Chapter 23 A scene described in "Sixty Years of Change"

The second volume of Li Liuru's long historical novel "Sixty Years of Change" has been published recently.This novel will take three volumes to complete.The first part describes the period from the reform of the Qing Dynasty to the failure of the Revolution of 1911. This period is my childhood, and I was born more than ten years after the reform, so many things described in the book have never caught up.But the era covered in the new third volume is different. In 1927, the year when the Great Revolution failed, I was already a young man in his twenties, having graduated from an art school. I want to be a writer again.Therefore, the historical changes described in this volume have a particularly intimate feeling for me.Especially the scene of the massacre of petitioning workers by the Kuomintang army described in "Xiao Qiang provoked a provocation, but failed to succeed" in the last chapter of the second volume, "The Massacre on Baoshan Road", is a fact that I personally witnessed .

This happened on March 12, 1927. The publishing department of our Creation Society was established in Sanli, Baoshan Road, Zhabei. Next door to the alley is the famous Catholic Church, which is the KMT mentioned in this book. The headquarters of the 2nd Division of the 26th Army.At that time, the headquarters of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions was located in the Oriental Library, on the other side of Baoshan Road, about half a street away.The day before, there had been a little skirmish because some of the workers' pickets were disarmed, and gunshots were heard during the night.The next day, after the general meeting of the Federation of Trade Unions, a parade and demonstration were held, and the team was very majestic.At that time, we were all standing at the entrance of the alley, that is, on the side of Baoshan Road, watching the excitement.I clearly remember that at the forefront of the parade was the picket team of workers, who were still fairly armed, with light machine guns, box guns, and rifles.After the armed pickets came unarmed workers' pickets, followed by ordinary workers and citizens, many of whom were women and children.They walked and chanted slogans all the way, with a very passionate attitude.But when these unarmed teams passed halfway in front of us, there was a sudden burst of gunshots in our ears.Because the headquarters is next to us, the gunshots sounded particularly loud, and at the same time, many people fell to the ground in the chaotic parade.

The massacre this time was extremely cruel and cowardly, because these troops were within close distance, without any warning in advance, and suddenly fired wildly.The place we were standing at that time was on this side of the wall of the Catholic Church. If we had stood across the street, we might have already suffered disaster. From this moment on, the counter-revolutionary actions in Shanghai began on a large scale.The Federation of Trade Unions of the Oriental Library was surrounded, and gunshots rang out all night. We didn't close our eyes all night. After reading the second volume of "Sixty Years of Change", the horrible scene I personally experienced more than 30 years ago came to my eyes again, which made me review this historical lesson again.