Pay tribute to my father
Yan Yongfeng
Recently, I was watching the long TV series "lurking before dawn", which revealed the unknown dangers and hardships of the underground party intelligence workers of the Chinese Communist Party. For the cause of the party, they not only face the danger of sacrifice at any time, but what is even more embarrassing is that due to the particularity of their single-line connections in their work, once something goes wrong with the contacts in the information chain, it may mean that they lose contact with the organization forever. However, even so, the underground workers still persisted in fighting on the line of life and death with their passion.
This thrilling drama also happened to my father. Out of the desire to change society, my father resolutely chose to join the revolutionary cause when he was young. In March 1939, my father officially joined the Communist Party of China and engaged in underground work. At the beginning of 1941, the Kuomintang agents carried out a large-scale investigation and destroyed all the contact points in the area where my father was active. After being forced to disconnect from the organization, although his father lost support, he still actively searched for the party and contacted party organizations under the cover of his identity as a staff member of the telecommunications bureau. However, due to the particularity of underground work and the work policy of "long-term lurking" implemented by underground work at that time, it is generally difficult for those who have lost contact to restore organizational relations except under special circumstances. My father was no exception. Although his wish to return to the organization was not realized, my father has always maintained working contact with the comrades of "Xinhua Daily".
On October 4, 1946, the storm came quietly. My father and Mr. Yang Jifu were arrested during a meeting in Juyutuo, Wanxian County. When they were tried in court, Mr. Yang Jifu and his father launched a heroic struggle against the enemy. Fortunately, Mr. Yang Jifu and his father were finally released after being rescued by well-known figures in the society. After his release, his father resumed his job at the Wanxian Telecommunications Bureau, and published his "Prison Diary" in its internal magazine "Huayou Monthly" to reflect his life in prison and expose and accuse the crimes of the reactionaries. In July 1947, my father finally made contact with the organization. Then he used his home as the party's activity and contact point, continued to engage in revolutionary work, and continued to provide intelligence and materials to the CCP's eastern Sichuan guerrillas.
In the early summer of 1948, due to the traitor's betrayal, Kuomintang agents once again surrounded the contact point where his father worked. At that time, my father passed by and found that the contact point did not hang clothes on the second floor window as agreed, and there were many unfamiliar faces nearby. This alerted my father, and he left immediately and escaped. Afterwards, my father learned that when the Kuomintang agents attacked the contact point, it was the traffic officer who quickly went upstairs to take off the clothes promised to report that he was safe and let him find him, so he escaped from danger. However, the traffic officer, who was only 20 years old at the time, unfortunately fell into the hands of the enemy. In early 1949, the traffic officer was brutally killed.
After liberation, my father served as the director of the Southwest Post and Telecommunications Sanatorium Office, and was transferred frequently. During the long years of hiding, my father had always been concerned about the identification of organizational connections between 1939 and July 1949, when he lost contact. The difficulties in collecting materials and finding witnesses once affected the appeal work. However, my father was loyal to the party. Always. After many twists and turns, on July 11, 1985, the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China finally issued an official document recognizing and restoring my father’s party membership since March 1939. When
received the notice, his father had already retired, and he was in tears while holding the documents. My father, who had no complaints, told us the story he knew about the underground party organizations in eastern Sichuan. Years have passed, and now my father is 98 years old, but he still has fresh memories of his life experience more than half a century ago, that period of hard and noble latent years.
pays tribute to his father, and to the many heroes who cannot leave their names, but shed their lives and blood for the party’s underground work!
(Author’s unit: Chongqing Yubei Branch of China Post Group Co., Ltd.)
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