In a significant recounting of historical events, today’s segment of “The Century’s Truth” dives deep into the life of a legendary yet often misrepresented figure in Chinese history known as the “Double-Gun Granny.”
When one mentions “Double-Gun Granny,” fans of the Communist Party’s narrative often visualize an elderly woman, her feet wrapped, seated on a rickshaw, gently waving a feather fan, and brandishing two pistols as she loyally follows the Communist Party into revolution. This portrayal, constructed over decades, has become a shared memory engraved in the minds of billions of Chinese citizens through textbooks, films, and television.
However, the well-known depiction of the “Double-Gun Granny” is, in truth, a fabrication meticulously crafted by the Communist Party. The real figure, who fought valiantly against both Japanese invaders and the Communist Party itself, ultimately lost her life at the hands of the Communists. Her true name was Zhao Hongwenguo.
Zhao Hongwenguo, originally named Hongwenguo, was born in 1881 into a Manchu family in Xiuyan County, Liaoning. After marriage, she adopted her husband’s surname, Zhao, and was popularly known as “Granny Zhao.”
Together with her husband, Zhao Yutang, she rose from extreme poverty to establish a modest yet prosperous family while actively supporting her local community by funding schools. Initially, she was meant to enjoy a peaceful retirement, but her life took a dramatic turn with the onset of the 918 Incident in 1931.
As the Japanese military invaded northeastern China, the sons of the Zhao family could no longer remain passive. Her third son, Zhao Dong, a student in the physics department of Northeast University, threw aside his studies to return to Liao Nan and organize a resistance against the Japanese. He participated in forming the “Young Iron Blood Army,” later becoming its commander following the death of Miao Kexiu.
Meanwhile, Zhao Hongwenguo displayed remarkable courage and wisdom by liquidating family assets to procure firearms and funds for her sons’ resistance efforts, rallying her whole family to join the fight.
Enraged by the Zhao family’s prominence within the Iron Blood Army, the Japanese military retaliated by burning down sixteen of their houses, leaving them destitute. Yet, despite this adversity, Zhao Hongwenguo remained undeterred, continuing to distribute anti-Japanese pamphlets in the name of her faction.
At over fifty years of age, with two pistols often strapped to her waist, she had become a skilled marksman.
One well-known tale illustrates her remarkable resolve and daring intelligence. Upon forming an anti-Japanese guerrilla unit with her son, they struggled to expand their ranks and acquire more weapons. Zhao Hongwenguo decided to venture into a remote village in Jinbei to rally the local farmers to arm themselves against the Japanese.
When the villagers laughed at her for being too old and inexperienced with weapons, she simply replied with a hint of a smile, “You will know whether I can fight as I lead you tonight.”
That night, when reports surfaced of three Japanese scouts approaching the village, Zhao gathered a few sturdy men who had mocked her earlier and stealthily set an ambush. In the darkness, all they could see were flickering flashlight beams and the muffled sounds of the Japanese soldiers’ footsteps.
In a tense moment of silence, she abruptly drew both pistols from her waist and, without aiming for long, fired with precision.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The gunfire echoed, and soon the sounds of heavy bodies hitting the ground followed. When the villagers gathered the courage to investigate, they found two Japanese soldiers lying dead, while the third had fled in panic at the efficacy of her unexpected marksmanship.
Her breathtaking skill and bravery won over the same villagers who had once mocked her.
Inevitably, however, the Japanese were determined to crush this formidable foe. In 1934, they conducted a raid, capturing Zhao and her family alongside over three hundred villagers. As she refused to surrender, the local Japanese forces escalated their brutality, talking of secret executions.
At that life-or-death juncture, Zhao’s eldest son, Zhao Liancheng, miraculously managed to evade capture and launched an ambitious rescue operation, selling family properties and networking with sympathetic local judges to successfully release his mother while rescuing over three hundred villagers. The family eventually fled to Peiping and continued their anti-Japanese activities.
After the July 7 Incident, Zhao Hongwenguo and her son, Zhao Dong, led an uprising on the outskirts of Peiping, forming the “North China National Anti-Japanese Army,” which at one time broke into Peiping’s second model prison to liberate thousands of patriots. Their ranks swelled to over 20 battalions comprising approximately 25,000 troops.
In 1938, now over fifty, she boarded a crowded train to Hankou and Chongqing, where she gave speeches about the guerrilla warfare in the north. Prominent American journalists, including Edgar Snow and Israel Epstein, interviewed her. International media often referred to her as “the mother of Chinese guerrilla fighters,” noting her silver hair yet robust physique, with an unmatched ability to shoot accurately with both hands.
Zhao’s efforts extended beyond speeches; she traveled to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia to raise donations, garnering support from overseas Chinese, including prominent figures like Chen Jiageng. Zhao participated in torch marches alongside leaders like Soong Ching-ling and He Xiangning and was praised by Chiang Kai-shek as the “Mother of Guerrilla Fighters.” Many notable individuals, including Soong Meiling and Feng Yuxiang, lauded her as a “model for all women in the nation.”
However, as her reputation soared, the Communist Party had begun to take a keen interest in her sizeable army.
Marshal Zhu De, commander of the Eighth Route Army, and Vice Commander Peng Dehuai personally wrote to incorporate the “North China National Anti-Japanese Army” into the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei military district as its 5th unit, putting Zhao Dong nominally in command while gradually marginalizing his actual authority. The Party sought to recruit Zhao Dong while simultaneously infiltrating the ranks with its members.
Realizing the underhanded tactics behind the so-called “unified anti-Japanese efforts,” Zhao Dong eventually took a group of loyal subordinate officers and broke away from the unit. After maneuvering through Peiping and Tianjin, they reached Chongqing, where they were assimilated into the Nationalist ranks to continue the struggle against the Japanese.
However, Zhao Dong never returned to the battlefield.
Between late 1939 and early 1940, he led over three hundred men north into a county bordering Hebei but fell into an ambush laid by the Communist Party’s 120th Division led by He Long, resulting in the annihilation of his entire force. Zhao Dong was only twenty-seven years old when he bravely died in battle, along with his twenty-year-old sister, Zhao Lizhi.
It is crucial to note that the person responsible for the death of this anti-Japanese commander was neither the Japanese nor the Nationalist forces, but rather the Communist Eighth Route Army. The Party initially denied the incident, only acknowledging it in official records and memoirs after establishing the regime in 1949. General Nie Rongzhen’s memoirs clarify the rationale: Zhao Dong’s guerrilla activities were deemed a threat to their territorial ambitions, necessitating his elimination.
A valiant Chinese general lost his life at the hands of his compatriots simply for returning to his roots to continue the fight against the Japanese—this embodies the bitter truth behind the Communist Party’s rhetoric of “unified anti-Japanese struggle.”
Upon receiving the tragic news, Zhao Hongwenguo expressed her deep sorrow and indignation in an interview. “We cannot fathom such hatred that they would do this to him… All the people of China, from officials to commoners, should recognize that personal vendettas and old grudges have no place here. Those who use eloquent rhetoric yet fail to resist the enemy or instead sabotage their own resistance forces are akin to traitors and deserve to be reviled by the whole nation.”
Though stricken with grief, the loss of her son did not break Zhao Hongwenguo; instead, it sharpened her insight into the true face of the Communist Party. She continued to organize guerrilla resistance against the Japanese and sent her remaining children to fight on the battlefield. Overall, over thirty members of the Zhao family laid down their lives for the nation’s cause.
In stark contrast, during this period, the Communist Party was preoccupied with preserving its strength while hiding behind the enemy’s lines. In major battles against the Japanese, the Communist forces were conspicuously absent from the frontlines.
The day before the anti-Japanese victory, Zhao Hongwenguo’s husband passed away. In the aftermath of the war, she resigned from her military and political roles and returned to the Northeast to start a factory in hopes of providing for the families of anti-Japanese martyrs. However, the civil war soon erupted, and she recognized the Communist strategy of deception and seduction aimed at loyal patriots. Thus, she accepted Chiang Kai-shek’s appointment to organize anti-Communist forces in North and Southwest China. In 1949, she received orders to establish an anti-Communist guerrilla force in Sichuan, with her fourth son, Zhao Lianzhong, appointed as its commander. Together, mother and son, along with their loyalists, confronted the advancing Communist military for nearly a year.
In February 1950, Zhao Hongwenguo suffered defeat and was captured. The Communist Party, aware of her anti-Japanese legacy, initially attempted to persuade her to surrender.
Imagine if she had defected; the Communist Party would have achieved a significant propaganda victory, showcasing the “Mother of Chinese Guerrilla Fighters” as a strong ally in building a “New China.”
Sources indicate that He Long attempted to win her over, while Zhou Enlai advocated for her life post-capture. Following her imprisonment, guards brought her newspapers and works by Mao Zedong, continuously attempting ideological re-education. She ignored all efforts, resolutely choosing death over capitulation. Her son, Zhao Lianzhong, was executed first, and on July 16, 1950, after a farcical “public trial,” the seventy-year-old anti-Japanese heroine was put to death by the Communist regime. In one of her final photographs, bound and defiant, her face exudes an unwavering spirit.
Thus, this hero of the anti-Japanese struggle, who sacrificed profoundly for her nation, met her demise at the hands of the Communist Party. In their attempt to obliterate her memory, the Party sought to fabricate a false “Double-Gun Granny,” misrepresenting her legacy to align with their narratives.
This leads us to the novel “Red Rock,” which highlights the Communist underground movement in eastern Sichuan, portraying the rickshaw-riding, dual-pistol-wielding female guerrilla leader as a devoted, revolutionary hero loyal to the Communist Party.
The author, Luo Guangbin, acknowledged that one of the character prototypes was based on Chen Lianshi; later interpretations merged the tales of Chen, Deng Huizhong, and Liu Longhua into one figure.
However, none of these individuals participated in the anti-Japanese effort, nor were any of them anti-Communist; Chen Lianshi is the only one who purportedly wielded dual pistols.
Though their stories were co-opted by the Communist Party to enhance its image and confuse the populace, the real endings of these figures and their families offer a bitter irony against this so-called “red classic.”
To elaborate on Chen Lianshi: she hailed from a prestigious literary family in Yuechi, Sichuan. Well-educated, she was skillful in poetry and painting and joined the Communist Party in 1928. After her husband, Liao Yubi, was murdered by warlord Yang Sen in 1935, she took charge of his former troops, forming a 40-member “Double-Gun Unit” in the Huaying Mountains to serve the Communist cause, gaining local recognition as “Double-Gun Sister Chen.” Though she sacrificed extensively for the Party, including enduring imprisonment and facing execution sites, the Communist regime, just two years after taking power, forced her to resign her Party membership under the guise of “unstable positions” and “complex social relations.”
Despite her protests, which resulted in 42 application letters pleading for reinstatement, the Party remained indifferent to her appeals until after her tragic death in 1960 due to depression. Ironically, 22 years later, the Party sought to exploit her legacy for propaganda, ultimately restoring her Party membership posthumously.
The plight of those whom she had brought into the cause was equally tragic. Her son-in-law, Lin Xiangbei, joined the Party in 1938 and initially engaged in underground activities in eastern Sichuan. However, he was soon targeted in the “Three Antis Campaign,” and by 1957, he was labeled a “rightist,” leading to a downward spiral.
During the Cultural Revolution, his wife, Liao Ningjun, Chen Lianshi’s daughter, was accused of “being a traitor” and publicly humiliated, while their child faced brutal treatment. The family’s home was repeatedly raided. Tragically, Liao Ningjun met a cruel fate in May 1975, having endured relentless persecution throughout her life as a revolutionary.
In retrospect, Lin Xiangbei eventually realized that the fate of his family had been predetermined long before the Communist Party invaded Sichuan. He recalled that, in 1949, the Central Committee had subtle guidelines stating, “Demotion, control of use, local digestion, gradual elimination.”
Those underground Party members who jubilantly welcomed the “liberation” were blind to the fact that the victory would mark their own disposability, the beginning of their abandonment, and systematic purging.
Another prototype of the Communist version of the “Double-Gun Granny,” Deng Huizhong, also faced a tragic end. After participating in guerrilla activities, she was killed in 1949. For decades, the Communist Party regarded her as a “traitor,” only posthumously rectifying her status in 1982.
As for Luo Guangbin, the creator of “Red Rock,” he too was an underground Party member and became a target during the Cultural Revolution after his work was labeled as “traitor literature.” He suffered greatly before ultimately jumping to his death in 1967. In 1968, Jiang Qing publicly condemned the guerrilla troops of the Huaying Mountains as “utterly useless,” further decimating the ranks of the Sichuan underground Party.
When we connect these two narratives, the true intentions of the Communist Party become glaringly evident.
The historically accurate “Double-Gun Granny,” Zhao Hongwenguo, who contributed immensely to anti-Japanese efforts and opposed the Communist regime, was executed by the very Party she opposed. To conceal the truth about her demise, the Communist Party fabricated a fictitious “Double-Gun Granny,” molding her story to fit their agenda, ensuring that she aligned indefinitely with the Party in the collective consciousness of millions. Over time, the public memory fades, leaving only an embellished artistic representation, with few questioning: Who was the real Double-Gun Granny? What happened to her? Who was responsible for her death?
Nonetheless, lies are ephemeral. The gripping tale of Zhao Hongwenguo’s noble sacrifices for the nation, as well as the blood and tears of the idealistic youth deceived and discarded beneath Huaying Mountain, will inevitably be revealed to the world.
That concludes today’s program. Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed our show, please remember to like, subscribe, and share. Until next time.