WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.400 Shenzhou Dadi · Episode 33 The Curtain Rises on a Life-and-Death Struggle A Documentary Series on China's Historic Sites and Cultural Heritage 00:00:05.400 --> 00:00:18.601 The Kuomintang and the Communist Party—allies only yesterday—turned and drew their guns. That single shot raised a curtain that would hang over China for twenty-two years, a life-or-death struggle. 00:00:18.601 --> 00:00:37.752 One rifle. One flag. For the twenty-two years that followed, China lived in its shadow, locked in a fight to the death. The scene is a night on the walls of Nanchang—a leaden sky, the muzzle of an old-fashioned rifle pointing into a darkness with no bottom. 00:00:37.752 --> 00:00:48.193 Was that shot an accident, or inevitable? To answer that, we must wind the clock back half a year. 00:00:48.193 --> 00:01:03.214 This so-called "communist revolution" was, from the moment it opened its first page in China, no fairy tale of "working for the welfare of the people." It was gun barrels. It was territory. It was betrayal. It was blood. 00:01:03.214 --> 00:01:13.224 Who raised the gun, and what lay crushed beneath it—the very opening of this "revolution" already foretold the calamity of the decades to come. 00:01:13.224 --> 00:01:30.215 In the spring of 1927, China had two governments: the Nationalist government in Wuhan, still proclaiming its alliance with Russia and toleration of the Communists; and the Nationalist government in Nanjing, which had already raised the blade of the purge. April 12th. Shanghai. 00:01:30.215 --> 00:01:42.436 Chiang Kai-shek's troops stormed the workers' picket posts—bloodshed, arrests, executions. This is what later came to be called the "April 12th Incident." 00:01:42.436 --> 00:01:52.876 On July 15th, the Wuhan side issued its own order to "sever ties with the Communists." Comrades of yesterday became, overnight, men to be arrested and killed. 00:01:52.876 --> 00:02:10.347 Such was that summer. At two in the morning on August 1st, in Nanchang. Inside a three-story building called the Jiangxi Grand Hotel, a few men made up their minds. They would fire the first shot—against the Kuomintang army. 00:02:10.347 --> 00:02:22.228 The night of August 1st, 1927, in Nanchang, was stiflingly hot. Garrisoned in the city was the Kuomintang army—roughly three thousand men. 00:02:22.228 --> 00:02:41.719 And outside the city, mustering in secret, was another force: some twenty thousand strong, still bearing the designation "Second Front Army of the National Revolutionary Army," still flying the Blue Sky with a White Sun flag. It was absurd—the same flag, and tonight they would turn and slaughter one another. 00:02:41.719 --> 00:02:52.420 At two in the morning, a signal flare rose, and gunfire erupted. Before dawn, the walls of Nanchang had changed hands. 00:02:52.420 --> 00:03:02.260 This shot was no spur-of-the-moment impulse. On July 27th, on the third floor of the Jiangxi Grand Hotel, beneath a single oil lamp, 00:03:02.260 --> 00:03:20.601 Zhou Enlai gathered He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De, and Liu Bocheng around a map of the city's defenses, laid out Nanchang's deployment, and the meeting settled three things: at two a.m. on August 1st, a signal flare as the cue, and the whole city would move; 00:03:20.601 --> 00:03:30.922 He Long and Ye Ting would lead the main assault, striking first at the enemy headquarters; Zhu De was tasked with "inviting" several enemy regimental commanders out of the chain of command. 00:03:30.922 --> 00:03:41.723 The next day, Zhou Enlai met He Long alone—this army commander who was not yet a Party member was, face to face, pushed into the post of overall commander of the uprising. 00:03:41.723 --> 00:03:56.293 When it came time to declare his stance, He Long slapped the table and hurled out a line that would often be quoted afterward: "I never found the Communist Party before; now that the Party asks me to act, I will follow the Communists!" 00:03:56.293 --> 00:04:03.034 And so a coup was sealed, in a locked room, by a handful of men. 00:04:03.034 --> 00:04:17.745 That this night succeeded was thanks to a raid built on deception: He Long and Ye Ting led the main assault, while Zhu De used a "banquet" to drink the enemy regimental commanders into a stupor and detain them, severing the enemy's chain of command first; 00:04:17.745 --> 00:04:30.155 In the darkness, both the enemy and our forces still flew the Blue Sky with a White Sun flag and wore the same National Revolutionary Army uniforms; the uprising troops could tell friend from foe only by the white towels tied around their arms and the passwords they exchanged. 00:04:30.155 --> 00:04:49.166 The moment the flare rose, they closed in from three sides, striking the enemy headquarters first; the three-thousand-strong garrison was caught unprepared, and before dawn the walls had changed hands. This battle was won on "speed, surprise, and paralysis of the enemy command"—the losers simply never had time to react. 00:04:49.166 --> 00:05:08.077 The night before the strike, Zhu De played the host. On the evening of July 31st, he sent invitations and brought the enemy's 23rd Regiment commander, Lu Zeming, his deputy Jiang Zeguang, and several other officers to the Jiabin Lou restaurant on West Street for a banquet. 00:05:08.077 --> 00:05:26.918 After the wine had flowed round, the men were muddled and about to start a drinking game when suddenly footsteps sounded below—Zhu De threw down his cup as the signal, and the ambushing uprising fighters swarmed up, pressing their muzzles to the officers' backs; before the regimental commanders had sobered up, they were fish in a barrel. 00:05:26.918 --> 00:05:34.019 The necks of the enemy's elite garrison in Nanchang were, first, loosened by a banquet their own men had been invited to. 00:05:34.019 --> 00:05:45.109 Exactly two o'clock. A signal flare trailed its fire into Nanchang's night sky. Almost at the same moment, gunfire broke out across the city. 00:05:45.109 --> 00:06:06.591 The uprising troops tied a white towel around their left arms to tell friend from foe in the dark—the same Blue Sky with a White Sun flag, the same National Revolutionary Army uniforms; who was enemy and who friend came down entirely to that white band on the arm. He Long and Ye Ting's men closed in from three sides, driving straight at the enemy general headquarters; 00:06:06.591 --> 00:06:22.962 In the streets and alleys, bayonets met bayonets, and anyone whose password failed was fired upon. The three thousand defenders were roused from sleep, their commanders long since drunk and detained, thrown into total chaos, and before dawn the red flag was planted on the walls. 00:06:22.962 --> 00:06:35.032 The general headquarters of this uprising was set up in that very Jiangxi Grand Hotel. The thirty-one-year-old Zhou Enlai was secretary of the CCP's Frontline Committee. 00:06:35.032 --> 00:06:51.883 He was not a man who charged ahead with a gun—thin, round spectacles, slow of speech—yet on that night he twisted He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De, and Liu Bocheng, these men of arms, into a single rope. 00:06:51.883 --> 00:07:11.704 The "Declaration of Central Committee Members" issued on the day of the uprising paid lip service to "carrying on the line of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, opposing imperialism, and solving the land question," but in substance it was the Communists, borrowing the designation of the National Revolutionary Army, raising a banner against Chiang and seizing armed leadership. 00:07:11.704 --> 00:07:17.995 The calculation behind this declaration speaks louder than its pretty words. 00:07:17.995 --> 00:07:30.255 He Long, originally named He Wenchang, a native of Sangzhi in Hunan, held the title of commander of the 20th Army of the National Revolutionary Army at the time—yet was not yet a Communist Party member. 00:07:30.255 --> 00:07:44.556 This man came from the green-forest underworld of western Hunan—in his early years he took to the hills around Sangzhi and Enshi; in 1916, with two kitchen cleavers, he hacked apart the salt-tax bureau at Bamao Stream and raised a band; 00:07:44.556 --> 00:08:04.697 After that, along the borders of Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, and Guizhou, he was a bandit and a brotherhood chief—ferocious and unruly, with slack discipline and a turncoat nature: today he joined Sun Yat-sen's Chinese Revolutionary Party, tomorrow he attached himself to Tang Jiyao's Yunnan army, the day after to Xiong Kewu's Sichuan army. 00:08:04.697 --> 00:08:19.818 Such a man of the green-forest world—only in 1926 was he incorporated into the National Revolutionary Army; on this night in Nanchang he handed over his entire 20th Army and, on the city wall, raised his hand and joined the Party. What did he stand to gain? 00:08:19.818 --> 00:08:31.989 Not some lofty ideal—he had seen clearly that the Kuomintang side meant to purge him, while the Communist side offered him an army command and a future. It was mere political opportunism. 00:08:31.989 --> 00:08:39.909 The so-called "banner of the workers' and peasants' revolution"—the very general who first raised it had, at bottom, this sort of character. 00:08:39.909 --> 00:08:51.980 Ye Ting, commander of the 24th Division of the 11th Army, a famed general of the Northern Expedition, forged in the "Iron Army," fought the toughest battles and assaulted the enemy's hardest nuts. 00:08:51.980 --> 00:09:07.941 Zhu De, deputy commander of the 9th Army, then forty-one—the elder of this group—an old-warlord officer out of the Yunnan Military Academy, once studied in Germany, and in his early years fought the National Protection War under Cai E; 00:09:07.941 --> 00:09:18.912 In 1922 he sought to join the Communist Party, but Chen Duxiu rejected him for his "warlord background"; it was Zhou Enlai, in Europe, who later sponsored his entrance. 00:09:18.912 --> 00:09:32.252 On this night in Nanchang, what this old general did was not charge—it was "host a banquet": getting several enemy regimental commanders drunk and detaining them, so his troops could enter the city with one less obstacle. 00:09:32.252 --> 00:09:44.543 An old warlord, helping the Communists take a city by such means—see how hasty, how pragmatic, this uprising really was. 00:09:44.543 --> 00:09:59.254 One more man must be mentioned—Zhang Guotao. A delegate to the First Congress of the CCP, he was in Nanchang at this time as a "central representative," lording it over others and everywhere contesting command with Zhou Enlai. 00:09:59.254 --> 00:10:17.615 This habit of jockeying for power within the Party was no isolated case: later, on the Long March, he would stir up an even greater split, nearly tearing this army in two. The lust for power, from the very first shot, was lodged in the bones of this force. 00:10:17.615 --> 00:10:34.946 This shot was later canonized as "the first shot of armed resistance against the Kuomintang." But at the time, what these few men had in mind was probably less grand: before being hunted to extinction, survive first, get guns first. 00:10:34.946 --> 00:10:55.087 An army without a base area is like duckweed. Nanchang was taken—where next? They chose to head south—to Guangdong, to the coast, to receive aid the Soviets might send, to rebuild the Guangdong base that Chen Jiongming had lost years before. 00:10:55.087 --> 00:11:00.607 But at the coast, no aid awaited them—only an ambush. 00:11:00.607 --> 00:11:22.668 More than twenty thousand men left Nanchang and marched south. The August heat was brutal; the mountain roads of southern Jiangxi and northern Guangdong had no vehicles, only their feet. Supplies failed to keep up, and the sick multiplied. The Kuomintang army pursued from behind; local militias blocked the flanks. 00:11:22.668 --> 00:11:38.769 In September the troops reached the East River region of Guangdong and, around Tangkeng, ran into the interception of Qian Dajun's Kuomintang force. After several days of fighting, their ammunition spent, they collapsed and scattered—this is the "failure at Chaozhou-Shantou." 00:11:38.769 --> 00:11:49.710 At the same time came the split at Sanheba: Zhu De took a detachment to stay behind and block the enemy, while the main force continued its retreat toward Chaozhou and Shantou. 00:11:49.710 --> 00:12:02.981 In the end the main force was broken apart along the Tangkeng–Liusha line; He Long and Ye Ting broke out and fled to Hong Kong and Shanghai, and Zhou Enlai fell ill and was secretly evacuated. 00:12:02.981 --> 00:12:19.472 This victorious army was simply worn down and beaten apart alive: more than twenty thousand when they left Nanchang, harassed the whole way by Kuomintang pursuers and local militias, with the sick mounting daily and food and ammunition failing to arrive; 00:12:19.472 --> 00:12:32.552 By late September they reached Tangkeng in the East River region of Guangdong and fought Qian Dajun's roughly twenty thousand men in a bloody battle for days; the uprising army, having lost more than half its numbers and exhausted its ammunition, finally could hold no more. 00:12:32.552 --> 00:12:55.854 After the split at Sanheba, the main force was beaten piece by piece along the Tangkeng–Liusha line; He Long and Ye Ting broke out for Hong Kong and Shanghai, and Zhou Enlai, fevered and collapsed, was secretly carried away—this so-called "march south" ended in the army's total disintegration, defeated by "an expedition that exhausted its troops, a severed supply line, and vastly unequal strength." 00:12:55.854 --> 00:13:12.225 The uprising's leading figures scattered or fell ill, and the army shattered. Yet a small band did not scatter. At its head were Zhu De, and also Chen Yi and Wang Erzhuo. 00:13:12.225 --> 00:13:24.995 They gathered the scattered officers and men—those who had retreated from Sanheba, those who had escaped the collapse of the main force—into a group of seven or eight hundred, wandering the mountains of northern Guangdong and southern Jiangxi. 00:13:24.995 --> 00:13:41.096 These seven or eight hundred were the "living spark" of the twenty-odd thousand who had left Nanchang—not because they were anything extraordinary, but because an old warlord officer, when all had deserted him, was still willing to lead these hungry men and keep them alive. 00:13:41.096 --> 00:14:02.237 To what degree of wretchedness had this "spark" been reduced? Ragged clothing, no food, deserters without end; some officers and men lost in the forests, a company commander who led his men over to the militia. Zhu De later recalled that in those days "it was cold, there were no blankets, and everyone slept huddled together." 00:14:02.237 --> 00:14:13.378 This is the true face of the so-called "revolutionary armed forces" at their birth—not the iron torrent of later propaganda, but a pack of desperate men, barely holding on in the barren hills. 00:14:13.378 --> 00:14:26.559 The spark from Nanchang made for the hills; and at the same time, another force lit its own fire along the Hunan–Jiangxi border. At its head was Mao Zedong. 00:14:26.559 --> 00:14:43.100 This episode's stage strings together several famous sites: the Tengwang Pavilion in Nanchang, built in 653 by Li Yuanying, Prince of Teng, when he governed Hongzhou; Wang Bo's "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion" made its name resound for a thousand years; 00:14:43.100 --> 00:14:58.461 the Yuelu Academy in Changsha, founded in 976 by Zhu Dong, prefect of Tanzhou; the Mawangdui Han tombs, the family burial of the Marquis of Dai of the Western Han, unearthed in 1972; 00:14:58.461 --> 00:15:13.411 the Nanyue King's Tomb in Guangzhou, the burial of Zhao Mo, second king of the Nanyue Kingdom of the Western Han, discovered in 1983; Guangxiao Temple, first built in the Wu kingdom of the Three Kingdoms (the residence of Yu Fan), and Liurong Temple, first built in the Liang dynasty of the Southern Dynasties; 00:15:13.411 --> 00:15:25.052 the Whampoa Military Academy, established by Sun Yat-sen in 1924 on Changzhou Island, from whose gates came the military men of both the KMT and the CCP—who, three years later, would turn their guns on each other. 00:15:25.052 --> 00:15:46.073 Jiangxi's signature is the porcelain of Jingdezhen. The town was established in 1004, named for the reign title Jingde of Emperor Zhenzong of Song, and its kiln fires have burned unbroken for a thousand years since; "white as jade, thin as paper, ringing like a chime," it was the imperial kiln of the Ming and Qing dynasties. 00:15:46.073 --> 00:16:01.534 The Jinggang Mountains are the Hakka's mountains—the Hakka walled houses, those defensive dwellings with thick outer walls and corner towers, one clan to a fortress, have multiplied in the hills of southern Jiangxi and northern Guangdong since the Ming dynasty. 00:16:01.534 --> 00:16:09.505 And then there are red rice, bamboo shoots, and clay-pot soup—the everyday fare of this red earth. 00:16:09.505 --> 00:16:29.856 Hunan's soul is spice—the chili pepper only reached China in the late Ming, yet took root in Hunan; chopped chili, cured meats, and chopped-chili fish head—they love it hot. The stinky tofu of Huogongdian is black outside and tender within; Xiang embroidery traces to the Chu lands, attested by the Western Han silk embroidery of Mawangdui; 00:16:29.856 --> 00:16:35.756 and the Liuyang fireworks are said to have been made by Li Tian in the Tang dynasty to drive away plague. 00:16:35.756 --> 00:16:55.437 Guangdong's slowness lives in its morning tea—from the mid-Qing, a pot and two dishes, sipped from dawn till the sun slants; the qilou arcade is a building born where Western colonnades met Lingnan's rainy climate; herbal tea is a bowl of bitterness in the humid heat, the folk wisdom of dispelling miasma. 00:16:55.437 --> 00:17:16.058 All these places are alive today, visitable and profitable—Jingdezhen porcelain, Changsha's Yuelu Academy and Mawangdui, Guangzhou's Nanyue King's Tomb and old qilou streets, Jinggangshan red tourism—a line running "from Han tombs to the Red Army" is more than enough. 00:17:16.058 --> 00:17:36.150 Stringing 1927 together: in this one year China heard gunfire in four places—Nanchang, the Hunan–Jiangxi border, the two Guangs, and the spring–summer purge of Shanghai and Nanjing. They share one name: the curtain raised by the so-called "communist revolution." 00:17:36.150 --> 00:17:53.531 In this year the KMT and CCP went from allies to mortal enemies; the Kuomintang butchered itself over territory, and the Communists raised forces and slipped into the mountains to entrench themselves—the nation, from top to bottom, no longer believed that "sitting down to talk" could solve anything. 00:17:53.531 --> 00:18:02.961 The gun thus became the final word. (The gunfire of the Hunan–Jiangxi border and the two Guangs—we take it up in the next episode.) 00:18:02.961 --> 00:18:07.901 The curtain once raised, the gunfire will not stop of its own accord.