From Huangyaidong to Huangyanjie: A Roots-Seeking Team Visits Revolutionary Sites of Its Predecessor Units

A Roots-Seeking Team from a Brigade of the 71st Group Army Visits Revolutionary Sites of Its Predecessor Units Along the Way—

From Huangyaidong to Huangyanjie

■ Huang Zihan

Soldiers at the Huangyaidong Arsenal use hand tools to machine weapon components. (Archival photo) Provided by the Huangyaidong Revolutionary Memorial Site

Passing over hills and advancing northward along a winding road, the author rounds a bend to find a stretch of red cliff face coming into view—this is the former site of the Huangyaidong Arsenal, acclaimed as "the cradle of the people's defense industry."

Eighty-five years ago, dark clouds pressed upon the city as Japanese forces massed heavy troops in an attempt to destroy the Huangyaidong Arsenal. Eighth Route Army regimental commander Ou Zhifu led his soldiers in a desperate resistance, fighting a bloody battle for eight days and nights against a Japanese force several times their size, achieving the brilliant record of a 6-to-1 enemy-to-friendly casualty ratio. The regiment was awarded the honorary battle flag "Hero Regiment of the Huangyaidong Defense Battle."

Eighty-five years later, amid lush vegetation, the stone walls of the former arsenal site are pocked with bullet scars, silently bearing witness to those smoke-filled years. As the unit that has inherited the battle flag of its forebears, a brigade of the 71st Group Army organized a roots-seeking team to come here. Their hearts were filled with reverence, and also with a question: in the face of the enemy's surging offensive, how were their predecessors able to achieve the feat of defeating the strong with the weak, and the many with the few?

"Beyond that mountain is the Huangyaidong Arsenal, within Licheng territory—that's the direction the Japanese came from…" Standing atop the ridge at Guanjianaocun, looking in the direction pointed out by the team's leading officer, Gu Yuanqiang, the map comes to life amid a landscape of gullies and ravines; place names overlap with hilltops, and the sound of guns and artillery seems to carry from deep within history.

Why did the Japanese forces covet the Huangyaidong Arsenal? A set of figures provides the answer: by 1940, the arsenal employed nearly 1,000 workers, with peak monthly output of 430 rifles and more than 2,000 artillery shells; its annual weapons production could equip 16 regiments, making it the largest arsenal in the anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines.

Deep in the mountains, machines turned. Without precision instruments, chive leaves were used as measuring tools; lacking specialized machine tools, files were used to manufacture firearms. Everyone believed that as long as the arsenal stood, the Eighth Route Army would have weapons and could win battles.

Proceeding along the mountain plank road, underfoot lies the Wenggelang Gorge—a place where "one man holds the pass against ten thousand"—which was both the battlefield of the Huangyaidong Defense Battle and the last barrier on the road to the arsenal.

On November 11, 1941, Japanese forces exploited heavy fog in an attempt to launch a surprise attack on the southern entrance of Huangyaidong. One by one, the comrades around him fell to enemy fire, until only bugler Cui Zhenfang remained to guard the sole passage into Huangyaidong.

For seven full days and nights, Cui Zhenfang fought alone, exploiting the advantageous terrain of the cliff face, hurling more than a hundred grenades and annihilating dozens of Japanese soldiers. When his ammunition and rations were exhausted, reinforcements finally arrived. But at that moment, an artillery shell exploded beside him; shrapnel struck his throat, and Cui Zhenfang died a heroic death.

"We should all carry forward this conviction of holding on to the end for the sake of victory," said Corporal Guo Ming with deep feeling. Last year, he transferred to the chemical defense specialty and went with his unit to a certain area in the northwest to conduct toxic agent detection operations.

At the work site, fierce winds and sand flew together; dryness and scorching heat combined. On top of that, the operating conditions were completely unfamiliar, the types of contamination complex and dangerous, and a single careless move could cause serious consequences…

"During the battle at Huangyaidong, the enemy launched a poison gas attack. Cui Zhenfang detected it with keen awareness and, heedless of personal danger, immediately raised his bugle to sound the alarm, preventing the unit from suffering major losses." Just as Guo Ming was beginning to waver, his political instructor led everyone in reviewing the deeds of their predecessors, rekindling Guo Ming's fighting spirit.

After successfully completing the mission and returning to the garrison, Guo Ming voluntarily signed up to join the roots-seeking team. Now, standing before the statue of Cui Zhenfang and gazing down at the precipitous valley below, Guo Ming understood ever more deeply the heroic spirit of his predecessors—their fearlessness before a powerful enemy and their determination to fight to the last—and his eyes took on a new measure of resolve.

"Once you truly understand what conviction means, your heart opens wide," said Gu Yuanqiang. Since the launch of political rectification training (政治整训), an increasing number of officers and soldiers in the brigade have been actively holding themselves up against the deeds of their predecessors, examining and reflecting on themselves, and driving thoughts of "fearing hardship and fearing loss" from their minds.

Leaving the former site of the Huangyaidong Arsenal, the team found answers to the questions in their hearts, only for another question to arise: in conditions of extreme material scarcity, with danger ahead and pursuers behind, why were the revolutionary forebears still able to maintain an unshakeable conviction in victory? They set out again, heading for the Jinggangshan revolutionary base area to seek the spiritual origins of their brigade.

Five hundred li of Jinggangshan, range upon range of mountains. Tracing further back into history, more than 90 years ago, the brigade's predecessor unit was once the Special Service Company of the 1st Regiment, 1st Division, 1st Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. It endured the arduous struggles of multiple counter-"encirclement and suppression" campaigns and traversed the long road of the 25,000-li Long March…

At the site of the Huangyanjie Defense Battle, crumbling trenches and scorched stone walls pulled the officers and soldiers back to that breathtaking battlefield: in August 1928, the Red Army's main force had gone far to southern Hunan, leaving fewer than one battalion of troops to garrison Jinggangshan. The enemy, exploiting the thinly held defenses of Jinggangshan, advanced with four regiments in two columns against Huangyanjie.

The weapons in the hands of the garrison soldiers were mostly crude muskets and spears; some even carried hoes and woodcutting knives. Facing an enemy force far superior in both equipment and numbers, they piled rolling logs and boulders at the pass, buried bamboo spikes in the trenches, and, relying on the commanding terrain, held fast to the key routes into the mountains.

At the height of the fighting, the enemy concentrated its firepower in a fierce assault on the sentry post, shells pouring down like rain. Even so, the soldiers holding the position did not retreat a single step, repelling the enemy's charges again and again.

Just as the enemy was massing strength to launch another attack, the soldiers brought up the only mortar they had and, with three shells, scored a direct hit on the enemy's command post. The enemy mistakenly believed that the Red Army's main force had arrived and fled under cover of night.

In the exhibition hall, a passage of text caught the attention of Political Instructor Chai of the roots-seeking team: 31st Regiment Commander Zhu Yunqing and Party Representative He Tingying, bearing in mind Comrade Mao Zedong's instructions to hold Jinggangshan, constructed defensive works at key terrain features, strictly implemented the operational deployment, and neutralized the enemy's advantages in firepower and manpower, creating the miracle of defeating the many with the few. Upon hearing the news, Mao Zedong took up his brush and wrote in high praise: "The enemy surrounds us ten thousand strong, yet I stand unmoved. Long have our walls been strong; now our resolve is one."

"Weapons must be gripped firmly in our own hands; conviction must be planted deep in the hearts of officers and soldiers," Political Instructor Chai said with heartfelt emotion. "It is precisely this conviction—infused into the blood, unwavering and steadfast—that allowed our predecessors to remain unyielding even when trapped in desperate straits."

Before bidding farewell to Jinggangshan, the team members held a video call with Cheng Peiran, a veteran of the "Hero Regiment of the Huangyaidong Defense Battle." "Who among us is not flesh and blood—what person has no fear of death?" Recalling that iron-and-blood chapter of history, the old veteran remained impassioned and stirring: "But everything for victory, everything for the front!" On their end of the video call, the young officers and soldiers rose solemnly to their feet and rendered a formal salute to the veteran.