142 tombstones 15-year-
old
"
searching for relatives
"
veteran policeman Yu Fahai searched for family members of the Yangloudong Martyrs' Tomb in the wilderness, and brought back 67 families for the martyrs in 15 years
The veteran policeman Yu Fahai never thought that the rest of his life would be tied to 142 tombstones.
Fifteen years ago, 55-year-old Yu Fahai had just underwent a kidney transplant for less than two years. During his sick leave, the Chibi Political Consultative Conference commissioned him to inspect a tomb of soldiers and martyrs.
The tombs are located at the junction of Hunan and Hubei provinces, on Laoyingpancha Mountain, two kilometers away from Yangloudong Village in Chibi City.
Yu Fahai still remembers that it was a vast wilderness of hillsides with wild grasses, no villages or roads around.
A gust of wind blew, and the heads of the steles were exposed, "It seems that a strengthening company is lying in ambush."
The heads of the tombs were uneven, some tombs were missing a corner, some were sunken in the soil, and some tombs collapsed and fell on the ground.
Yu Fahai pulled a handful of waist-deep weeds, tied them into a bunch, and wiped off the moss and dust on the stele. The writing on it has become a little blurred in the weathering and erosion of the years: there are ordinary women, artillery, and infantry. Soldiers also have squad, platoon, battalion, and regiment-level cadres.
Hometown involves 24 provinces and 118 counties and cities across the country.
The youngest sacrificed soldier was 18 years old and the oldest was 52 years old.
He counted with his hands, 15 rows, 142 seats.
In the following fifteen years, in order to explore the secrets behind the tombstone, Yu Fahai sent more than 100 letters of "No such person" and walked tens of thousands of kilometers on the "Long March Road" alone to bring back the tombstone martyrs. 67 families.
Ye tombs are well-documented tombs of martyrs
In 2005, Yu Fahai began to visit the villagers near the tombs and found that Yangloudong Village had always had questions about "Are they heroes or deserters?"
An 88-year-old villager recalled that when he was young, the school organized a tomb sweep, but he didn't know who was buried inside.
The Chibi CPPCC Cultural and Historical Committee has also repeatedly received feedback from the old CPPCC members, saying that this desolate group of soldiers and martyrs is the Red Army or the New Fourth Army?
During the visit, Yu Fahai met the Xu family brothers who lived next to the tomb complex, and the nearby villagers called them "cemetery guards".
The 75-year-old Xu Lijun recalled that more than sixty years ago, a large number of fighters returned to China to resist the US and Aid Korea came to Yangloudong Town.
In Zhaoliqiao Town, a few kilometers away from the main road, the wounded were pulled off the train and transported by a stretcher team and a carriage to the 67th Field Hospital for treatment.
Xu Lijun's eldest brother was a member of the stretcher team.
Xu Lijun was less than ten that year, and he saw many wounded.
After Yu Fahai got these clues, he found the medical staff of the field hospital and visited some veterans in the village to resist the US and Aid Korea. They were 80 or 90 years old and told Yu Fahai many stories about the martyrs on the tombstones and the wars of the year.
Many people died after only one side.
With these stories, after returning home, Yu Fahai began to search the archives and the village history.
In a book of "Chibi Civil Affairs Chronicles" that he found from a street stall, he found a list of 142 martyrs.
It was finally determined that this place was not a wild grave, but a group of well-documented martyrs. The wounded who returned to China to resist the US and Aid Korea died were carried one by one to this wasteland for coffin burial.
He took the book to the cemetery, compared the list of martyrs in the book with the inscriptions on the tombstones, and marked the location of the tombstones with each name in red.
Among them are Dong Cunrui's comrade-in-arms Wang Xikui and Luo Shengjiao's comrade-in-arms Zhou Xingliang.
But there are still nine martyrs who are not on the list. He found the names of these nine in the memoirs of a veteran warrior to resist US aggression and aid Korea and added them in the narration of the book.
Yu Fahai formed a report on these findings and submitted it to the higher-level government. The Chibi Civil Affairs Bureau, together with the Municipal People's Armed Forces Department and the Municipal Public Security Bureau, jointly initiated an activity to find home for 142 soldiers and martyrs.
These 142 unfamiliar names lingered in Yu Fahai's mind all the time. He flipped through the pages with the names of martyrs day and night, the corners were turned torn, and tape was attached again.
"The 142 wounded were killed and treated ineffective, and they were buried on our land. They slept here in obscurity for decades without being known. Are there any relatives in their family? Do you know that they died here? What is their family? What's the situation?"
A lot of questions filled his mind, unable to sleep, "142 names are like 142 puzzles."
More than 100 letters of "No such person"
With curiosity, Yu Fahai began to search for the families behind these 142 names.
All the clues about the martyrs come from these short lines of inscription on the stele.
Yu Fahai copied the contents of the inscription on paper.
He sent the letter according to the address on the inscription-fifteen years ago, a general correspondence was 2 corners and a registered letter was 8 corners.
I don’t know when it started, and it became an ordinary 1 yuan 2 jiao, 8 yuan registered.
Later, there was express delivery, and a credit express mail was about 20 yuan.
When seeking relatives became the only theme in Yu Fahai’s life in the future, the concept of time became blurred in his mind, and he could only rely on changes in prices to remember the process. “I made the money by myself, and kept the notes. Big Ben."
In the first year, he sent more than 100 letters.
However, most of the letters fell to the sea, and the letter was returned with a note, "No such person was found."
Yu Fahai couldn't figure it out, "Why don't their family members reply?"
Later, he discovered that in the past few decades, the division of some administrative regions had changed. For example, the tombstone of a martyr was engraved with "Beiliu County, Guangdong Province", and Beiliu had already been included in Guangxi.
Another example is "Mianyang County, Hubei Province", which has now been renamed "Xiantao City, Hubei Province".
"Comfortable Township in Hualien County, Taiwan" is actually "Shoufeng Township in Hualien City", and even "Chibi" was renamed from "Puqi County".
Because of dialects and near-phonetic characters, the names of some martyrs also differ.
The name of a Henan martyr was Liu Yizhai, but Liu Yiqi (Liu Yiqi) was engraved on the tombstone in traditional Chinese.
The gender of some martyrs was even wrong, and women were written as men.
During that period, Yu Fahai began to get into the list of these martyrs every day from morning to night, finding one to verify one.
A total of 70 errors were found and corrected one by one.
But there is still no response.
"I was also discouraged at the time, so I scribbled the pen and threw it directly out of the window." Yu Fahai fell into a trough for a while.
After months of silence, he suddenly received a reply.
The letter wrote: "You did a great deed. I was only four years old when my dad joined the revolution, and I died when I was about seven or eight. After my dad died, I never knew it. Later my mother died. An orphan..."
The inscribed "Liu Yao" is the son of Liu Yizhai, a martyr in Henan.
His uncle was also a soldier. He had come to Yanglou Cave to find Liu Yizhai, but he couldn't find him, and finally passed away with regret.
Before his death, the uncle told Liu Yao, "You leave a space next to your grandparents' graves. After your father finds them, you will bury him with us and let us reunite."
This letter rekindled Yu Fahai's hope, "it is still meaningful."
He decided to continue.
Fifteen years of "Long March Road"
In 2006, Yu Fahai began to find relatives for the martyrs by train.
His footprints are almost all over the country-as far as Dandong in the north and Guangxi in the south.
He drew the places he had visited on a map, "My 15 years have also been a long march."
Before the Ching Ming Festival in 2007, Yu Fahai accidentally saw a report.
In Taiyuan, there is an old prosecutor Wang Aifu who is nine years older than himself who is doing similar things.
Yu Fahai tried to contact Wang Aifu, "If you have a martyr from Hubei, I will help you find it. I have one from Shanxi. Can you find it for me?" It didn't take long for Wang Aifu to help contact Chibi. A family member of a Shanxi martyr in the tomb.
In 2007, Yu Fahai arrived in Taiyuan by train for more than 20 hours.
Follow Wang Aifu to drive to Yizhangtang North Village in Jiexiu City.
The village is remote and surrounded by a circle of earthen city walls.
After entering the village, Yu Fahai began to ask group by group, a large group and a small group went from house to house.
Finally found the family of Martyr Wen Bingren-in a dilapidated old house.
Wen Binggen, the 74-year-old brother of the martyr, recalled to Yu Fahai that at that time, he himself was less than ten years old, and his brother had no news after he went out in the Eighth Route Army. His grandparents and parents have been waiting for him to come back.
When there is news, it is the news of his death brought by his comrades.
"Wen Bingren's brother has never been here until now. I don't know if his family is poor." Yu Fahai was helpless, this was the first family member he found when he went out.
In the following fifteen years, Yu Fahai encountered various families of martyrs.
Some are the posthumous sons of martyrs, who have never seen their fathers and only listened to their mothers. Some families have been searching for decades, but there is no news.
Some families are broken because of the death of their loved ones, some have a negative life, some choose to reorganize, and some have no choice but to forget.
Yu Fahai is still able to recite the letter sent back from the family of the martyr Xu Baorong in Jiangsu thirteen years ago.
"Police Officer Yu, I am the descendant of Martyr Xu Baorong. I want to see my relatives. My mother is still there. She is the martyr's wife, but I am not the martyr's son. My mother's tears are all gone, and I want to see him all my life. one side."
So he took a train from Chibi to Shuyang County, Jiangsu Province.
The family of the martyrs cooked a table for Officer Yu who had come from afar. Wu Qinglan, the widow of Martyr Xu Baorong, who was 84 years old, was sitting on the threshold and was crying, telling the story of the year in dialect.
Xu Baorong returned home once before participating in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and it was also that time that he married Wu Qinglan.
After getting along for a day or two, he returned to the army and never came back.
After Wu Qinglan received the news of her husband's death, she fell ill and a large family was broken.
Xu Baorong's younger brother expressed his intentions to her, so "two suffering men decided to support three small houses."
Yu Fahai's voice choked, "When I heard my old mother talk about this, I saw a gray-haired grandfather sitting next to him. He was the younger brother of that year. He was 75 years old and had white eyebrows. He shook his hand to pick me up on the road. It was their son, in his 30s. The two had three children and one daughter."
They all knelt down and said, "Officer Yu, benefactor!"
"Can I not be moved? What did I do? I acted as a correspondent, but these stories infected me. You can't say that people have no conscience and people are numb, even if there is no one to support me, whether it is someone else Envy or jealous of me, I have to do this." Yu Fahai said.
One person's "exhibition hall"
The five years from 2007 to 2011 were the busiest period in Yu Fahai's family.
The government took the lead in repairing the tombs of 142 martyrs in Yangloudong. A leading group was established to repair and protect the tombs of 142 martyrs in Yangloudong. Yu Fahai was appointed as the deputy director of the office.
Zhang Jianping, director of the Chibi Martyrs Cemetery, said that since 2010, he has taken over the tombs of 142 martyrs in Yangloudong. In the past ten years, nearly one million people have visited and visited the graves.
Before he took over, the cemetery underwent two phases of renovation. The wall was built with red bricks, the monument of martyrs was built, and the dirt road was also built into a cement road.
During Zhang Jianping's tenure, the tombs of the martyrs were completely transformed, the original old tomb bags were retained, and new tombstones were built.
The past few years have also been the peak period for the families of martyrs to come to remember.
When family members came to Chibi, Yu Fahai was the first to contact.
Some family members could not afford to stay in a hotel, so Yu Fahai left them overnight in his own home.
At most, six or seven people slept, and there were blankets on the sofa and the floor in the living room.
But most of the time, there is only one person and a room of information left in this house.
There are two bookshelves on the balcony of a few square meters, filled with books such as chronicles, archives, and war history to resist US aggression and aid Korea. On the other side are some books bound together in a thick stack, with serial numbers from 1 to 20. .
There is an old desktop computer in the cramped space. It was a second-hand product he bought a few years ago, and it buzzed when it was running.
In order to check information, he started learning computer from scratch a few years ago, and now he has used it very well.
In the early years, Yu Fahai lived with his wife and children in a family of five in a bungalow on the street.
Before retiring, he worked as a public security police officer, director of a police station, went to the grassroots level, and also entered an agency. He was a backbone force in the Public Security Bureau. He also won a first-class medal for solving a major case.
In 2003, overwork became ill and Yu Fahai suffered from kidney disease.
Necrosis of both kidneys requires kidney transplantation.
The unit knew of his illness and asked him to go to the hospital for a kidney matching, but he did not expect to find a suitable kidney source soon.
The Public Security Bureau organized a fund-raising internally, and the rest of the couple managed to borrow money from their relatives to collect the operating expenses.
After being discharged from the hospital, he still needs medication to maintain.
On the desk, there is a one-meter-long biochemical examination record sheet, densely packed in small letters with the status of various physical indicators that he has checked from 2003 to the present.
In 2005, the Public Security Bureau transferred Yu Fahai from the grass-roots police station back to the department of the department during the recovery period from sick leave, and sent him to the Yangloudong tombs for a red survey, which was regarded as an idle job.
Unexpectedly, he plunged in, becoming a hundred times busier than work, and barely home.
According to his economic situation at the time, after he paid the medical bills every month, there was almost nothing left.
He made a proposition, and without the consent of his wife and children, he sold the old house that he was going to marry his son, partly to repay the money, and partly to find the martyrs' families.
For more than ten years, Yu Fahai's family's money has basically been spent, "I am sorry to my family and my children. Other parents leave property for their children, but I continue to consume property at home."
Yu Fahai has the most sense of belonging only in his own "exhibition hall".
The "Exhibition Hall" is divided into several series, each series has more than a dozen books, marked with serial numbers according to the year.
One set is a ticket book, which is covered with red, red and blue train tickets that he used to find relatives every time he went to find his relatives from 2005 to now.
One set is the information of the martyrs. When you open it, you can cut and paste the information, as well as some letters and files.
There is also a set of mailing slips, ranging from two cents to twenty or thirty dollars, every page turning over is the bit by bit over the past 15 years.
He even kept the ticket for each taxi, bus and photo-washing list for the families of the martyrs.
Another set is the report of every newspaper in the past fifteen years, and he has posted it in full with the masthead and arranged it according to time.
To every piece of paper, he can tell a complete story.
He turned over carefully, as if those things were the whole meaning of his life.
67 reunions
In September 2010, the Yangloudong Volunteer Army Martyrs Tombs were approved by the Hubei Provincial People's Government as a key protection unit for provincial martyrs' buildings.
Today, the tombs of Yangloudong martyrs are surrounded by green tea mountains.
Blocks of square stone steles stand in the cemetery.
The original old tombstone was erected on the stone platform behind the cemetery, and moss grew from the cracks in the stone, following the tombstone upward.
Directly in front of the 142 tombstones, there is a monument inscribed with "Revolutionary Martyrs Immortal."
Next to it is the Martyrs Memorial Hall of the Yangloudong Tombs, which contains the relics of the martyrs dug up in the tombs, as well as some letters and old objects sent by the veterans of the Korean War.
During the years when Yu Fahai was looking for relatives, the villagers in Yangloudong knew that "Officer Yu found another one, and brought another one back."
So far, Yu Fahai has found the relatives of 120 martyrs and 67 relatives of martyrs have come to pay homage.
Liu Yao was the first family member to come to the tombs of Yanglou Cave to make sacrifices.
Two days after Yu Fahai received the reply, he rushed from Henan.
When he got out of the car, the 63-year-old man ran straight to his father's tombstone, tomb 13 in row 10.
"He held the tombstone tightly with his hands. He was crying heartbreakingly." Yu Fahai said.
The villagers shed tears as they watched this scene.
In 2007, Yu Fahai also saw a living "martyr".
On the 28th of the twelfth lunar month that year, he received a call and found the "martyr" Hu Jinhai himself in Jiangjin County.
Standing in front of Hu Jinhai's tombstone, repeatedly confirmed the correctness, and called Hu Jinhai.
There was silence on the other end, "Why did I die?"
In August 2007, 76-year-old Hu Jinhai wore an old military uniform and carried a water bottle, accompanied by his family, to the Yangloudong Martyrs Tomb.
The word "Eternal" is engraved on the head of the stele, and the introduction above is indeed his own.
Hu Jinhai recalled that he joined the army to fight in North Korea in March 1951. The battle of Shangganling was fought very hard.
Once a soldier was burned by the fire, he rushed to the soldier, took off his military uniform and slapped. After extinguishing, he found that the soldier's fingers were still moving, so he put the military uniform on the injured soldier and continued to charge.
At that time, there was a "life and death card" printed on the upper left pocket of each soldier's uniform.
When the battle was cleaned up at the end of the war, the soldier in Hu Jin's navy suit was dying and was mistaken for "Hu Jinhai" and returned to China. He died shortly after being transferred to the 67th Field Hospital and was buried in the Yangloudong Tomb.
Hu Jinhai walked slowly to each tombstone to salute. It took more than an hour and 142 military salutes.
After the salute, tears were already streaming down my face.
"As a last resort"
The influence of finding relatives for the martyrs is growing, and college students and social volunteers have joined.
But the 70-year-old Yu Fahai's physical strength is getting worse. He stays at home most of the time, but he is still struggling to find his relatives.
Some family members of martyrs told him, “Our relatives lie in the martyrs’ cemetery, but we don’t have a martyr certificate." For example, the grandson of a martyr Ran Xingchu in Jingzhou, Hubei said that his family’s martyr certificate had been lost in the flood many years ago.
Section Chief Ke Luo of the Songzi County Veterans Affairs Bureau of Jingzhou City explained to a reporter from the Beijing News that there are two grounds for confirming the identity of the family members of martyrs. One is the martyr's certificate held by the family, and the other is the "Hubei Revolutionary Martyrs" issued by the provincial government. "Record", you can have either of them.
And Yu Fahai did not find the name of Ran Xingchu in the "British List of Hubei Revolutionary Martyrs" published by the Chibi Veterans Affairs Bureau.
Ran's family only has a plaque of "Glory House" to prove its identity.
Guangxi martyr Yan Sheng, his family members also lost the certification materials during several moves, leaving only a "certificate of a revolutionary soldier who died of illness" and a burial certificate.
On December 7, 2020, Chief Yu of the Special Care Division of the Chibi City Veterans Affairs Bureau, the responsible organization of the Yangloudong Martyrs’ Tombs, explained that among the 142 martyrs, not only were soldiers who returned to China injured in the War of Resist U.S. Aid Korea, but also sacrificed and died on duty All of the people are buried in the Chibi Martyrs Tombs. Due to historical reasons, many cannot be verified.
Some family members expressed understanding, "Uncle Yu has done enough, and he feels uncomfortable. I don't blame him, I am grateful to him." But some family members of martyrs will get angry with Yu Fahai, "What is the use of finding out for us? Well, it's better not to find it."
Yu Fahai was caught in the middle helpless.
On January 8, Zhang Jianping, director of the Chibi Martyrs Cemetery, told reporters that the relevant departments had recently found a copy of the "Hubei Provincial Revolutionary Soldiers' Death List of Martyrs", which is a direct and effective proof of ratification of the martyrs and also obtained from the Hubei Provincial Archives. Several historical materials were used to confirm.
According to these historical materials, the 142 people buried in the tombs of the martyrs in Yangloudong were all identified as martyrs.
Zhang Jianping said that as for the application and re-issuance of the martyrs' certificate, the affairs department where the martyrs are registered is responsible.
Up to now, Yu Fahai has regarded finding relatives for the martyrs as his mission for the rest of his life.
The words that cannot be said are written in the memoir, named "The Expedition of Conscience and Morality", which has written nearly 50,000 words.
"There are too many regrets in my heart. There are still 22 martyrs who have not found their families, but there is basically no hope. Some things are really impossible." It took Yu Fahai a long time to convince himself to give up.
On December 14, 2020, in the damp and cold weather of Chibi, Yu Fahai set off again.
Not long ago, he discovered a new tomb complex. It was the site of the 66th Preparatory Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in Changsha, "Shigupo", where a group of wounded who had returned from the battlefield to resist the US and Aid Korea were also admitted there.
Before leaving for Changsha, he sat in front of the computer and wrote this sentence: "Some 80-90-year-old veterans passed away year after year, and I was seriously ill when I was in my early years, and I didn’t have much time left. I will cherish the remaining time even more as a last resort."
Beijing News reporter Xie Lei