Yancheng’s red culture sites are inspiring
Known for its famous migratory bird sanctuaries, Yancheng City of Jiangsu Province is also proud of its “red culture” sites and relics.
The city, soon to be brought into the “Shanghai one-hour economy circle,” has 248 “red” sites and relics, and 128 of its towns and villages were named after martyrs.
Shanghai Daily has picked six of Yancheng’s red culture sites so visitors can experience how China is marching forward from the heroic days since its founding.
Notable foreign revolutionaries
Jakob Rosenfeld (1903-1952) and Hans Shipre (1897-1941) are foreign names people get to know when they visit the former site of the rebuilt headquarters of the New Fourth Army in Yancheng. The site records the history of the New Fourth Army after the 1941 Southern Anhui Incident.
Rosenfeld was a Jewish doctor from Austria who found refuge in Shanghai after the rise of the Nazis. He then met Shipre, a Jewish journalist from Germany.
Shipre had actively supported Shanghai’s labor movement in 1925. He had disguised himself and his wife as a doctor and a nurse, raised funds to buy medical supplies and transported them to Chinese soldiers in need after Shanghai was occupied by Japanese invaders in 1937.
Shipre was angered by the 1941 Southern Anhui Incident where the Kuomintang government ambushed the New Fourth Army, killing 3,000 soldiers and capturing 4,300. This was despite the peril the country faced from the invading Japanese.
After the New Fourth Army rebuilt itself in Yancheng, Shipre visited and reported their resistance to the Japanese invasion to the world.
Influenced by Shipre, Rosenfeld closed his urology and maternity clinic in Shanghai, visited the rebuilt headquarters and began to serve as a garrison doctor for the New Fourth Army.
The doctor, fondly called as “the bignose doctor” by soldiers, rescued the lives of numerous soldiers, officers and civilians. He also delivered the first baby for then commander-in-chief Chen Yi, who was later the mayor of Shanghai.
Rosenfeld worked for a total of nine years for the Chinese army.
He died of a heart attack on his way to Israel to visit his brother in 1952.
Shipre, after going north to report the China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, died on the battlefield in Yimeng of Shandong Province in 1941.
The site includes pictures and records of the two foreign revolutionaries, as well as of Chinese patriots.
Venue: Former site of the rebuilt headquarters of the New Fourth Army
Address: 118 Jianjun Rd W., Tinghu District
Right-hand man of Chairman Mao
“Thanks to Qiaomu, we don’t need to worry about our livelihoods,” Chairman Mao Zedong once said.
Hu Qiaomu (1912-1992), a Yancheng native, was the right-hand man of Chairman Mao and is recognized as a great drafter of official documents for the Communist Party of China.
As a talented young man, Hu was recruited into the physics department of Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1930. As a result of his promotion of the Communist Party Youth League, he was targeted by the then ruling government.
Hu took refuge in his hometown Yancheng and joined the Communist Party there in autumn of 1932. But he was soon on the run again and sought shelter in Shanghai.
In 1933, Hu was recruited into the English department of Zhejiang University. He was targeted for a third time, but continued to promote the Party in Shanghai and Jiangsu Province.
Hu started to work as Chairman Mao’s secretary in Yan’an City of northwest Shaanxi Province in February 1941.
Numerous significant Party documents were drafted by Hu. “Viva the People’s Republic of China, viva the solid union of the world’s people” — words visitors see on the facade of Tian’anmen Square in the capital Beijing — were also drawn up by Hu.