately throws things on her quilt, which is not good.
This is a spy prison, which is kept secret from the outside world, and the prison is not allowed to communicate with the outside world, nor is it allowed to be visited by outsiders, and all relations with the outside world are cut off. The prisoners were never sentenced and never interrogated. The prison is a gloomy place, from the beginning of 1942 to the time I escaped in 1943, I have only seen the living in and the dead carried out, and I have never seen a living person go out. The prison was under the control of Hu Zongnan and was managed by his own captain, Liu Dajun, a major general. Due to this special geographical environment, this spy prison is completely cut off from the outside world.
It's been closed like this for a long time, and I can't communicate with the outside world. I asked Platoon Commander Bian to find me some books, and he found books such as the Four Books and Five Classics, Buddhist Sutras, and Tao Te Ching, and I brought a set of Wang Yangming's complete works. Sun Dianying thought that I would be executed soon, cut off my family's food supply, and took back the horses I rode and the guns I carried, which was very ruthless. Later, seeing that I was not executed soon, the Law Enforcement Directorate sent me to the Political Department, and the Political Department sent me to Xi'an, and Li Xijiu and the people from the office could see me off before leaving. Because of these things, Sun was confused about my situation, and even he had the illusion that I had colluded with the Kuomintang spies and that the Kuomintang wanted to use me. When he sent me to Xi'an, and then transferred me to Zhongnanshan Secret Service Prison, I was cut off from the outside world, and even Sun could not get any news, but he became worried. He wanted to leave a way back, and to show his subordinates, during the Spring Festival, he actually asked the Luoyang office to send 20,000 yuan to Peng Wen, and the old warlords were so treacherous! At the beginning of 1943, Peng Wentuo and Peng Yilan transferred me 2,000 yuan and gave it to Platoon Commander Bian through Hu Gongmian (taking advantage of his special relationship with Hu Zongnan). At that time, I was only notified to send 2,000 yuan, and I didn't say who sent it, I was very worried that Peng Wen came to Xi'an to send money, and I was afraid that she would do the same after she arrived in Xi'an, and also made a dozen oil poems: "Last year, in the twilight of the ice and snow, Jun pulled his children to cross the pass in the west, and the salary Gui was cold and the country was broken, and he was worried about the same fortune and worked hard." "I didn't see the money, and I bought two catties of peanuts twice in prison.
I stayed in this prison until the month of 1943. This is just a prison guard, no one interrogates or cares, and even the deceptive propaganda engaged in by ordinary concentration camps has never been published, and no one has ever announced a crime, nor has anyone announced how to deal with it, and has cut off all contact with the outside world. None of the prison inmates wore pants, some had a single coat, and some of them were not clothed, and on the day I entered the prison, one of the people in the south room froze to death. Because it was the old calendar year, the prison did not want to carry the dead during the New Year, so they put it in their place, together with the living, and carried it out after the third day of the junior high school, and buried it in a pit at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain. I still remember that in 1942, there was a prisoner who also died in prison, before he died, he was blind, and on the steamed buns given to him, there were often maggots crawling, and when he ate them, maggots did not know. When he was dead and carried out, the maggots crawled into the next room. Fleas are more prevalent here. I'm thinking about what if I'm locked up here and I'm going to risk my life if I run away.
Later, I heard that my problem was "eternal imprisonment" approved by Chiang Kai-shek. No trial, no judgment, no release! This is the life sentence. He didn't kill me, he locked me up, and also considered that the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party was not completely broken down at that time, and it was the War of Resistance! I'm afraid I'm going to get this light, otherwise I'd have been killed.
In prison in Daoyu Village, at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain, I have been thinking about what to do. Later, I wanted to run, but it was not easy to run, and the cell door could not be opened without the assistance of the guards, so how could I run? The courtyard of the prison is very large, the gate is guarded, the three small courtyards where the prisoners are imprisoned are all on duty, the doors of each prisoner's prison are locked, there are guards on the watchtowers around the perimeter, and the fence is set up with barbed wire, and it is heavily guarded. If you want to escape from prison, you can't escape the surveillance of the guards on duty even if you don't go through the gate, and once you cross the wall, the sentry on the watchtower can see it, and it is difficult to escape. But the weakness of the Kuomintang was also exposed in prison, and a favorable situation emerged: the Kuomintang troops had always been in arrears, and by 1943 they were even more serious. Prices are soaring, they are unable to buy anything when they receive a salary, officers and men are having difficulties in their lives, and the soldiers' minds are very shaken. In order to make money for the officials, the two platoons stationed here privately used their troops to go into the mountains to cut down trees, and then transported them to Xi'an to sell them for private distribution. Felling trees requires manual work, and I noticed that one platoon and one of the six squads of two platoons often went out. There are three shifts in one platoon, four out of six, and only two squads are left in the house to stand guard and take charge of other procurement and miscellaneous chores. The Kuomintang troops were also paid empty salaries, and the number of people in the squad was insufficient. Two guards plus one with a shift will cost three people, three turrets account for three people, this will go to six, two shifts have a total of about 20 people, day and night, four shifts of people, you have to use twenty-four people, how to send posts? ! No one could be sent, the guards were very weak, and the bunkers could no longer be set up.
I looked at this situation and wanted to break out of prison. Note that the back wall is very low, and although there is barbed wire on the wall, it is not easy to get on, but you can always think of running from here. In this case, I was determined to risk my life to escape from prison. But just such a condition is not enough, you have to ask for people. Life was bad for the Kuomintang soldiers, and they often showed uneasy wavering. In this case, they knew more about me as a senior officer, and the two platoons guarding me were drawn from ordinary units and had not received special rigorous training, and many of them were sympathetic and polite to me, such as beating and scolding prisoners, which was a common thing, but never beating and scolding me.
It just so happened that among the guards there was a young man from Yongdeng County, Gansu Province, named Chen Lichao, who was very polite to me, and whenever he was on duty, he had a lot of convenience in life, and sometimes he even brought me some food. This man has a rough personality, bold and spicy, and is very dissatisfied with the life of their troops. I considered risking my escape, and this guard was a rare target for mobilization. One day, when he was standing guard to open the meal, he brought me a scrambled egg with his palms facing up and a few fingers holding a plate in a playful gesture. It's not easy to eat scrambled eggs here! I saw that this man was showing affection and proximity to me, so I got close to him and learned a lot about the prison from him. After two or three days, the relationship was hot, so I said to him: This place is really difficult, what are you doing here, let's go together. As soon as I said that, he agreed. The time route to take in the future and so on, are all things that I consider. I told him that he was going to replace the guard at the gate with his friend, because the guard was also a shift leader who could go to the prison to inspect and the next shift would be called by him, so it would be safer to have such a person to do it together. So we have to move one person, otherwise we will go, in case we run into something that is not good. He actually did it, and mobilized another veteran (from Shandong, who was older than him), and that person agreed to help me escape from prison together.
I thought about striking while the iron was hot, he thought that he had a good relationship with me, and he was impulsive, so he stopped for a while, and if something changed there, he couldn't run. I'm thinking I'll run in a day or two. However, it is not enough to only consider people, but also to consider the time to choose for jailbreak. Escape from prison is only after the guards have slept, but as soon as they get out, they are found and cannot escape. It is best to run ten miles and eight miles, or even one or twenty miles, before they find out, in order to escape, they have to choose the time.
It was already close to the Dragon Boat Festival in 1943, and it was already hot in Xi'an. Soldiers always go to bed until ninety o'clock in the evening, and people always fall asleep after eleven o'clock. I think I have to run after 10 o'clock, or even after 12 o'clock, and I have to leave the prison thirty or fifty miles before dawn, because it is too close to the prison and it is easy to follow and inquire about it. Their ** time is usually ten o'clock, twelve o'clock, so I chose to sentry after ten o'clock at night**. I leave half an hour or an extra hour, so that the previous shift has half an hour to sleep, just fell asleep at eleven o'clock, and the next shift is not**, it is not easy to find that someone has escaped. I left at eleven o'clock, and by the time I handed over ** at twelve o'clock, it had been an hour, and I could walk more than ten miles when I escaped from prison, and it was not easy for them to catch up if they wanted to chase him around. If you can escape, you will be four or five hours away from dawn, and you can walk thirty or fifty miles, which will not be able to catch up. I decided to choose this time at 11 o'clock in the evening: I would take the opportunity to arrange for Chen Lichao and Chen Lichao to work at the same time at 10 o'clock, Chen Lichao would take up a post in my office, and another person would lead the shift, so that no one would come to inquire about my office.
In addition, the lock on the cell door should be opened. As soon as Chen Lichao went to work, it happened that the director of my institute was the Zhejiang man (the surname Bian was gone, and the platoon commander was changed), young and absurd, and went out to engage in relations between men and women. What about getting out of prison and going to **? This is not only about whether you can escape or not, but also about the work after you go out.
Sixty miles north of Daoyu is Xi'an, and after Xi'an to the north, it is northern Shaanxi, and it is best to escape to northern Shaanxi. But this road will not work. Leaving at 11 o'clock at night, just after dawn they were about to pass through Xi'an, the political and military center of the Kuomintang in the northwest at that time, and the location of Hu Zongnan's headquarters. At that time, there were several Kuomintang defense lines along the way from Xi'an to Yan'an, and it was difficult to pass through without special relations. So you can't go north.
To the east is Longhai Road, which is the most convenient line of communication, but run along the railway, fast and fast, but they found that the prisoner ran, must first be pursued from the railway, not only from the back can be chased, but also can send a telegram to hit **, from the front to arrange people to intercept, this road must be their main pursuit line, so can not go.
To the west, it is the road into Gansu, where there are no relatives and no reason, no social relations, and the key to the survival of the nation at that time is to win the War of Resistance against Japan. The major events after the escape from prison are still inseparable from the anti-Japanese war, and the anti-Japanese war is in North China, Central China, and South China, what to do in the northwest!
To the south is Hanzhong, as mentioned earlier, it is a rugged mountain road, which is very difficult to walk, and it is the same as to the west, which is out of reality. You can't go to the south, south, west, and north, where to go! Later, I thought of a way out, and after getting out of prison, I began to go east along the side of Zhongnan Mountain through Lantian, out of Heilongguan, and along Shangluo Avenue to detour to Lushi County in western Henan and then to Luoyang. This road is not easy to attract attention, and you can still find a little relationship after arriving in western Henan. Moreover, the main road is easy to be discovered, and this road can be taken on the side of the mountain, and the path is more hidden, so if someone is searching, you can go up the mountain. In 1943, I was barely forty years old, strong, and could climb the mountain, so I ran to Lantian and got on the highway to Shangluo, and then inserted it into western Henan, so that I went around Shaanxi. Even if they were soon discovered, they could not take out many people to chase after them, because they only had one platoon, and the number was not large, so they needed to leave at least half of them to watch the house, and they could only take more than ten people out.
This is carefully considered. Because it is very clear that if you can't run, you will die. Although there is a danger of nine deaths if you escape, there is still a lifetime of hope, if you don't run, you will die ten out of ten. Later, it turned out that during the Liberation War, all the people in Daoyu Prison were burned to death by them. (Jing Yuzhong added: 38 years later, in 1981, my father went to Baidaoyu Village at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain in the far suburbs of Xi'an, and was fortunate to meet the master who shaved the prisoner's head.) According to local people, on the eve of liberation, the prison authorities ordered the prisoners to dig a pit on the hillside, and when the pit was dug, the prisoners were pushed down the pit and buried alive. Some of them were rushed into the brick kiln and burned alive, but no one survived, which is really miserable. )
At that time, there was another favorable condition for making this decision: I had served as a lieutenant colonel and staff officer in the Yanghucheng Department of Shaanxi Province, and I was familiar with the geography of Shaanxi. During the Anti-Japanese War, I had some understanding of the relationship between the Kuomintang's troop deployment in Shaanxi and Yan'an in the north, so I chose to take this road.
This experience, which can be summed up in one sentence, is called a successful prison break. Escaping from a heavily guarded concentration camp for political prisoners and then traveling thousands of miles through areas under reactionary rule generally had little chance of success. In addition, at that time, I was an independent activity, and I had no contact with the organization, and there was no response from the outside, which made it even more difficult to escape, so there was a lot of chance in saying that I succeeded. However, if you think about it carefully, there are still some inevitability factors, which are intriguing. For example, the fact that a Kuomintang soldier whom I did not know was willing to risk his life to escape with me shows that the peasants who were forced to serve as soldiers were kind, and they regarded the Kuomintang army as a prison and risked their lives to escape at the first opportunity. Therefore, I do not shy away from the troubles, and recall some details as follows:
After making all the preparations, one day I learned that the two platoons of the guards and four more squads went up the hill to cut down trees, and only two squads were left in the prison, and there were no guards around the watchtowers. I think the time has come. On the evening of May 19, 1943, according to the predetermined plan, Chen Lichao and others changed the time on duty, going to the post from 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock, and another appointed guard came to the door. By eleven o'clock, the prison guards and guards were asleep. On this silent night, Chen Lichao opened the cell door for me. I believe that some of the fellow refugees who were in the same big house with me at that time (the big house was divided into several small houses) must have been awake and would have known when the door was opened, but they were all silent, and none of them made a sound, giving me the greatest support and enabling me to escape smoothly.
Walk out of the yard where you were being held, and cross the outer wall of the prison near the southwest corner bunker. Chen Lichao held me up at the bottom, and I grabbed the stake on the barbed wire fence and jumped over it, regardless of the stinging pain. Then, Chen Lichao also jumped down, and the veteran who led the class with him said that he was going to come out of the gate. He has conditions, of course he can. But after we came out, there was no one in sight, at this time, we couldn't wait for a long time in that situation, we only stopped nearby, and Chen Lichao and I immediately walked east along the side of Zhongnan Mountain. Because before the escape, it was inconvenient for me to tell them the route after the escape, so I lost contact and was never whereabouts again. The prison was on the edge of the village, and in the dead of night, passing through the village, only a few barking dogs and the murmuring of the brook along the hillside could be heard in the distance, and there was no movement except these two sounds.
We walked in a hurry, and after a while we felt our mouth dry and burnt, so we leaned over to drink some water from the creek and continued walking. Because he escaped along Zhongnan Mountain at night, he also made a crooked poem: "Walking the barren mountain monks at night to sleep, drinking the clear spring on the empty road, the white bones are all over the wilderness, and the golden jade court is blazing." "As I walked, I thought that these stupid pigs might have gone north. They would think that the Communist Party must be running towards northern Shaanxi. In the middle of the night, we ran forty or fifty miles along the mountain road. Even if the mountain road is rough, it is time to go out for thirty or forty miles. Look at the white in the east, the sky is about to dawn, we don't dare to go. It is easy to be exposed when walking during the day, and it is not too far from Daoyu, so if it is exposed, it will cause problems. Before dawn we went up to the slope of the hill and saw two or three families here, and half a mile further on, there was a small land temple the size of half a house on the side of the road. When we walked to the temple and saw that there was only room for two people to sleep in the temple, we hid in the temple and slept for a whole day. I hid in the temple for a whole day, and I didn't eat, because I was nervous, and I didn't feel hungry. It wasn't until the sun went down and the sun was about to set that I came out to find something to eat and prepare for the night road. The families were very poor, and we didn't have any money on us. If you want to find food, how to find a way? Fortunately, when I ran out of prison, I made some preparations and brought a bag of clothes, so that I could change my clothes after I came out, and I could sell clothes to solve the expenses along the way. The man was not there, so he took out a pair of casual pants from his baggage, discussed with the hostess, and exchanged the pants for a meal. The woman was very honest, took her pants and went to get us a few nests. It was dark and we were on the road again.
Material**: Between the Tiger's Den in Longtan: Memoirs of Jing Renqiu