Chapter 3 Chapter 2 Chiang Kai-shek changed from suppressing "bandits" to being suppressed, retreated to Taiwan and started anew

Chiang Kai-shek changed from suppressing "bandits" to being suppressed. He retired to the warship in a sedan chair and chose Taiwan to start a new stove. (Fenghua, late April 1949) He sat on the sedan chair, bumping with the ups and downs of the mountain road. The sky was gloomy.His face was also gloomy.This year he was already sixty-two, and his bald head was covered with white hair, short; even his beard and eyebrows were also white.He remained silent for a long time with a sullen face, and neither did his son Jiang Jingguo.None of the three sedan chairs, the entourage and guards dared to speak, the atmosphere became more and more heavy due to the gloomy silence, only the shaking of the sedan chair, the panting of the bearers, and the hurried and chaotic footsteps could be heard.They just left Xikou by car from Wuling Gate and headed east to the sea.Chiang Kai-shek was a man with a strong sense of hometown, and he would go back to his hometown in Xikou for a few days every year to visit his fellow villagers or pay respects to his ancestors.This time, it was the last time he bid farewell to his hometown.

After Chen Yi's army forcibly crossed the Yangtze River on April 21, they drove straight into Shanghai and Hangzhou; this time he had to leave his hometown.Before setting off just now, he was not in the mood to say his last farewell to the elders in the village. He just took Jiang Jingguo and stood silently for a long time before boarding the car, looking back heavily at his ancestral home before getting in the car and leaving. Since the beginning of the new year in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek announced his "retirement" and went to the field. On January 21, he flew from Nanjing Minggu Palace Airport and returned to Xikou Town, his hometown in Fenghua, Zhejiang via Hangzhou.After he returned to Xikou, the Navy's "Taikang" warship has been ordered several times to berth on the coast of Tuanbu Village, Xilu Township, Ninghai County, more than 40 kilometers away from Xikou.It refers to the open space next to the small hill.Tuanhou Village is surrounded by mountains on three sides, east, west and north, and faces the sea on the south. It is a rather hidden natural small bay.Chiang Kai-shek arranged for the warship to stop by this remote village with no roads, of course, to avoid people's eyes and ears and to go out conveniently.

His convoy drove on the road for more than an hour. At noon, it stopped at a place called Xidian, changed to a sedan chair and went straight to the "Taikang". This day is April twenty-fifth.Chiang Ching-kuo recorded in his diary that day the feelings of his father and son before parting from their hometown— In the morning, I followed my father to bid farewell to the tomb of my grandmother, and then walked up to the top of Feifeng Mountain. Looking around, the mountains and rivers were speechless. Although there were no tears, the grief was hard to express.I wanted to visit Fenghao's house again, but I couldn't bear it; I wanted to say goodbye to the elders in the country, but I couldn't bear it even more.

Finally left without saying goodbye.The weather is gloomy, and the pain is increasing...Besides, the mouth of the river is where the tomb of the ancestors is. Once we leave now, the pain will be beyond words to describe... In Chiang Kai-shek's political career, it is rare to sit in a sedan chair in such a desolate situation. From his fortune to monopolizing the power of the party, government, and army, his means of transportation range from special planes, special trains to bulletproof cars. .His special plane was imported from the United States; his special train, once called "blue steel skin", had a steel shell with blue tiles and blue tiles, high quality and thick armor; the car was first made in Germany, and later it was replaced by an American one. Very expensive.Compared with the emperors of the past 5,000 years in Chinese history, this should be the pinnacle.However, he still particularly likes to sit in a sedan chair.A foreign leader once asked him what his hobbies are, and he replied without thinking: he likes to travel in mountains and rivers.He likes old sayings such as "The benevolent are happy with mountains, and the wise are happy with water".The joy of traveling in mountains and rivers is closely related to riding a sedan chair.

The sedan chair is a unique means of transportation in China. There are bamboo sedan chairs, wooden sedan chairs, rattan sedan chairs, Hunan sedan chairs, Sichuan sedan chairs, Cantonese sedan chairs, and Anhui sedan chairs. The sedan chairs in various places have their own characteristics.I heard from one of Chiang Kai-shek's attendants that Chiang Kai-shek, who has traveled all over the famous mountains and rivers, especially admired the Sichuan sedan chairs called "sliding poles", and also admired the foot strength of Sichuan people's bearers.Although he hated smoking opium the most, he would frown and curse at people when he smelled the pungent smoke; but he was quite fond of the Sichuan bearers who stopped and tipped their feet on the Jinding Road to Shangemei and took out the small bong on their waist to take a few puffs of opium smoke. Tolerant, no temper tantrum.He rode in a special rattan sedan chair in his hometown of Xikou.This kind of rattan sedan chair is cool and smooth. The pole is made of selected moso bamboo or chestnut wood. The side rails of the sedan chair have patterns woven from rattan.

The bearers employed are all members of the trained attendants, most of whom are from Fenghua hometown, and there are eight young and strong bearers who take turns to replace them.In their spare time, they help the general affairs and the kitchen in Xikou to do some miscellaneous work, plant flowers and vegetables, renovate the grass and repair the house, and when they want to climb the mountain and carry the sedan chair, they take the sedan chair with the advance team to the predetermined place first. wait.This time the bearers were carrying jobs for Chiang Kai-shek's departure from Xikou, and they knew that this time was not a tour of mountains and rivers, so they felt uneasy.

Going out to sea in sedan chair this time is quite a bit of a "fleeing".No matter how much he tried to calm down, his depressed state of mind was still revealed. History has been turned upside down! Fourteen years ago, that is, in October 1934, he led a large army to succeed in the fifth encirclement and suppression of the central base of the Red Army in Jiangxi. After that, they fled from southern Jiangxi to the border area of ​​Hunan, Guangdong and Guangxi."He once offered a reward of 250,000 Guangyang to buy Mao Zedong's head.In fact, his information was not accurate at that time, and he did not know that his success in encirclement and suppression was closely related to Mao Zedong's loss of command of the Central Red Army in Jiangxi.

Many historians believe that the peak of Chiang Kai-shek's rule was when the Red Army was hunted down on the eve of the Xi'an Incident in 1936.The 300,000 Red Army before Chiang Kai-shek's encirclement and suppression had dropped sharply to less than 30,000 by the time the Long March reached northern Shaanxi.While besieging and intercepting the Red Army, which he called "bandits", he dealt with various factions in the Kuomintang that caused him great headaches through the usual political methods of splitting, disintegrating, and buying.He pulled over Yu Hanmou, the subordinate of Southern Guangdong King Chen Jitang, and Chen Jitang's air force, quickly resolved the "Guangdong Incident" launched by the Guangxi faction, and forced his political opponent Wang Jingwei in the Central Committee to go abroad.On October 30, 1936, he celebrated his fiftieth birthday in Luoyang, and organized "birthday celebrations and presents" all over the country. He asked all over the country to donate airplanes and schools, and he also built "Zhongzheng Hall" and "Jieshou Hall" everywhere. .At this time, he was really full of ambition and arrogant. He sent Zhang Qun to make many contacts with the Japanese ambassador to China, Kawayue, and asked Ambassador Xu Shiying in Tokyo to discuss with Foreign Minister Hiarita. At the same time, he mobilized Chen Cheng, Qian Da Jun, Chen Tiaoyuan, Wei Lihuang, Zhu Shaoliang, Jiang Zuobin, Jiang Dingwen and a large number of senior military and political personnel gathered in the ancient city of Xi'an and dispatched large troops to gather in northern Shaanxi. More than 100,000 troops expanded the airfield and concentrated more than 100 newly purchased combat aircraft from Italy, preparing for a full-scale attack on the Red Army.He believed that this was the sixth encirclement and suppression campaign against the Red Army, and it was also the last one; he fully believed that after he personally supervised the division, it would only take a month at most before Zhu Mao's Red Army would bow down and wipe it out, and by the end of the year he would be able to triumphantly return. up.His work of "settling the interior first" can be successfully completed.

Things backfired.What still pained him until his death was that Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng launched the "Xi'an Incident", which destroyed his great cause of suppressing the Communist Party that was about to be completed.As a result, after the overall situation of the Anti-Japanese War was formed, the Red Army not only survived, but also developed through it; he often said, "It is difficult for the CCP to rely on the country to be arrogant."Before and after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he even resented the Americans as his allies, who actually listened to the CCP's instigation and put pressure on him to form a coalition government with the CCP.He and Mao Zedong shook hands in Chongqing in the autumn of 1945, but they could not sit together.This civil war was inevitable.He launched a civil war, failed, and had to announce his third "retirement".

Chiang Kai-shek's return to Fenghua's villa in Gaomiaotai Mountain, Xikou, was not his own declaration of "ignoring affairs and ignoring politics".Before leaving the field, he had appointed his confidant Yu Jishi to deploy guards and communication networks at Xikou.Yu set up seven radio stations for Jiang to command at will. Although Jiang stepped down, he was still the president of the Kuomintang and held actual power.Li Zongren is called the acting president, but he is actually a puppet. If he can't get money, he can't mobilize troops, and orders won't work at all.Li Zongren once ordered Chen Cheng, chairman of Taiwan Province, to release Zhang Xueliang who was imprisoned in Taiwan immediately in order to express his openness, and assigned Cheng Siyuan to Taiwan to supervise the handling, but Chen Cheng refused to implement it, evading and perfunctory with the excuse of "I don't know where Zhang Guan is."

Chiang Ching-kuo recalled that the reason why his father decided to retire back then was based on the following three factors: "A, the party, government and army have accumulated so much that it is difficult to return, and they cannot be completely rectified and reformed unless they retreat; B, to break the half-dead environment; C, to start anew and reset the foundation." Chiang Kai-shek's so-called "restart and reset the foundation", he took a fancy to Taiwan as the last stronghold to accumulate strength and make a comeback.Taiwan and the mainland are separated by a strait. This largest island in China is surrounded by seas and is easy to defend and difficult to attack. This allows the Kuomintang's navy and air force, which has not yet suffered losses, to take advantage of it; , Japan and other Western countries to obtain foreign aid; moreover, after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War.Compared with the mainland, Taiwan is relatively stable, and the civil war has not yet ignited.Therefore, before Jiang left the field, he wanted to balance the current situation. Although he still wanted to gain a foothold in East China, stabilize the Southwest, and return to the original picture, he also knew that the difficulties were too great, and the Southwest was the hometown of the Guangxi Clan. obey orders. He set his sights on Taiwan.On the eve of his resignation, on December 30, 1948, he appointed Chen Cheng to replace Wei Daoming as the chairman of Taiwan Province, and Chiang Ching-kuo to replace Qiu Niantai as the chairman of the Taiwan Provincial Party Committee.On January 16, 1949, Chen Cheng was additionally appointed as the commander-in-chief of the Taiwan Provincial Guard.Although Jiang Jingguo was appointed as the chairman of the Taiwan Provincial Party Committee, he did not go to the post. In the days when the Kuomintang rule was faltering, Chiang Ching-kuo felt that the matter was at stake, and he had to be inseparable, accompanying Chiang Kai-shek. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek asked Chiang Ching-kuo to do two things well: the first was to secretly supervise the construction of Dinghai Airport in Zhoushan.Dinghai is just an ordinary small town on Zhoushan Island. Jiang Jingguo didn't understand his father's intention at first, but when it came time to use it, he suddenly realized it.Chiang Ching-kuo recorded in his book "The Tranquility in the Storm": I remember that after my father retired, the first thing he asked me to do was to hope that the Air Force Headquarters would quickly build Dinghai Airport.At that time, we didn't quite understand what my father meant, so we could only follow orders. My father seemed very concerned about this matter, and asked almost every week how far the airport project had been completed.Later, the urging was even tighter, almost once every three days, every two days, until the airport was completely completed.When we arrived at Songhu and abandoned the defense, we realized that Tang Enbo's troops could safely retreat to Taiwan through Zhoushan only by relying on the cover of the air force taking off from Dinghai base... The second thing is that Chiang Kai-shek instructed Chiang Ching-kuo to urge Yu Hongjun, the governor of the Central Bank, to transport all the gold, silver, and foreign exchange stored by the Nanjing government to Taiwan.Doing so not only cut off the economic lifeline of the Li Zongren regime, but also had a major impact on stabilizing Taiwan's economy.Chiang Ching-kuo himself admitted later: "In the initial stage of the government's relocation to Taiwan, it would have been unimaginable without this batch of gold to make up for the financial and economic situation." The transfer of gold to Taiwan was a highly confidential matter at the time.In the middle of a certain night, they were secretly ordered by the commander-in-chief of the navy to park a warship at the pier near the Central Bank of Shanghai Huangpu Beach.With the cooperation of the commander-in-chief Tang Enbo, a temporary martial law was imposed on the streets near the Central Bank. Boxes of gold were quietly transported onto the warship under the cover of night. , to Keelung.Two days later, Chen Cheng sent a telegram to Shanghai to Yu Honggou, saying that the transported gold had been safely hidden in the vault of the Bank of Taiwan.This matter has been kept secret until Chiang Kai-shek disclosed it in a speech in 1958.Yu Hongjun has always been reused by Chiang Kai-shek. After arriving in Taiwan, in addition to serving as the president of the central bank for the second time, he also served as the chairman of the Taiwan Provincial Government in 1953, and took over as the executive president in 1954. Since the 1970s, as verified by Taiwanese newspapers, Chiang Ching-kuo and Yu Honggou moved gold and silver to Taiwan more than once.According to the account of He Shanyuan, who was the Secretary of the Central Bank Secretariat and Director of the Confidential Section at that time, He Shanyuan was responsible for the tasks assigned by Yu Hongjun at that time.In January 1949, when Yu Hongjun was the president of the Central Bank, according to the "president's secret order" conveyed by Chiang Ching-kuo, a batch of gold was transported away.After Li Zongren found out, he was about to dismiss Yu Zhi, and appointed Finance Minister Liu Gongyun to act as the president of Bank of China.After Yu left office, he lived in Hong Kong.From April to April, Jiang Jingguo secretly sent Yu back to Shanghai.After Yu Hongjun got off the plane at Longhua Airport, he didn't have any identity documents, not even a business card. The guards considered him suspicious and detained him at the airport until he called Tang Enbo, who sent a special car to meet him at the airport.With the assistance of Tang Enbo, Yu Hongjun secretly loaded the remaining gold and US dollar bills on the warship again and shipped them to Taiwan. How much gold did Jiang and Yu remove from the treasury?Taiwan officials have not yet announced the exact figures.There are several theories- Li Du, who was the general tax department of the customs at the time, described: At the end of 1948, the customs anti-smuggling ship "shipped more than 80 tons of gold and more than 120 tons of silver to Taiwan." Chen Xiaowei, a literati of the Kuomintang, said it was "500,000 taels of gold." Zhan Tefang, who once participated in the transshipment work, said that it was "80 million U.S. dollars, 924,000 taels of gold, and 30 million silver dollars." Li Zongren's secretary, Liang Shengjun, provided an even larger number. He said that when Nanjing fell, "the treasury still had 2.8 million taels of gold and more than 50 million U.S. dollars, and the total value of cotton gauze sold by the OECD was no less than 15000 gold." Millions of dollars, as well as securities with huge value, totaling more than 200 million U.S. dollars." Although there are different opinions, the amount of gold bills is indeed huge.It can be seen that Chiang Kai-shek has already invested a lot of money to "start anew and redefine the foundation" in Taiwan. This shows that he is ready to abandon the mainland. Not only Li Zongren felt it, but even the US military advisory group could see it. Ten days before Chiang Kai-shek's resignation, General Barthavi, head of the US military delegation to China, was surprised to learn that Chiang planned to abandon the mainland and run Taiwan.From a military point of view, Badawi saw that after the Pingjin and Huaihai campaigns, although the communist army had increased to more than 2 million people, Jiang's army immediately made adjustments and supplements, and its strength was still claimed to be 3.5 million. In short, there are still half of the soldiers ready to fight.At this time, the northwest and south of the Yangtze River were still intact, and it was too early for Chiang to make preparations to abandon the mainland.General Badawi also believed that "Although the Cairo Conference had an agreement to return Taiwan to China, there was no legal basis for Taiwan's sovereignty before the signing of the peace treaty with Japan." Taiwan has been Chinese territory since ancient times, and there is no need for outsiders to say Making irresponsible remarks, but Chiang Kai-shek intends to use Taiwan as a base, and Badawi thinks that Chiang's actions seem to be overstepping from the perspective of the interests of the United States.Therefore, General Badawi asked the US Ambassador to China Leighton Stuart to lodge a verbal protest to Chiang Kai-shek.Leighton Stuart was still under consideration, and Chiang had officially announced his resignation on January 21. While Chiang Kai-shek was busy preparing for the retreat to Taiwan, the peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in Beiping broke down. On April 21, Mao Zedong and Zhu De ordered the People's Liberation Army to cross the entire Yangtze River.On this day, the seven radio stations in Xikou frequently sent unfortunate news to Chiang Kai-shek: the communist army broke through the Yangtze River defense line in three ways; the Jiangyin fortress has been occupied by the communist army; , the muzzle has turned from north to south; Tang Enbo has ordered the 54th Army to counterattack the fortress and is fighting fiercely... Chiang Kai-shek felt that the day had come to leave his hometown of Xikou for the last time. At noon on April 22, he and Li Zongren had an urgent meeting on the sofa in the reception room of Hangzhou Jianqiao Aviation School. Jiang: "What are your plans for the peace talks?" Li: "I'm going to send someone to Peking to discuss it again." Jiang: "No, no need to say any more. In the past, the Communist Party agreed to peace talks because they didn't have a good military deployment. Now that they have crossed the river, there is no room for negotiation." On this day, the People's Liberation Army was approaching Nanjing, and even if the two giants of the Kuomintang could not save the crisis, they broke up immediately.The next day, April 23, Nanjing was occupied by the PLA.Chiang Kai-shek was so sad that he couldn't express it.He immediately took emergency measures.At that time, Song Meiling was promoting American aid in the United States, and he decided to ask Chiang Ching-kuo to send his wife and grandson to Taiwan "to avoid future worries." On April 24, there was news that the Communist army had been spotted near Hangzhou, so he ordered: "Get the boats ready, we are leaving tomorrow." Most of the villagers in Tuan Village are surnamed Dai.On April 24th, Dai Sengeng, the head of the security guard, was notified: the superior said that tomorrow a senior official will arrive here, and all the chiefs will wait at the seawall to take him into the sea.At that time, there were four security guards in the regiment, one security guard and ten armors, a total of forty armor leaders, and they all arrived the next day.The middle-aged people in the village rely on the sea to make a living and know how to do rowing, so the chief Jia in the village does not miss any of them. On the twenty-fifth day, the sea tide was relatively high, and the bamboo rafts could be put directly into the sea from the bank in front of the village.The two people supporting Chiang Kai-shek on the bamboo raft were Dai Yangtu and Dai Yumao. Chiang Kai-shek came to the bank in a sedan chair, got off the sedan chair and immediately got into a row, with Dai Yumao supporting the head and Dai Yangtu supporting the tail, with door panels and chairs on the row, and five people sat in the row.Chiang Kai-shek sat at the end of the row, and his chair was moved from a motorboat.The other four people, a short and fat one, is Chiang Ching-kuo.One is Yu Jishi.There are also two wearing black Zhongshan uniforms, probably guards.After Chiang Kai-shek boarded the bamboo raft and sat down, he spread out the map and checked the names of nearby places. The bamboo rafts propped up half a kilometer in the tide, approaching the motorboat that had been prepared in advance.The people in the row abandoned the raft and boarded the boat, and then took the motorboat to the "Taikang" warship on the surface of the sea.The launch was separated from the warship by a kilometer and a half.Dai Yangtu said: Before the platoon returning to the shore reached the village, the soldiers on the Taikang ship welcomed Jiang with slogans along the wind. According to the platoon supporters, Chiang Kai-shek rewarded each platoon leader with a silver dollar, but most of them fell into the pockets of the guarantors. Baochang.