From 'Lenin Room' to 'National Salvation Room': Red Army Soldiers Build Fitness Through Sport, and Build Combat Readiness Through Fitness
Building Fitness Through Sport, Building Combat Readiness Through Fitness
— From the 'Lenin Room' to the 'National Salvation Room'
■ Fan Jianghuai
From the very birth of the People's Army, military physical education has accompanied it every step of the way. Through physical education activities adapted to local conditions and conducted in diverse forms, our army has effectively achieved the goals of strengthening the physical fitness of officers and soldiers, enhancing military skills, consolidating unit morale, and cementing civil-military relations — all ultimately in service of the fundamental objectives of raising combat effectiveness, winning wars, and defending and building the nation.
In carrying out vibrant and diverse physical education activities, sports organizations at all levels of our army have played an important role. Although the organizational structures for military physical education differed in form across the various historical periods of our army — the Red Army, the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army, and the People's Liberation Army — they all exercised powerful organizational functions. Among these sports organizations, the Lenin Rooms and National Salvation Rooms at the most basic level became the earliest and most important venues for physical education activities in the People's Army.
I
From the moment the Chinese Communist Party established the first rural revolutionary base area on Jinggang Mountain, the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army attached great importance to physical training. Officers and soldiers combined daily military drilling with military physical education activities such as mountain climbing, route marching, field exercises, and games. Although no dedicated sports organizations had yet been established at this time, physical education had already become a principal component of the Red Army's daily education and training.
In December 1929, the Ninth Representative Congress of the CCP's Fourth Red Army was convened at Gutian. The Gutian Conference Resolution passed at the meeting explicitly called for the Red Army to establish clubs at the battalion level to enrich soldiers' recreational life and to organize cultural and sports activities including hide-and-seek, football, and martial arts. These activities not only cultivated in Red Army soldiers a lively and upward-looking attitude toward life, but also deepened political education in the form of recreation, strengthened the physical fitness of officers and soldiers, and cultivated in Red Army soldiers the spirit of daring to struggle and pursuing progress.
After the Gutian Conference, clubs encompassing functions for carrying out various physical education activities were gradually established within the Red Army and local organizations, and were widely promoted.
The clubs and Lenin Rooms established at all levels of the Red Army were a distinctive organizational form for self-education in the Red Army's daily life. The Lenin Rooms in Red Army basic-level companies in particular played an important organizational role in the Red Army's conduct of diverse physical education activities.
The General Political Department of the Red Army's publication Organizational Work of Lenin Rooms in Red Army Clubs stipulated: clubs were to be established at the division level, and Lenin Rooms at the company level. The Lenin Room was the most fundamental organization within each company for carrying out political education, cultural education, physical education, and cultural and recreational work, with various activity groups subordinate to it. The subordinate sports group was further divided into ball sports sections, bayonet fencing sections, track and field sections, and martial arts sections, responsible for conducting physical training and guiding subordinate units in organizing competitions.
Every evening was the busiest time for the section chiefs of the Lenin Room's sports group. They organized Red Army officers and soldiers on makeshift drill grounds to carry out competitive activities including long jump, high jump, running, wall climbing, rope skipping, boxing, football, and games. By organizing these competition activities full of youthful vitality, they strengthened relations between officers and soldiers, promoted military democracy, conducted discipline education, and cultivated in Red Army officers and soldiers a spirit of revolutionary optimism and heroism.
To this day, in Nan'an Village, Luanshan Town, You County, Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province, the former site of a Lenin Room is still completely preserved. This two-story pavilion-style residence was once the Lenin Room established by the Third Regiment of the First Independent Division of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army's Xiang-Gan forces. Nearly a hundred years have passed, yet more than ten revolutionary slogans written on the interior and exterior walls of the Lenin Room remain clearly legible. One can almost still see Red Army soldiers enthusiastically participating in various physical competition activities on the open ground in front of the residence.
In addition to daily physical activities, the Lenin Rooms also organized physical education meets of a certain scale. At these meets, the competition events were full of a 'smell of gunpowder' (火药味): on the track there was not only the hundred-meter sprint, but also 'fully armed obstacle runs'; in the field events area there was not only high jump and long jump, but also 'grenade throwing competitions'; live-fire shooting competitions pushed the meets to their climax and became the most eye-catching and fiercely contested events…
As a multifunctional basic-level organization of the Red Army, the Lenin Room's role was not limited to physical education but extended to political education, cultural study, military training, and multiple other areas. Through systematic physical education activities and comprehensive political and cultural education, they not only enhanced the physical fitness of officers and soldiers and cultivated the fighting spirit, consolidating the army's combat effectiveness, but also raised the political consciousness of both the military and the civilian population, providing important organizational guarantees and spiritual motivation for the Land Revolution War. In addition, the Lenin Room served as a window for displaying the fine spiritual bearing and fighting style of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army to the outside world, and as a 'Red Army expansion fueling station' (扩红加油站) for attracting and calling on large numbers of young people to devote themselves to the revolution and join the Red Army.
II
During the arduous ten-thousand-li Long March, there was a special fellow traveler among the Red Army ranks — Rudolf Bosshardt, a Swiss-born British missionary. In his memoir, he gave a vivid description of the Red Army's Lenin Rooms.
During the Long March, with enemy forces blocking the way ahead and pursuers at their heels, Bosshardt observed that the Red Army — short of clothing and food, with even a moment's rest a luxury — would, whenever they stayed somewhere for a slightly longer period, cut a few bamboo poles to put up a simple Lenin Room and get cultural and sports activities going. What left the deepest impression on him was the 'physical exercise' (肉体运动) conducted in the Lenin Rooms — wrestling competitions.
Every evening, companies of the Red Army would set up a contest arena on the open ground in front of the Lenin Room and organize wrestling competitions. In an environment of material scarcity and lacking sports equipment, conducting physical competitions such as wrestling was simple, practical, and most suited to actual conditions. Whenever a wrestling bout reached its climax, waves of enthusiastic applause and cheers would ring out from the surrounding crowd. In his writing, these scenes not only displayed the robust physique of Red Army soldiers, but also reflected their spirit of revolutionary optimism — finding joy amid hardship.
The famous American journalist Edgar Snow also recorded the Lenin Rooms in detail in his book Red Star Over China. At the time, in addition to observing Red Army officers and soldiers conducting various physical competition activities in the Lenin Rooms, he particularly noted that the center of a Red Army Lenin Room typically held a ping-pong table that served a dual purpose — both as a ping-pong table and as a dining table. This was a common simple sports facility in Lenin Rooms of that era. Snow remarked with admiration: 'Every company had a ping-pong player, and I was simply no match for them.'
Due to the tight blockade imposed by the Nationalist rulers, the outside world knew very little about the Red Army. To smear the Red Army, newspapers controlled by the Nationalist Party frequently vilified them as 'ape-men' (人猿) with blue faces and protruding fangs. However, when Snow stepped onto the Red Army's training grounds, he saw a Red Army completely different from what the outside world had described.
On makeshift sports grounds, Red Army officers and soldiers, in order to improve their actual combat capabilities, carried out various physical training and competition activities including long jump, high jump, wall climbing, grenade throwing, and shooting. When Snow saw with his own eyes Red Army soldiers nimbly scaling smooth walls and rapidly ascending and descending thick hemp ropes like apes, he suddenly understood why the Nationalist newspapers had given them the nickname 'ape-men' — because they possessed physical fitness far surpassing that of ordinary people, as agile and nimble as apes. This combat-oriented training that perfectly combined physical education with military skills showed Snow the formidable combat power of this army.
In the eyes of Snow and other foreigners, a few simple physical competitions or fitness training sessions reflected the image of a new type of people's army with firm convictions, strict discipline, a love of life, and boundless vitality. In their writings, they conveyed to the outside world the following message: an army that, even in adversity, could forge its bodies as strong as steel and live its life as ardently as flame was invincible.
III
'Strengthen the body, the better to fight Japan.' After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan by the entire nation, Comrade Mao Zedong issued a firm and powerful call to the people of the whole country. The tasks and mission borne by our army thereupon underwent a transformation: resisting Japan and saving the nation (抗日救亡) became the most important and most urgent central task, and all political and cultural activities had to revolve around this task. The physical education work under the Party's leadership was naturally no exception.
In order to adapt to the needs of the Anti-Japanese National United Front and eliminate ideological barriers within the Nationalist-Communist cooperation, units of the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army successively renamed their 'Lenin Rooms' as 'National Salvation Rooms' (救亡室). The purpose was to unite all forces that could be united, and to upgrade the political mobilization that had originally been confined to the interior of the revolutionary ranks into a mobilization for the War of Resistance directed at the entire nation.
In December 1937, the Ninth Company of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University (Kangda) established a 'National Salvation Room.' Upon learning this news, Comrade Mao Zedong was very pleased and immediately wrote a letter of congratulation. In the letter he wrote with delight: 'Congratulations on the establishment of your National Salvation Room. The two characters for national salvation (救亡) represent the one and only overarching goal for you and for all the people of the nation at the present stage.' This letter was not only an encouragement to the Kangda students, but also pointed to the primary task of the entire nation at that time — national salvation and survival (救亡图存).
The National Salvation Room was a basic-level organization under the leadership of the military club. At the time, our army established military clubs under the leadership of political organs at the division and brigade level, responsible for organizing cultural education, physical education, and propaganda work for all officers and soldiers of the division (brigade). The National Salvation Rooms established in each company were under the responsibility of the political instructor, with specific work typically divided among five committee members: the wall-newspaper committee member, the cultural and recreational committee member, the physical education committee member, the hygiene and economic coordination committee member, and the competition and fundraising committee member. Within the National Salvation Room, the physical education committee member's work was the most demanding, as nearly all of the unit's daily training activities fell within the scope of his responsibilities.
The physical education activities carried out by National Salvation Rooms in units of the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army had one distinctive characteristic: they were closely integrated with military training and bore an extremely strong combat-oriented character, focused on serving the improvement of the unit's combat effectiveness.
At the First Branch School of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University and other locations, physical education activities organized by the National Salvation Rooms were often fused with military physical training. They carried out diverse competitive activities such as mountain-climbing competitions, armed cross-country runs, and obstacle crossing, all full of a 'smell of gunpowder.' On the surface these competitive activities were ordinary athletic competitions; in reality they were all combat-oriented exercises suited to actual combat requirements and simulating battlefield environments. These military physical education competitions both trained the students' mobility in complex terrain and tempered their willpower and character under extreme conditions.
During combat intervals and rest periods, National Salvation Rooms at all levels would often take the lead in organizing simple comprehensive sports meets. General Wang Enmo, a founding lieutenant general, vividly recorded in his diary the scene of a sports meet organized by the National Salvation Room of the headquarters of the 386th Brigade, 129th Division, Eighth Route Army. The sports meet was subject to many material constraints and also lacked necessary sports equipment, but the National Salvation Room organized officers and soldiers to build the venue themselves — using compacted yellow-earth ground as a basketball court, cutting old automobile inner tubes into rings to make basketball hoops, and drawing lines on the yellow-earth ground with pot-bottom soot or charcoal… The diverse physical competition activities held on the makeshift sports ground — including ball sports, track and field, and bayonet fencing — were warmly welcomed by the broad mass of officers and soldiers. These small-scale competitions directly planned and organized by the National Salvation Room not only enriched the off-duty life of officers and soldiers, but also improved everyone's physical fitness and combat skills in a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere.
The experience of the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army National Salvation Rooms in conducting physical education activities is a precious spiritual legacy created under conditions of extreme hardship. It had no magnificent forms, yet possessed the most unadorned passion; it did not pursue competitive records, yet was tightly bound to the era's central theme of national salvation and survival (救亡图存). Through these simple yet vibrant physical education activities, the National Salvation Rooms truly achieved having officers and soldiers 'build fitness through sport, and build combat readiness through fitness,' providing indispensable 'spiritual ammunition' and 'physical fuel' for maintaining the tenacious combat effectiveness of the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army.