Before Jiang died, Song asked if he could release Hanqing? Jiang: Don't let the tiger go
On April 5, 1975, during the Qingming Festival in Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek, who was bedridden, died of a heart attack at 23:50 in the morning. Before his death, he summoned Chiang Ching-kuo, Soong Meiling and others to make detailed arrangements for Taiwan's future development.
At this farewell ceremony, Song Meiling once again tearfully asked her husband the question that had plagued them for 39 years: Han Qing ......Will freedom be restored? Chiang Kai-shek pondered silently for a while, and then replied regretfully: "Don't let the tiger go." ”
When Song Meiling heard this, she couldn't help crying.
A Legendary Figure: Born and Fugitive, at the Age of 27 at the Helm of China's Northeast Gateway Zhang Xueliang is a high-profile figure in modern Chinese history, and various theoretical works about him continue to emerge.
However, it is not easy to summarize his life in its entirety. On June 4, 1901, Zhang Xueliang was born in Tai'an County, Liaoning Province, at that time Octagonal Terrace, his father Zhang Zuolin was not a Beiyang warlord, but just a regimental training leader who collected "protection money" in the mountains.
His mother, Zhao Chungui, gave birth to him on the way to escape, and he was named "Little Liuzi". After the age of five, the youngest sixth son moved with his mother to Xinmin Mansion, where his father was stationed, and studied classical Chinese works such as the Four Books and Five Classics under Cui Mingyao.
Zhang Zuolin served as the commander of the 27th Division in the Northeast, and the little sixth son was officially named "Xueliang", the word Hanqing. He has a very stubborn personality and is always fearless, which often terrifies those around him.
However, Xiao Liuzi didn't care, but had fun all day long. With the passage of time, after the establishment of **, Zhang Zuolin was stationed in Fengtian, which was later Shenyang.
At this time, under the arrangement of his father, Xiao Liuzi successively worshipped Yang Jingzhen, Jin Liang, and Bai Yongzhen as teachers to learn Eastern and Western cultures. And when Bai Yongzhen resigned, he persuaded Zhang Zuolin to let Xiao Liuzi do what he wanted to do, because he was not a person who liked to read and sit in the house.
In 1919, Zhang Zuolin reopened the Northeast Army Martial Arts Hall, and the sixth son was officially enrolled. He was awarded the rank of artillery major with honors, entered the Northeast Army units, and within a year rose to colonel.
Zhang Xueliang's efforts in the army continued to be promoted, and by the time of the Central Plains War, he was already a general of the Northeast Army and was Zhang Zuolin's right-hand man. During this period, he got acquainted with his mentor Guo Songling, his close friend Pan Youyu and others.
Under the leadership of Zhang's father and son, the Northeast Army formed three major forces: the local faction, the Japanese faction, and the Jiangwutang faction. Zhang Xueliang became the core of the leadership of the Jiangwutang faction, but this also laid the groundwork for the later civil strife in the northeast.
In 1925, Guo Songling opposed the signing of a secret treaty with Japan against Zhang Zuolin, but was finally defeated by Zhang Xueliang, and finally died in the insidious scheme of Yang Yuting, the Japanese faction.
Guo Songling and Pan Youyu were executed by Zhang Zuolin because they were involved in communism. Zhang Xueliang had no choice but to kill Pan Youyu with his own hands. In 1927, Zhang Zuolin founded the self-proclaimed army marshal in Beijing, and Zhang Xueliang assisted him as an army general"Young marshal"The name spread throughout the country.
At this time, Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing was already in power, and in 1928 he sent troops to the Northern Expedition again. The Feng army was defeated and retreated, and Zhang Zuolin was worried that he would be scolded as a thief by later generations, and refused to implement the secret agreement signed with Japan.
On June 3, 1928, he left Beijing. On June 4, he was seriously wounded by the Kwantung Army on his way back to Mukden, and died when he finally returned to the Grand Marshal's Mansion. From that day on, Zhang Xueliang's birthday became the death day of his father Zhang Zuolin.
Knowing that Zhang Zuolin was injured, Japan sent Lin Quanzhu and others to spy on the situation many times. However, Mrs. Zhang Zuolin and Yu Fengzhi, the daughter-in-law of the long house, teamed up to send them away.
Finally, on June 17, Zhang Xueliang disguised himself as a cooking soldier and rushed back to Mukden from Beijing to stabilize the mood of his subordinates. After everything was properly resolved, he released an obituary on the 21st, officially announcing Zhang Zuolin's death.
On July 3, 1928, Zhang Xueliang, who was only 27 years old, took office as the commander of the security of the three northeastern provinces and assumed the heavy burden of military and political affairs. At the turn of history, after Zhang Xueliang became the supreme de facto leader of Northeast China, his first task was how to resolve the privileges of Japan and the Soviet Union in Northeast China.
Zhang Xueliang resolutely defended the sovereignty of Northeast China, resolutely dealt with the problem of collusion between Yang Yuting and Chang Yinhuai, veterans of the old faction, and betrayed the interests of Northeast China, and reorganized the Northeast Air Force and established a naval academy to cultivate Northeast China's own naval forces.
In just a few years, the northeast has possessed a modern navy, army, and air force, and has formed a number of arms that coordinate operations, such as infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineering, armor, automobiles, and communications.
Zhang Xueliang's move made him the only leader in China with a modern army other than Chiang Kai-shek. In the face of the situation that Japan was pressing step by step, Zhang Xueliang, in order to prevent the Northeast from falling into the hands of Japan, announced on December 29, 1928 that the Northeast would change its banner, obey Chiang Kai-shek's Nanjing people**, and obey the deployment.
Zhang Xueliang ordered the replacement of the five-color national flag of Beiyang and the blue sky and white sun flag of the Kuomintang, which marked the formal reunification of China and the bankruptcy of Japan's conspiracy to attempt China.
To this end, on December 30, 1928, Nanjing appointed Tang Yulin, a general of the Northeast Army, as the chairman of Rehe**, and the next day appointed Zhang Xueliang as the commander of the Northeast Frontier Army of the National Revolutionary Army, which was integrated into the National Revolutionary Army.
What worried Chiang Kai-shek was that Zhang Xueliang's troops did not come out of nowhere. The Zhang family and his son operated in Northeast China for many years, established a sound transportation and commercial system, orderly operation of the military industry and munitions industry, implemented effective policies such as "cutting troops and colonizing borders", and the people's lives were relatively stable, and Northeast China became an "independent kingdom" during the war.
Although Japan is eyeing the tiger, it is still relatively peaceful on the whole.
After Zhang Xueliang took over the position of the old coach, he faced a thorny problem. He had to be cautious in the struggle for the privileges of the Soviet Union and China's Northeast Railway. He knew that any verbal agreement could be overturned without ironclad evidence.
Therefore, Zhang Xueliang resolutely rejected the Soviet railway lease agreement, and only recognized those agreements that had been written on paper. However, even so, the Soviet Union still insisted on retaining the relevant privileges of the Eastern Railway, which made Zhang Xueliang very dissatisfied.
In order to recapture the Eastern Railway, he accepted the agitation of Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, and on August 18, 1929, he went to war with the Soviets near the Black Blind Island. The battle, which lasted for more than 100 days, was known as the "Middle East Road Incident" and attracted wide attention at home and abroad at the time.
In this battle, the Northeast Army paid the price of nearly 10,000 people, and the Soviet Army's ** was much lower than that, only less than 1,000 people. On December 20, under the mediation of the United States, Zhang Xueliang was forced to sign the "Protocol of the Sino-Soviet Boli Conference" with the Soviet Union, agreeing to the Sino-Soviet joint operation of the China Eastern Railway.
Since then, the Black Blind Island has also fallen under the control of the Soviet Union. The battle inflicted heavy losses on the Northeast Army, and at the same time affected Zhang Xueliang's personal reputation.
At the same time, the base camp of the Kwantung Army stationed in the northeast also began to attack Zhang Xueliang, frequently provoking the bottom line of the Northeast Army. On September 18, 1931, the Kwantung Army created the Wicker Lake Incident as a pretext to occupy the entire Tohoku region for the next 6 months.
Zhang Xueliang followed Chiang Kai-shek's order and led 300,000 Northeast Army to retreat into the pass, but was denounced by the people of the whole country as a "general of non-resistance".
At the behest of Chiang Kai-shek, Zhang Xueliang announced his resignation in April 1933 and went to Europe for an investigation. During this period, he deeply felt that he had been deceived and victimized everywhere, and now he had fallen into such a situation, so he made up his mind to quit drug addiction and never be contaminated again.
After Zhang Xueliang went abroad, the 300,000 troops he left in the northeast were full of anger and dissatisfaction, and they scolded Chiang Kai-shek for being mean and unkind, saying that as long as he could use people, he would be nepotistic, and when he didn't need them, he would kick them away, completely ignoring friendship.
Driven by this sentiment, Chiang Kai-shek's orders to the Northeast Army were often ignored, and Zhang Xueliang's loyal subordinates Yu Xuezhong, He Zhuguo, Wan Fulin, Wang Yizhe and others refused to obey the deployment for various reasons, which made Chiang Kai-shek very angry.
Under these circumstances, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to re-employ Zhang Xueliang, recalled him at the end of 1933, and ordered him to remain in charge of the Northeast Army and to go to the northwest to "encircle and suppress" the Red Army.
However, to Chiang Kai-shek's disappointment, after Zhang Xueliang took over the Northeast Army, the number of Red Army troops in northern Shaanxi increased, and the Northeast Army suffered several heavy defeats in Laoshan and other places in a row, which made Zhang Xueliang have deep doubts about Chiang Kai-shek's theory of "fighting outside the country must first secure the interior", and no longer believed in it.
In order to better deal with the Red Army, Zhang Xueliang began to secretly read books and theoretical works related to communism, and became acquainted with several Kuomintang officers who had private dealings with the Communist Party.
At the same time, the situation in North China became increasingly tense, and the Japanese army went all the way south, frantically attacking the city and conquering the city, carrying out a brutal and inhumane **, and the strike movement of workers in various places was in full swing.
Chiang Kai-shek remained indifferent despite the growing anti-Japanese voice, and after successfully quelling the Liangguang Incident, he personally went to Xi'an to supervise the war. At this time, Zhang Xueliang's Northeast Army, Yang Hucheng's Northwest Army, and the Communist Red Army had secretly reached a joint anti-Japanese agreement, forming a "three-in-one" situation in the entire northwest, which made Chiang Kai-shek feel very uneasy.
He repeatedly urged Zhang Xueliang to send troops to exterminate the Communist Party, and threatened that if Zhang Xueliang did not obey the order, he would transfer the Northeast Army south to Anhui and Fujian, and at the same time would also send the ** army to exterminate the Communist Party.
After many hard persuasions, Zhang Xueliang still could not change Chiang Kai-shek's mind, which made Chiang Kai-shek angry and had the idea of replacing Zhang Xueliang and dismantling the Northeast Army.
Just when Zhang Xueliang was hesitating whether to admonish or not, Yang Hucheng found him and reminded him that time was running out, and if he continued to delay, the Northwest Army might mutini because of his anger, and the situation would be even more difficult to control.
At 5 a.m. on December 12, 1936, gunshots rang out at the edge of Huaqing Pond in Lintong. The Xi'an Incident broke out, and history left a tragic song without regrets and a hero's end here.
Representatives of various parties, such as the Nanjing National**, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region**, the Soviet Union, and the United States, entered Xi'an one after another to try to preserve Chiang Kai-shek and avoid a greater political crisis.
However, due to Chiang Kai-shek's high prestige in the country, ordinary people did not understand the true circumstances of the incident and mistakenly believed that Zhang Xueliang was detaining Chiang Kai-shek for personal gain. During this period, Zhang Xueliang was attacked like never before.
Internationally, the Soviet Union and the United States also expressed their disapproval of Zhang Xueliang's actions. At this time, Zhang Xueliang finally looked forward to the representative of Yan'an entering Xi'an.
Subsequently, ** met with Song Meiling, the representative of Nanjing, Duan Na, the representative of the United States, and others, and after many consultations, Chiang Kai-shek finally agreed to stop the civil war and unite against Japan. The wheels of history are rolling forward, and despite the grief brought by the incident, it has also opened up a new path for China's future.
After the peaceful resolution of the Xi'an Incident, Zhang Xueliang felt deeply guilty and decided to send Chiang Kai-shek back to Nanjing. This decision was not informed to others, and even after *** got the news, he rushed to the airport only to see the shadow of the plane in the distance.
On December 25, 1936, Zhang Xueliang escorted Chiang Kai-shek to Nanjing, and as soon as he got off the plane, he was secretly "escorted" to the mansion by Dai Li. Six days later, the Nanjing Military Court sentenced Zhang Xueliang to 10 years in prison for committing rebellion, and although Chiang Kai-shek "magnanimously" pardoned him for his crimes, Zhang Xueliang was still sent to Fenghua Xikou to "study".
During the entire Anti-Japanese War and the War of Liberation, Zhang Xueliang never had the opportunity to go to the battlefield to fight against Japan and serve the motherland. Chiang Kai-shek's backsliding caused controversy on all sides.
On the eve of the liberation of the mainland, ** had planned to use Chiang Kai-shek's ally brother Zhang Qun in exchange for Zhang Xueliang's freedom, but due to uncontrollable factors, the plan ultimately failed.
Since then, the mainland has never provided a chance to save Zhang Xueliang. After Chiang Kai-shek was defeated and left Taiwan, Soong Meiling took the initiative to take on the responsibility of protecting Zhang Xueliang.
Soong Meiling and Zhang Xueliang met at a Shanghai cocktail party in 1925. At that time, Zhang Xueliang was the commander-in-chief of the Eastern Route Army, responsible for mediating conflicts between China and foreign countries. On that occasion, he met Song Meiling, the first lady who was famous in Shanghai at the time.
The two fell in love at first sight, Zhang Xueliang was attracted by Song Meiling's intellectual gentleness and beauty erudition, while Song Meiling was impressed by Zhang Xueliang's elegance and charm and gentlemanly demeanor.
Song Meiling and Zhang Xueliang left precious memories in Shanghai. Zhang Xueliang once humorously said that if he didn't have a wife at that time, he would definitely yearn for Song Meiling.
However, in December 1927, Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Meiling entered the palace of marriage, and their lives were full of tacit understanding and harmony. Although Soong Meiling was full of affection for Chiang Kai-shek, she showed great tenacity in dealing with Zhang Xueliang.
In order to protect Zhang Xueliang's personal safety, she tried everything she could. After the Xi'an incident, she even assured Zhang Xueliang that if he came to Nanjing, she would definitely ensure that he was safe and sound.
With her wisdom and courage, Song Meiling has become an important pillar on Zhang Xueliang's life path.
Chiang Kai-shek's detention of Zhang Xueliang made Soong Meiling feel deeply guilty, and she urged her husband to leave Zhang Xueliang's life on the pretext that she was in possession of Chiang Kai-shek's secrets. When Zhang Xueliang was in the most difficult time, Song Meiling always cared about his safety, sent him daily necessities, and kept in touch with him through letters, regarding him as a lifelong confidant.
Zhang Xueliang has spent more than half a century in Taiwan, and he has always been monitored by spies. Under long-term repression, he fell in love with Miss Zhao Si and married in the 60s.
Yu Fengzhi, who is in the United States, signed a divorce agreement in order to protect Zhang Xueliang.
In 1975, Chiang Kai-shek died of illness in Taiwan, and before his death, he still had a jealousy of Zhang Xueliang, who had been imprisoned for 39 years. Song Meiling asked what to do with Zhang Xueliang, and Chiang Kai-shek, who was about to die, replied to her: Don't let go of the tiger.
These four short words fully reflect Chiang Kai-shek's longing for the Xi'an Incident and his deep hatred for Zhang Xueliang. Although Chiang Ching-kuo had a favorable opinion of Zhang Xueliang and had in-depth exchanges with him at Xikou, he eventually complied with his father's will and continued to hold Zhang Xueliang for ten years until his death in 1988.
In Chiang Ching-kuo's later years, although Zhang Xueliang was not officially freed, he was much freer in his actions than before. By 1990, Zhang Xueliang had finally regained his freedom.
After the death of Miss Zhao Si, Zhang Xueliang chose to spend his old age in Hawaii, USA. In 2001, the centenarian passed away with a peaceful mind.
This young marshal, who led the trend of China's modern history and had an extraordinary legendary experience, left us forever with many unsolved mysteries, leaving a yellowed page of history for future generations - 1936.
References: 1. Communist Party of China News Network: "You Are Such a Person - Memories of *** Oral Record" **Zhang Xueliang said, *** among the people I admire *** is the first "2, CCTV.com: "Did Chiang Kai-shek give Zhang Xueliang an order not to resist?"
3, CCTV: "Zhang Xueliang's Biography".