"Please go elsewhere for promotion and wealth, and don't enter the door if you are greedy for life and fear of death", many people must have heard of this couplet. It was born exactly 100 years ago in 1924, and first appeared at the gate of the former site of the Huangpu Military Academy on Changzhou Island, Huangpu District, Guangzhou City.
That's right, it's the well-known Whampoa Military Academy.
In the mainland's modern history and military development history, the Whampoa Military Academy is an unavoidable topic. As a school that trains cadres of the revolutionary army, it has cultivated a large number of military talents for the Chinese revolution by virtue of its advanced school-running concepts and excellent professional knowledge. Despite the failure of the Great Revolution and the breakdown of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the Whampoa Military Academy is still sending a steady stream of outstanding cadets to the whole country, who have not only made achievements in the military field, but also some have even become outstanding writers, historians, poets, and so on.
June this year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy, but after "a hundred years", the Whampoa Military Academy seems to have faded out of our field of vision. So does this school still exist today, and if so, where is it, and why do we commemorate this military school, which was born 100 years ago?
Let's go back to Guangzhou 100 years ago to find out.
In essence, it was the product of the first Kuomintang-Communist cooperation, and Mr. Sun Yat-sen was the founder of the military academy
As the name suggests, the Whampoa Military Academy got its name from the location of its establishment - Huangpu District, Guangzhou City. On Changzhou Island, Changzhou Street, Huangpu District, there are also buildings such as the Memorial Hall of the Whampoa Military Academy, the Monument to the Northern Expedition, and the Memorial Hall of the Xinhai Revolution, which tell people its glorious history in the past 100 years.
But it's not just a hundred years old.
The first principal of the Whampoa Military Academy was Chiang Kai-shek, but its real founder was the great revolutionary pioneer Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
As early as 1921, Ma Lin, a representative of the Comintern who participated in the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China, suggested to Sun Yat-sen when he met with Sun Yat-sen in Guilin, Guangxi, that the Chinese revolution must have a revolutionary army, and that "a revolutionary army can only be established by establishing an officer school." Mr. Sun agreed.
The meeting with Marin was related to the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and this meeting also opened the prelude to the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary career in exile made him aware of the importance of education to the revolution, and he regarded education as an important and sacred cause, and the purpose of education was to cultivate talents. Therefore, in 1924, the far-sighted Mr. Sun Yat-sen founded two schools in Guangzhou. "Wuxuetang" is the protagonist of our article, the Whampoa Military Academy, and the "Literature Hall" is also famous - "National Guangdong University", which is now Sun Yat-sen University.
In January 1924, the first national congress of the Kuomintang was held in Guangzhou, attended by a number of Communist Party members, including Mao Zedong, and this meeting was regarded as the beginning of the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party: in terms of procedure, the two sides established the "New Three People's Principles" of "uniting Russia, uniting the Communist Party, and supporting peasants and workers", and Communist Party members Li Dazhao, Qu Qiubai, Mao Zedong and others all joined the Kuomintang as communists in accordance with the decisions of the three major CCP and the "Constitution of the Chinese Kuomintang" (so later Chiang Kai-shek "purged the party" for the mass arrest and massacre of the Communists, which led to the defeat of the Revolution).
The establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy marked the formal completion of the front of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. The congress established the official name of the military academy as the "Army Military Academy", which was located in Huangpu, Guangzhou.
At that time, the internal struggle of the Kuomintang was already very fierce, and after some struggle, Chiang Kai-shek was appointed as the first president. Because this was Chiang Kai-shek's most satisfying identity, Chiang himself benefited from this identity and was able to climb to the top of power within the Kuomintang. Of course, these are later words.
Mr. Sun Yat-sen was the real founder of the Whampoa Military Academy, but because Mr. Sun died soon after the military academy opened, the development trajectory of the Whampoa Military Academy after that was more subordinated to the personal will of the president, Chiang Kai-shek.
In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek brazenly launched the "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup, the first KMT-CCP cooperation broke down, and the Great Revolution failed. After the National Revolutionary Army conquered Wuhan in 1926, it transferred the 5th Huangpu Political Science Officers to Wuchang to study, and later transferred the 5th Engineer and Artillery Sections to Wuchang. After the breakdown of the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, part of the branch of the Whampoa Military Academy was transferred to Nanjing, and Chiang Kai-shek asked the students who joined the Whampoa Military Academy in Nanjing to swear an oath of anti-communism - to sabotage the revolution, which he had premeditated.
At this time, three Whampoa military academies appeared throughout the country, namely Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Nanjing, and the situation of the struggle became more and more complicated. After the Kuomintang experienced mutual bombardment, several political forces reached a tacit understanding, and a situation of confluence between Ningbo and Han was formed, and the headquarters of the Wuhan Huangpu Military Academy was moved to Nanjing, while the Army Military Academy in Guangzhou continued to open for enrollment.
After the reorganization, Nanjing Huangpu Military Academy was renamed the Central Army Military Academy in 1931. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the school was forced to move west due to the capture of the capital Nanjing by the Japanese army, and traveled long distances along the Yangtze River to the Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan region until it settled in Chengdu. During this period, many students graduated early, and the school also recruited many students along the road (the 14th and 15th batches).
From then until 1949, the headquarters of the Whampoa Military Academy was located in Chengdu. Since it was still under the rule of the Kuomintang, it trained more army personnel for the Kuomintang. However, from 1931 onwards, more people with lofty ideals began to understand the significance of uniting to resist Japan with the same hatred of the enemy, and the political line of the Whampoa Military Academy was mainly anti-Japanese, and it also became a base camp for cultivating anti-Japanese talents during this period.
It attracted a large number of enthusiastic young people who were determined to make a revolution and cultivated a large number of talents for both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party
The start-up Whampoa Military Academy recruited students from all over the country, and officially admitted 350 students from 1,200 candidates who signed up nationwide, and began enrollment in early May 1924. These 350 students are the first batch of cadets of the military academy, that is, the "Whampoa Phase I" that gave birth to countless famous generals. Mr. Sun Yat-sen delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the first phase of the Whampoa Military Academy, saying: "When we open a school, we must take students as the foundation and establish a revolutionary army, and you will be the backbone of the revolutionary army in the future. Our revolution can only succeed if we create a revolutionary army. ”
This is also the origin of the famous couplet at the beginning of this article. In Mr. Sun's mind, the purpose of the Whampoa Military Academy is to train talented people for revolution and national salvation, and those who only seek personal fame and fortune and are greedy for life and fear death cannot join the revolutionary army.
It's a pity that Mr. Sun Yat-sen was in very poor health at that time. In order to negotiate with the Beiyang warlords who were entrenched in the north at that time, he accepted the invitation of Zhang Zuolin and other northern warlords to discuss the state of the country, dragged his sick body to the north at the end of 1924, and arrived in Beijing after many hardships. Before the negotiations were completed, Dr. Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in Beijing in March 1925 at the age of 59.
On his deathbed, Mr. Sun left his last words: "The revolution has not yet succeeded, and comrades still need to work hard." And the Whampoa Military Academy, which poured his life's work into, did not disappoint him to some extent.
According to statistics, from the first phase in 1924 to the last phase in 1949, the headquarters of the Whampoa Military Academy enrolled a total of 23 students and trained a total of 320,000 officers at all levels. This figure greatly exceeds that of several famous military academies before the establishment of the Huangpu Military Academy, such as the Baoding Military Academy and the Yunnan Army Lecture Hall.
Among them, in the early period when the enrollment of the Whampoa Military Academy was the most stable, that is, from 1924 to 1929, the military academy held seven classes, with more than 13,000 students. Most of them not only formed the backbone of the Kuomintang Central Army's "Whampoa Department," but also provided our party with a lot of military talent.
First of all, let's look at the famous alumni of the first phase of Whampoa: on the Kuomintang side, there are Hu Zongnan, Du Yuming, Huang Wei, Fan Hanjie, Sun Yuanliang, Zheng Dongguo and other generals of the national army who later defended one side. The most important thing in this is Hu Zongnan, who is known as the "King of the Northwest" and has confronted our party in the northwest region for many years and has caused a lot of trouble.
And the famous alumni of our party in the first phase of Huangpu are even more thunderous: Xu Xiangqian (founding marshal), Zuo Quan (chief of the general staff of the Eighth Route Army, Chen Geng (founding general). If it weren't for Zuo Quan's premature sacrifice, he would probably have become a member of the founding marshal or general. Other famous generals who graduated from the first phase of Huangpu and our party include Jiang Xianyun, Zhou Shidi, Xu Jishen, Wang Erzhuo, Liu Chouxi, etc.;
There were not as many famous generals in the second phase of Huangpu as in the first phase, but the Kuomintang produced Zheng Jiemin (later director of the Military Command Bureau) and Qiu Qingquan, and our party also had generals such as Lu Deming and Zhou Yiqun, but they all died early and failed to leave too many marks in history;
There are also many famous generals in the third phase of Huangpu, such as Wang Yaowu, Fang Xianjue, and Dai Anlan who were already famous during the Anti-Japanese War. On the other hand, Huang Gonglue of our party was the general who launched the Pingjiang Uprising with Marshal Peng Dehuai, and was an important leader of our party and our army in the early days, but unfortunately he died in 1931, otherwise he might have become a candidate for marshal or general;
The famous generals in the fourth phase of Huangpu did not lose the first phase, mainly because of Lin Biao, and the Kuomintang also produced famous generals such as Zhang Lingfu, Hu Lian, and Li Mi. In the Second Civil Revolutionary War, Liu Zhidan and other leaders created the Shaanxi-Gansu Border Revolutionary Base Area, and made great contributions to the establishment of the base camp after the victory of the Long March of our army;
The famous students of Huangpu in the fifth phase are basically the backbone of our party: General Xu Guangda, General Song Shilun, General Yang Zhicheng, Vice Premier Tao Zhu, Zhao Shangzhi, leader of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Federation, agents Guo Ruhuai and Liao Yunzhou, etc., from the fifth period, and there is only one famous Kuomintang general in the same session, Zheng Tingji. In the sixth phase, our army also had General Luo Ruiqing, General Zhang Zongxun and General Chen Bojun, and the national army also had Liao Yaoxiang and Sun Mingjin. However, there are two people in the sixth issue who are more special, they are not military talents: one is Dai Li, the head of the Kuomintang secret service, who founded the Military Command Bureau and served as the director, and the other is the famous poet Zang Kejia, who is the author of the famous poem "Some People" commemorating Mr. Lu Xun.
In fact, there are many alumni of the Whampoa Military Academy, who are not well-known as military talents. For example, Xiong Xianghui, the confidential secretary and agent of our party, was admitted to the 16th phase of the Whampoa Military Academy from Tsinghua University; Huang Renyu, a famous historian, was admitted to the 16th phase of the Whampoa Military Academy, served as a company commander and staff officer during the war years, and later retired and went to the United States to study history, leaving behind historical works such as "The Fifteenth Year of Wanli" and "The Great History of China".
Of course, there are also some military talents from Whampoa, who have more labels of their own. Zhang Xuesi, the founding major general, is the fourth son of Zhang Zuolin, the "King of the Northeast", Zhang Xueliang's half-brother, and a cadet of the 10th phase of the Whampoa Military Academy. However, the school when Zhang Xuesi entered the school, although it was also the Whampoa Military Academy, the official name was "Nanjing Central Military Academy Preparatory Class". The change in this name represents the changes of the Whampoa Military Academy, as well as its inheritance and influence, until now.
Following the change of school location by the national government many times, whether the school headquarters is still controversial today
As mentioned above, in 1931, the Whampoa Military Academy was renamed the Army Military Academy, and later renamed the Nanjing Central Military Academy, which was the name of Zhang Xuesi when he entered the school. In 1937, before the outbreak of the National War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the capture of Nanjing, the headquarters of the Whampoa Military Academy moved out of Nanjing with the Nationalist Government, moved all the way to the west, and finally settled in Chengdu. In 1946, it was officially renamed the Army Military Academy of the Republic of China, and the school was completely nationalized. But because of the reputation of Whampoa, everyone basically calls this school Whampoa Military Academy.
With the successive victories of our party and our army in the War of Liberation, it is time for the Whampoa Military Academy to retreat with the Nationalist Government. In December 1949, two months after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Whampoa Military Academy was suspended, and some of the 23rd batch of cadets at that time moved to Taiwan with the government because they were unwilling to stay on the mainland.
In October 1950, the Taiwan authorities "re-established" the so-called "Army Military Academy" in Fengshan District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. At that time, the Nationalist Government had been committed to building its own "orthodoxy" and had organized the "re-operation" of a number of schools that had been run on the mainland, and the Whampoa Military Academy was one of them.
However, there are many different branches of the Whampoa Military Academy, and the name "Whampoa" has been handed down, and the original site is located in the Huangpu District of Guangzhou, so there is a lot of controversy about whether the Whampoa Military Academy exists now, and which school it is.
The Taiwan authorities and the Kuomintang believe that the Whampoa Military Academy was established by the Nationalist Government, and that the Whampoa Military Academy should be in Taiwan because it was not reopened until it was moved to Taiwan after it was suspended on the mainland. According to the changes in its school inheritance, the former Whampoa Military Academy is now the Army Military Academy in Kaohsiung.
From the perspective of our party, many military talents came from the Whampoa Military Academy, and the first director of the Political Department of the military academy was Zhou Enlai, so the relationship between the Whampoa Military Academy and our party and our army cannot be severed.
However, when the Japanese army invaded Guangzhou in 1938, most of the buildings on the site of the Whampoa Military Academy had been blown up by Japanese aircraft. It was not until 1965 after the founding of the People's Republic of China that the Guangzhou Municipal Government made a large-scale renovation of the old site of the Huangpu Military Academy, which was basically restored according to the original appearance, and in 1984, the memorial hall of the old site of the Huangpu Military Academy was built, and the offices of Sun Yat-sen, Zhou Enlai and other military school leaders, as well as classrooms and classrooms were restored. The latest renovation in 2005 eliminated the potential safety hazards of many years ago and opened it to the whole country, and now it has become one of the patriotic education bases in Guangzhou.
So, strictly speaking, the former Whampoa Military Academy no longer exists. The so-called "government" of the Taiwan authorities is itself illegal, and its "resumption" is only for the sake of some of its political demands.
However, what is really worth remembering about the Whampoa Military Academy is not the controversy over its existence or not, but the revolutionary spirit it inherits.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy, and in early June, descendants, alumni, experts, and scholars from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and other parts of the country gathered in Beijing to hold an academic seminar to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy. The conference was organized by the Whampoa Military Academy Alumni Association, aiming to commemorate history, look forward to the future, inherit and carry forward the revolutionary spirit left by Mr. Sun Yat-sen, and contribute to the realization of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
You must know that the purpose of Mr. Sun Yat-sen's establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy was to build an armed force that could be truly relied on, so as to achieve the goal of revolution. Many years later, Mr. Sun's last wish was inherited by our party: to establish a people's army, seize power by armed force, lead the Chinese people to be the masters of their own affairs, and continue to advance steadily on the line of strengthening the country and the army.
Moreover, from the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army to the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and later to the People's Liberation Army and the Volunteer Army, many of our army's senior generals came from the Whampoa Military Academy, and their growth and achievements are inseparable from the early military practice of the Whampoa Military Academy. From this point of view, the spirit of the Whampoa Military Academy has been inherited and carried forward through the development and growth of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
The Army Military Academy in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, has only inherited the superficial skills of the Whampoa Military Academy. What really inherited the revolutionary spirit of the Whampoa Military Academy was the Communist Party of China and the Chinese People's Liberation Army, which overthrew the old world and established the new China. This is the real backbone of the Chinese revolution and the true backbone of the Chinese nation.
Do you still remember this couplet of "Please go elsewhere for promotion and wealth, don't enter the door if you are greedy for life and fear of death"? It is still posted in front of the former site of the Whampoa Military Academy.
By the way, he also has a horizontal criticism - "the revolutionaries are coming".
Resources:
[1] Jiang Haofeng.100 years, why do we still commemorate the Whampoa Military Academy? Xinmin Weekly,2024(22),034-039.
[2] Ying Chen, Liu Qili. Famous generals of the Communist Party of China with the background of Huangpu Military Academy[J].Xinmin Weekly,2024(22),040-041.
[3] Li Xiao, Huang Changsheng. Inheriting and carrying forward the spirit of Huangpu and devoting itself to the reunification of the motherland and national rejuvenation——Voices from the academic seminar to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Huangpu Military Academy[J].Unity Daily,2024-06-08.
[4] Zhang Chengliang. GAO Yuhan. The spread and spiritual shaping of red culture in Huangpu Military Academy[J].Lingnan Literature and History,2024-01(005-013).