Written by Yuan Guoxiang
On September 1, 2012, I was invited to attend the celebration banquet of the 90th birthday of Comrade Zhong Ying, the old chief, and the hall of the "Qing Yuran" Hotel on Na Stadium Road was full of comrades-in-arms, relatives and friends who came to congratulate me. Mr. Zhong and his wife Wang Huanghe, dressed in red Tang costumes, greeted the guests happily and warmly. Their children and grandchildren were also busy arranging the venue and taking photos with the old birthday star for their relatives and friends who attended the meeting.
The celebration began with his youngest daughter's thanksgiving speech, followed by a congratulatory speech by the party secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Local Chronicle Office, several veteran comrades read out the birthday couplets they had hung on the wall, and a comrade-in-arms recited a long poem in praise of Zhong Lao. Then, everyone raised their glasses to congratulate, and watched Zhong Lao and his wife's relatives perform in the exchange of cups and plates. Because Wang Huanghe joined the army in Hami in October 1949, she had many relatives in Xinjiang and blended elements of several ethnic groups, so the performances were rich and colorful, and people were surprised. First of all, there is a song "My Old Father" that shocks people's hearts, followed by the "Mongolian Dance" passionate flying field, the "Fan Dance" has a deep charm, the double reed allegro laughter continues, and finally the Uygur invitation dance, everyone has come on the stage, and the joy is very warm. The 90-year-old Zhong Ying couldn't bear it anymore and danced happily with her relatives and friends, while Wang Huanghe, who was good at singing and dancing, repeatedly invited me to dance, so that I, an 80-year-old man, had to dance with everyone, as if I had returned to my youth.
The celebration was held so well, Comrade Zhong Ying, who was full of white hair and full of energy, couldn't help his passion, he picked up the microphone to speak to everyone, he first expressed his gratitude to the comrades and relatives and friends of Shi Zhiban, and also specially introduced several old comrades-in-arms sitting beside him: the first was in 1944, when he joined the army as a cultural instructor in the 359th Brigade, the then head of the regimental education unit and later the deputy director of the Political Department of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region, 94-year-old Yan Bo; The second is before and after the march into Xinjiang, when he was the chief of the youth section of the Second Army, the eldest sister of the organization department who worked with him; the other is Ren Minzheng, who marched into Xinjiang together, transferred to other places at the same time, and later served as the director of the Kashgar Sports Committee; There is also a young photographer back then, and I later became a major general - Yuan Guoxiang. His introduction was met with applause, reflecting the deep friendship between the old comrades-in-arms.
I was not only touched but also rewarded at this celebration. I saw how much a veteran comrade who had made contributions to the revolutionary cause was respected and loved by the party, the government, and his relatives and friends, and at the same time, I also learned more about Zhong Ying's revolutionary history and the achievements he made in the work of the Xinjiang Autonomous Regional People's Government. For this reason, I copied a birthday couplet written for him by the Xinjiang History Office: Shanglian is "Recruiting talents and organizing the team to create Fang Zhi's great cause, and the first Xinjiang yearbook is the only one in the ancient and modern Western Regions." "Xialian is the first person to go deep into the grassroots resident prefectures and counties to innovate the theory of local chronicles and guide the compilation of county chronicles in contemporary Xinjiang." This deputy couplet is written at a very high level, and it is worthy of being written by the editor of Xinjiang local chronicles. It covers the specific work and major contributions made by Comrade Zhong Ying in the second half of his life, because we have never met again since the abolition of the Southern Xinjiang Regional Party Committee in 1955 and the transfer of Zhong Ying and Wang Huanghe to work in Urumqi. Later, I was very happy to hear that Zhong Ying had become the director of the Xinjiang Local Chronicles Office, because it allowed him to give full play to his talents as an old college student and to understand the situation of the old troops in Xinjiang and the local leaders' strengths.
In 1994, after I left for Urumqi, I went to the local chronicle office upstairs in front of the compound of the district party committee to look for Comrade Zhong Ying, but this old director, whom I was familiar with, had already retired. I sent two manuscripts: "Shule County in the Early Liberation Period" and "Memories of Kashgar Genggongtai 224", I don't know if he saw them, but the manuscripts were published in the magazine "Xinjiang Local Chronicles". Participating in the birthday toast this time, from the speeches of the guests, especially this Yinglian, I learned about the significant contributions made by Zhong Ying to the local history work in Xinjiang before his retirement. He is not only a competent organizational leader, but also a ground-breaking pioneer. Xinjiang has published a lot of "Yearbooks" and local chronicles of prefectures, prefectures, cities, and counties, and has also studied the true history of Xinjiang since ancient times and written a large number of articles criticizing national separatism, which has played a good role in promoting ethnic unity and social progress.
I met Zhong Ying on his way to Xinjiang in 1949, when he was the youth section chief of the Organization Department of the Political Department of the Second Army. But when it comes to work tasks, he moves when he hears the wind, handles things decisively, and does not let go until he finishes it. It is said that he was a graduate of the Central University who participated in the Southern Expedition of the 359th Brigade in Hunan in 1944, because he was a progressive youth who opposed Chiang Kai-shek when he was a student in Nanjing, so when he returned to his hometown Hunan, he saw the Eighth Route Army that opened up an anti-Japanese base area, and he threw himself into the revolution without hesitation. As he said earlier, he began to work as a cultural instructor in the 718th Regiment, the old Eighth Road Yanbo as the head of the propaganda unit, and the old Red Army Liu Faxiu as the director of the political department. Zhong Ying grew up rapidly in the warm embrace of the party, fought hard against the Japanese puppet recalcitrant army, went through the southern expedition and returned to the north, broke through the Central Plains, and fought for 70 days before returning to Longdong and transferring to Yan'an. Later, he moved to Shanxi with the 35th 225 Ninth Brigade, crossed the Yellow River four times, participated in the defense of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo border area and the liberation of the northwest and southern Shanxi provinces, and then galloped to the northwest battlefield, liberated Gannan and Qinghai, crossed the wind and snow Qilian Mountains, and until the liberation of Jiuquan, and fought a new China.
It was precisely because Zhong Ying was brave and tenacious in the long-term revolutionary war, able to penetrate deep into the soldiers, and good at doing political and ideological work, that he was appointed as the youngest regiment-level cadre and became a young section chief among the many leading organs of the Second Army of the old Red Army and the old Eighth Route at that time. After arriving in Xinjiang, he went to Kashgar with Wang Enmao, political commissar Wang Enmao, propaganda minister Tian Zhong, and democracy movement minister Feng Da. He and Wang Huanghe not only took part in the work of establishing the Youth League and the regional women's federation, but also held several study classes for the party committee of the southern Xinjiang region to train ethnic cadres. In particular, from 1951 to 1953, in the local cadre class school next to the tomb of Xiangfei in Kashgar, groups of ethnic cadres sent out became the backbone of the work in the anti-hegemony and land reform of rent reduction, and most of them later grew up to become cadres of the people's governments at all levels and leaders of the construction of party organizations. I remember that in that tree-lined and quiet local cadre training class, I rode my bicycle to conduct interviews many times, not only filming General Wang Zhen's passionate speech and Secretary Wang Enmao's earnest teaching at the graduation ceremony, but also leaving footage of the big lectures, group discussions, and female students earnestly studying and singing and dancing games.
In that tense and difficult living and working environment, Section Chief Zhong Ying fell in love and married Wang Huang and the secretary who could speak the Uygur language. Later, the couple had 4 children and went through a difficult time, but they all relied on their love and training, all of them grew up, and they never affected their work because of the drag of their children. Now the four children are in pairs, with their grown grandchildren and granddaughters, to bless the 90-year-old grandfather and the 80-year-old grandmother, and sing and dance, take photos together, a big family is happy and happy, everyone envies, applauds and blesses.