Reflections on Reading The Memoirs of Li Zongren
Written by Tang Degang, The Memoirs of Li Zongren is a masterpiece of oral history. Li Zongren himself was one of the most battle-tested figures in modern Chinese history. After Chiang Kai-shek he served for a time as President of the Republic of China and exerted considerable influence on modern Chinese history.
Yet this man came from a village outside Guilin, Guangxi; as a boy his greatest ambition was to become a rural "duck-herder." He attended a private village school in childhood and later received military education at an academy. Joining the National Protection Army in the late Qing and early Republican years, he started as a platoon leader and within a few years had become the prominent figure who unified Guangxi. He shared weal and woe with his soldiers, was honest and selfless, and enforced strict discipline; the army he founded became one of the toughest fighting forces of its time. He was, indeed, a rare military talent.
After taking civil and military power over Guangxi, Li Zongren did not become yet another warlord holding his own forces. Instead he devoted himself to the revolutionary cause founded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, leading his army on the Northern Expedition to unify a China then in chaos. But Li's military achievements eventually drew Chiang Kai-shek's jealousy. To guard against Li seizing power, Chiang weakened his forces, and the rift finally widened into the "Guangxi–Chiang split."
After the Japanese invasion, Li Zongren—an able commander—was again put to use; his Fifth Route Army won the "Great Victory of Tai'erzhuang." The Tai'erzhuang victory was one of the most brilliant triumphs of China's War of Resistance. Before it, the Chinese army and people lacked confidence in fighting the Japanese; the victory gave them confidence in eventual victory. In that sense, Li Zongren's contribution is undeniable.
I have long been interested in this period of our modern history. For one thing, the area where Li's Fifth Route Army was later mainly stationed is my own homeland, eastern Hubei. During the Wuhan Campaign, the "Guangxi clique" forces Li had personally built fought bloodily on my home ground. When I was in primary school, our school took us on a spring outing to a nearby hill fortress; we could still pick up shell casings left from the Wuhan Campaign there. Thousands of Li's anti-Japanese soldiers lie buried on that spot. Today a local-funded monument to anti-Japanese martyrs stands there, holding the remains of the Guangxi soldiers who gave their lives.
For another, many people from my own village took part in that extraordinarily arduous War of Resistance. As a child I heard the village elders tell how my great-grandfather's generation fought the "Eastern Oceaners"—as locals called the Japanese. At that time, the local village militia mainly supported Li Zongren's Guangxi forces in the resistance.
Because of this history, I feel goodwill toward Li Zongren. When Japanese iron heels trampled my homeland, it was Li Zongren and his troops who stood and fought beside us. Local lore holds that the Guangxi anti-Japanese heroes truly did not harm the common people in my hometown, yet defended it with their blood.
Li Zongren's life was that of a professional soldier. Born in war-torn China, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the National Protection War. Though later, high office and power inevitably led him to make some wrong decisions out of personal political interest, in that age of war, without these martyrs shedding their blood, there would be no peace today.
The memoir is highly readable and makes one feel present at the events. Once I began it, I read it through in a single sitting, forgetting sleep and meals. At moving passages I could not help but feel my heart swell. Peace does not come easily—every inch of our land was bought with blood. The martyrs won our peace with their lives, and we must cherish it all the more.