Heroic statue returns
2022-06-23
Chen Hui is not only the pride of his family but also a distant legend. Because when he was 18, he left his hometown Changde in order to repel the invaders and save the country. Since then, his relatives had never seen him again.
Chen Hui, former name Wu Shenghui, was born in September, 1920 in a small village in Changde, Hunan Province. In 1937 he joined the Communist Party of China. In February, 1945, just over 180 days before the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, Chen Hui was besieged by the Japanese troops in a civilian house due to a traitor’s whistle blowing.
At the last moment of the battle, fearless Chen Hui rushed out of the house, fired the last grenade, and died with the enemy. He didn’t reach 25 years old when he died. Chen Hui is not only a brave soldier but also a passionate poet. While leading the soldiers in the desperate struggle against the invaders, he wrote many excellent poems, such as “the Song of October”, “the Song for the Motherland” and “the Red Sorghum”, which were published in the newspapers and periodicals in the anti-Japanese base areas or written on the walls of the villages in the enemies’ rear. Chen said in his poems,
“A soldier, when he uses up all the bullets, he will pour blood into the gun chamber.”
“If the gun is broken, I’ll use a bayonet grenade. If the grenade explodes，I’ll use my hands and teeth... The enemy will be incapable of catching me alive. If they catch me, it would be the very time when I finally give my life to the land.”
These poems greatly encouraged soldiers and people, and became a classic chapter in the literature of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
After Chen’s sacrifice, his head was hung outside the turret and his limbs was fed to dogs by enemies. A man bravely took off Chen’s head in a dark night and buried it in a secret place. After the victory of the revolution, the government and villagers buried his skull in Zhuozhou Martyrs Cemetery.
Chen’s mother, who was far away in Changde, did not know the sacrifice of her son. She used every penny she had to buy cropland for Chen, waiting for his return. It was not until 1954 when the government sent Chen’s certificate and pension that the mother knew that her son had already died.
In those years, due to the lack of information and inconvenient transportation, his family knew nothing about Chen’s burial place. Finally, the Publicity Department of Dingcheng District found out the tomb of Chen in Zhuozhou Martyrs Cemetery.
Before the Memorial Day in 2016, Zhuozhou launched a large-scale patriotism education activity to send the martyr Chen Hui back to his hometown. With the support of numberless netizens, Chen Hui’s statue was customized, and then accepted by Dingcheng District Committee and Dingcheng District Government. Today, the statue of the hero stands on the land of his hometown, Changde.
