Wen Qiang once again embarked on a completely unfamiliar journey.
On this tour, he passed through Yongchuan, Longchang, Rongchang, Zigong, Yibin, Naxi, Luzhou, Hejiang, and Jiangjin, walked a large circle, and then turned back to Chongqing.
Whether he was walking alone on the undulating and winding paths of the hills of southern Sichuan that he had never walked before, or sitting in a cramped cabin, he was full of energy, looking at the mountains and scenery with a fresh eye, and sometimes reciting poetry and music.
Every day, he insisted on writing down the poems he saw and heard along the way and what he was satisfied with in the diary he carried with him, and when he had nothing to do on the boat, he could also read books and newspapers.
The weather was late autumn and early winter, Wen Qiang was only wearing a sweater, covered with a Yin Dan Shilin cloth gown, carrying a small cloth bag tied into a mallet, and two sets of clothes and toothbrush with tooth powder.
In the pocket of his underwear, there were 5 silver dollars as a spare. In addition, take a piece of ocean and exchange a number of copper coins for five or ten as pocket money.
Wen Qiang does not smoke or drink, eats simple, and has very little expenses. If you are on a boat, you can eat the ship's meal with the boatmen, a bowl of "hat head" (rice piled up in a hat), a plate of pickles, and a bowl of tofu soup or egg soup, totaling no more than 1 cent and 5 cents.
However, Wen Qiang's trip to southern Sichuan is by no means equivalent to traveling at his own expense. He also faces a grim situation and a difficult task.
A historical document that has been preserved to this day allows us to learn a lot about Wen Qiang's visit.
On December 16, 1930, Wen Qiang, under the pseudonym of Naizhi (i.e., Laizhi), wrote a report on the inspection of southern Sichuan to the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
This 10,000-word report, which has undergone complex historical changes, has miraculously been preserved. As can be seen from the report, the situation in southern Sichuan was very serious at that time.
After the arrest of the leading cadres of the Southern Sichuan Executive Committee (i.e., the Action Committee after the merger of the Communist Party, the Communist Youth League, and the trade union organizations during the "Lisan Line" national uprising, referred to as the "Nanxing" in the report), "the guiding organ was tantamount to losing its role," and the original 100 or so comrades in the Zigong area were now reduced to one-third.
When I asked the responsible comrades, I couldn't answer where the original comrades had gone. The trade union organization is completely tantamount to the collapse, there is not a factory committee, not a single factory branch. The party's military work was completely abandoned, and not only did it not develop again, but all seven soldiers' branches in Lian Rong County completely collapsed. ”
"The relationship between the southbound and rapid communication has been lost"
"From the comrades of the presidium of the southbound to the comrades of each branch, they all felt that there was no way...... The life of the party in southern Sichuan is naturally dead or alive, and the entire party organization is broken and pitiful. ”
Wen Qiang's report said:
After he arrived in Rong County, "none of the three communications offices received a head, and it is still a question whether there are still 10 cadres and comrades who are still leading the work." However, when I arrived in Rong County, I heard the common people saying along the way that the four townships of Rongwei were still working continuously, and that they were killing the gentry and landlords and confiscating their property in groups of three or five, day and night, and that when they distributed it, they had to keep a share for the Communist Party in addition to their own distribution.
Naturally, it is obvious that such a situation has changed from a political action to a hooligan and bandit action, and at the same time, it can be proved that the mood of the struggle in the countryside has not diminished, and as long as the party cleans up and takes the lead, it is still easy to become a large-scale political action. ”
Old photos of Luzhou, Sichuan in the 1930s The picture comes from the Internet
In Lu County, Wen Qiang's inspection was also difficult:
"Lu County and the southbound line is tantamount to losing relations", "Lu County's work is completely tantamount to a standstill".
"When I went to talk to the various responsible comrades, they were all divided. The secretary of the county party committee could not make a general work report, and the branch meeting could not be convened. Judging from the documents, there was only a notice on the economic report of the county party committee made by a party comrade, and there were no other documents. I held a three-day training course in Lu, and the name of it was three days, but in fact, every morning I waited for people to wait at least until after ten o'clock before anyone came,......"
Wen Qiang also attended a meeting of the teachers' branch in Lu County, and the leaders of the county party committee who attended the meeting asked the teachers to go to the factories to do the workers' movement and stop their activities in the schools. As a result, they had no choice, and the branch meeting became a complete hollow. This shows that the county party committee's distribution work is not steady. ”
It can be seen from Wen Qiang's inspection report that although the communists all advocate violent revolution, the grassroots organizations of the CPC in various parts of southern Sichuan were still dissatisfied with the great riots launched by the central government's "Lisan Line," which was divorced from reality and had a left-leaning blind movement, and to a certain extent made some spontaneous resistance.
"The comrades of Rurong County did not believe in the prospect of victory at first, and when they began to mobilize, they ran to Chengdu, and some of them ran to Chongqing."
In the Yibin riot, the comrades of the presidium of the county administrative committee "did not believe in the prospect of victory in the first place, and as a result, they only worked for one day, and the land program was not implemented at all, and they scattered in all directions by virtue of a military conspiracy to rob more than 100 rifles." ”
The comrades of Zigong Sanduozhai "had no doubts at all about the strategy of striving for Zigong's first victory and attacking Zigong." ”
According to the report, Yi Wenfei, a cadre of the Sichuan Provincial Military Commission of the Communist Party of China at that time, ran back to Chongqing.
Yi Wenfei's old photos in his later years The picture comes from the Internet
Wen Qiang didn't know that Yi Wenfei was originally a Communist Party member among the soldiers of the 7th Mixed Brigade and had been Wen Qiang's subordinate. Wen Qiang couldn't remember him, but he remembered "Instructor Wen".
Yi Wenfei participated in the 1929 7th Mixed Brigade Kuang Jixun Mutiny (served as the party representative, secretary of the regiment party committee and acting head of the 2nd Division and 5th Regiment of the insurrectionary army) and the 1930 Hechuan riot (served as the secretary general of the county party committee and secretary of the county party committee of the Communist Youth League), and after the successive failures, the provincial executive committee sent him and Li Bicheng (former secretary of the military branch of the 7th mixed brigade Kuangjixun and secretary of the Hechuan County Party Committee of the Communist Party of China) to participate in the southern Sichuan riot.
Before leaving, He Jinghua, a cadre of the provincial executive committee (who was later arrested by Liu Xiang and died in the eunuch of Ba County), called Yi Wenfei, who was not yet 19 years old, aside and explained to him alone:
Li Bicheng was responsible for the failure of the Hechuan uprising, and was punished by the provincial party committee for "right-leaning mistakes", and sent him to Zigong to work as a salt worker to "wear the crime and try to make meritorious contributions", and asked Yi Wenfei to supervise him.
On the way to Zigong the day before, Li Bicheng, who had been thinking hard for many days, finally talked angrily to the young Yi Wenfei about his dissatisfaction with the punitive punishment of the provincial party committee (his age and body were unbearable, and he was very easy to expose), and expressed his discouragement about whether he could succeed if he continued to do such left-leaning and brutal actions.
Yi Wenfei said that he was not convinced by this big brother who was one or twenty years older than him. Early the next morning, Li Bicheng left without saying goodbye and went back to Chengdu on his own.
After Yi Wenfei went to Zigong alone, the local responsible person was dissatisfied with the decision of the provincial party committee to riot, and instead of following the arrangement of the provincial party committee, he asked Yi Wenfei to be the secretary general of the South Sichuan Military Commission, and asked him to go to Rong County to lead the riot.
After arriving in Rong County, Yi Wenfei, who was unfamiliar with the land, was introduced to several farmers and asked him to be the political commissar of the brigade. But the peasants were unprepared for the uprising, and the original task was to meet the main forces, and no one knew where the main forces were.
They only "got" a few guns from a "dirty" house, and when the garrison heard the news and rushed to surround them, the captain ordered the guns to be buried and dispersed.
The captain hid with Yi Wenfei in a hut for two days, and then took Yi Wenfei to the main road to Zigong and told him to walk back by himself.
At this time, Zigong was already a white terror, and Yi Wenfei finally found an underground party member, and lay sick on a bench in his house for three days before returning to Chongqing with illness.
At the time of Wen Qiang's inspection of southern Sichuan, the leadership of the "Lisan Line" in the CPC Central Committee had come to an end, but at a time when the whole party had not yet seriously liquidated the mistakes of the left-leaning blind movement (as late as the end of October of this year, the Western Sichuan Executive Committee of the CPC also launched the Guanghan Mutiny in accordance with the spirit of the "Lisan Line"), Wen Qiang's report was still inevitably branded as the "Lisan Line" period.
From the report, it can be seen that Wen Qiang still rearranged the work of the party organization in southern Sichuan in accordance with the left-leaning blind movement spirit of the "Lisan line", divided southern Sichuan into five central areas: Jiading, Yibin, Luzhou, Neijiang, and Zigong, and with Zigong as the center, stepped up the mobilization of the workers' movement, launched guerrilla warfare, and created a red area, "striving for the first victory in Chongqing and the completion of the victory in Wuhan."
He also arranged demonstrations to commemorate the Canton uprising and a large-scale political strike at the end of the year, "the workers must achieve the political strike of the General League, the peasants must achieve the launching of guerrilla warfare, the call for mutiny, and the boycott of the city and the school to review the strength of the party in southern Sichuan."
It is worth noting that of the six "serious mistakes" summarized in this report, the fourth article states:
Because the abandonment of the abolition of the main workers' movement in the objective formation gave rise to the strategy of encircling the cities, especially Zigong, in the red zone, and inspiring the struggle of the workers in Zigong. This is a reflection of the backward concept and the concept of defeat of the masses, and at the same time, it is also a right-leaning mistake that no matter how rigid and opportunistic it is, it is no longer necessary.
From this passage, it can be seen that among the grassroots cadres of the Communist Party of China in Sichuan at that time, there was already a unique strategic idea of "encircling the city with (rural) red areas" that coincided with Mao Zedong's "encircling the city from the countryside".
However, this strategic thinking also suffered the same fate as Mao Zedong in the Sichuan Party at that time, and was denounced by Wen Qiang, a representative of the provincial party committee, as a "backward concept", "opportunism", and "right-leaning error" in accordance with the left-leaning viewpoint of the "Lisan line".
It can also be seen from Wen Qiang's report that he was a very simple-minded and radical young man at that time.
For example, in his evaluation of some leading cadres in southern Sichuan, he pointed out that the shortcomings of a relatively capable young female cadre are "romantic and snowflake essence".
It may be difficult for young people today to understand how even romance was seen as a shortcoming of CCP cadres at that time. And this "romantic" does not refer to the unserious and inappropriate style of life, but just a small thing in life such as "playing snowflake" - snowflake essence was a more popular skin care cream at that time, and the "beating" of "beating snowflake" is the colloquial meaning of smearing.
Applying skin cream as a young woman became a serious shortcoming that was written into the provincial party committee's inspection report at that time......
However, it can also be seen from this that Wen Qiang, who wrote the report, and the young communists of his contemporaries, fought with such pure and sincere passion for the cause they dedicated themselves to during the severe "revolutionary low tide" period at that time.
On a cold day after the heavy snow of the lunar calendar, Wen Qiang returned to Chongqing. He came to the stilted building by the Chuqimen River with joy, patted the closed courtyard door a few times, and shouted:
"Boss, Wishing you prosperity!"
It was Zhou Dunwan who came out to open the door.
"The third brother is back!" Zhou Dunwan happily welcomed Wen Qiang into the hospital, and Lai Zhaonian, who came to Chongqing with Wen Qiang, also heard the sound and greeted him. He was left behind in the provincial party committee to work as a security guard and handyman, and at the same time, he learned culture from Zhou Dunwan, and he has made great progress in reading and writing.
Subsequently, He Wanping, a small traffic officer, immediately ran to Horseshoe Street on the slope of Nanjimen Mountain in the west of the city and found Cheng Zijian back.
Wen Qiang reported to Cheng Zijian about the trip to southern Sichuan, and said that it was late at night, and the two fell asleep in the same room.
In the following days, Wen Qiang did not leave home and wrote the written report to the provincial party committee. Zhou Dunwan walked in gently from time to time, changed him with hot tea, and added a few pieces of charcoal to the brazier at his feet.
At this time, Wen Qiang officially settled in this stilted building.
Old photos of stilted buildings by the riverside in Chongqing The picture comes from the Internet
According to the rules of underground work, each of them has a name for covering the outside world:
Zhou Dunwan is called the second sister, Li Heming is called the third sister-in-law, Cheng Zijian is called the little uncle, Wen Qiang is called the third brother, Li Jueming is called the fifth brother, and Lai Zhaonian is Wen Qiang's cousin.
The preserved report of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China to the Yangtze River Bureau on February 14, 1931 states:
After Yu Naiwen left Sichuan, there were more than one person in the party caucus (Xiaoshan and Tiancai), and Comrade Deng Wan, the secretary of the Propaganda Department and acting director, joined the Standing Committee.
By the end of December, Comrade Naizhi returned to Chongqing from southern Sichuan for inspection, and the Standing Committee was composed of Xiaoshan, Deng Wan, and Naizhi.
It was reorganized in February this year, and there were three members of the Standing Committee: Xiaoshan, Chunfan, and Naizhi (acting secretary of the Provincial Military Commission, temporarily concurrently a member of the Standing Committee......
The "Xiaoshan" mentioned in the report is Cheng Zijian, the "genius" is Fang Ming (Gou Yongfang), the person in charge of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League, "Deng Wan" is Zhou Dunwan, and "Naizhi" is Brunei, that is, Wen Qiang. "Chunfan" is Zhang Chunfan (Su Yanqiu) who lives in another place.
Because he has not yet been officially appointed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Wen Qiang is only the acting secretary of the Provincial Military Commission at this time.
As secretary of the Military Commission, Wen Qiang mainly focuses on military work. At this time, the CCP organizations in various places have lost everything, and everything is almost starting from scratch, so you can imagine the difficulty of the work.
In order to cope with the sudden incident, Wen Qiang was ready to go out at any time and not be able to return home, always carrying a toothbrush and tooth powder on his body.
Seeing that the Spring Festival was approaching, Wen Qiang saw that the underground provincial party committee was still immersed in grief because the widows of the two martyrs were still in a very depressed atmosphere, so he took Lai Zhaonian and He Wanping to clean up for two days, bought red paper, and wrote New Year couplets at the gate of the hospital.
Although the Spring Festival couplets are written in the cliché of ordinary businessmen: "Business is prosperous and leads to the four seas, and the wealth is flourishing to reach the three rivers", and the horizontal criticism of "purple gas comes from the east". But in their minds, there was an implicit vision of the future of the revolution in this cliché.
In the code language of the CCP's underground work at that time, "business" referred to the revolutionary cause; The purple gas in the east reminded them of the artillery fire of the Red Army in the central revolutionary base area of Jiangxi, which was victoriously counterattacking the first major encirclement and suppression of the Kuomintang army under the leadership of Mao Zedong, Zhu De and others......
Wen Qiang, who is young and optimistic by nature, adds laughter to this stilted building. Even Zhou Dunwan, who usually doesn't smile, is no longer sad all day long.
Zhou Dunwan even joked with Wen Qiang and gave him the nickname: "Brother Parrot".
Because, Wen Qiang's Yin Dan Shilin cloth caftan and high nose make people think of parrots, commonly known as parrots in Sichuan.