Jiang Guangnai and Cai Tingkai: The Men Who Fired the First Shot

Basic facts

January 28: that night in Zhabei

11.30 p.m. on 28 January 1932.

More than 1,600 Japanese troops, covered by more than 20 armoured cars and motorcycles, launched a surprise attack on Baoshan Road, Qiujiang Road, Guangdong Road, Baoxing Road, Hengbang Road, Tiantong'an Road and Qingyun Road in Zhabei, Shanghai.

Stationed there, the 19th Route Army (commander-in-chief Jiang Guangnai, army commander Cai Tingkai, Shanghai–Wusong garrison commander Dai Ji) rose to resist.

And so the Battle of Shanghai, watched by the whole world, began.

23 January: the decision Jiang Guangnai made while ill

Five days before the war began, one thing decided whether this battle would be fought at all.

A report in the magazine Shanghai Veterans records it in detail:

It was 23 January 1932, and with the situation at the front growing tenser by the day, Jiang Guangnai left hospital against medical advice and at the Shanghai–Wusong garrison headquarters in Longhua convened a meeting of officers of battalion rank and above to discuss preparations for war.

In the same month Cai Tingkai did the same thing (as another source records):

On 23 January Cai Tingkai called a meeting of officers of battalion rank and above and gave an impassioned speech, calling on his troops "to resist to the death, by the only standard left to us — our own honour, duty and good name!"

"Answer him with cannon!"

On receiving the Japanese ultimatum, General Jiang Guangnai resolutely gave the order:

"Answer him with cannon!"

Background: the National Government's "swallowing every grievance"

This shot was precious precisely because it went against the policy of the day:

As is well known, at that time the National Government in Nanjing still pursued its basic policy of "resisting foreign aggression only after pacifying the country within". Faced with one Japanese provocation after another in Shanghai, and even the unreasonable demand that Chinese troops withdraw from Shanghai, the National Government did nothing but swallow its grievances, saying, "once the fighting starts, the city of Shanghai will be destroyed!"

Yet Jiang Guangnai, Cai Tingkai and the other 19th Route Army generals stationed in Shanghai, out of national honour and right, and moved by the will of the whole people to resist Japan and by the Chinese Communist Party's call to resist Japan and save the nation, resolutely decided to disobey orders, hold their positions and resist the Japanese invaders.

The two words "disobey orders" are the heart of this piece.

The telegram: "not an inch of ground, not a blade of grass, can be given up"

At 1 a.m. on 29 January, Jiang Guangnai, Cai Tingkai and Dai Ji issued a joint telegram to all walks of life across the country:

The brutal Japanese have occupied our three north-eastern provinces; our territory is discoloured, our nation on the brink of extinction! Of late they have murdered and burned in Shanghai; ronin have swarmed everywhere, sinking to every base and savage act in the world. Warships crowd in, the marines have all landed, and on the night of the 28th, at midnight, they brazenly violated our lines at Zhabei in Shanghai and provoked us.

Guangnai and the others are soldiers; we know only legitimate defence. To protect the country and hold its soil is our bounden duty; not an inch of ground, not a blade of grass, can be given up. In resisting Japan to save the nation and preserve our people, we shall not flinch even if we are reduced to a single soldier and a single bullet, and so forfeit the honour of a soldier of the Republic of China. This resolve, this heart of ours, can be laid before heaven and earth and shown to the world. The spirits of our forebears, the Yan and Yellow Emperors, are our witness!

From the 19th Route Army commander-in-chief Jiang Guangnai, army commander Cai Tingkai and Shanghai–Wusong garrison commander Dai Ji, respectfully, the 29th.

"Not an inch of ground, not a blade of grass, can be given up" — those words are the most famous oath sworn on the soil of Zhabei.

Jiang Guangnai in three threads

Jiang Guangnai's life can be seen along three threads:

From army uniform to the textile ministry, from the battlefield to the factory. That was the shared trajectory of many of that generation.

A remark by Zhou Enlai

"As a leader in resisting Japan the gentleman became a pillar of peace and democracy in south China; he seized the helm and turned the tide, and the whole nation looked to him."

The official assessment of 1988

In December 1988, at the meeting "Commemorating the Centenary of the Birth of Jiang Guangnai", the CCP Central Committee gave his life a high assessment:

"Mr Jiang Guangnai was an outstanding founder and leader of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, and a close friend who co-operated with the Chinese Communist Party over the long term; he devoted his life's energies to China's democratic revolution and socialist cause."

A personal detail

Jiang Guangnai's former residence was originally called Liyin Garden ("Litchi Shade"), in the Sanjiang natural village of Nanzha village, Humen town, Dongguan, Guangdong. In 1930 he built within the family garden a two-storey building of reinforced concrete in a Chinese-and-Western style, called "Hongli Mountain House" ("Red Litchi").

According to the village elders, a century-old litchi tree in the garden was planted with his own hands by General Jiang Guangnai, and "though it has lived through the vicissitudes of the world, it is still in full leaf".

A litchi tree he planted with his own hands is still alive today.

Cai Tingkai

Cai Tingkai (1892–1968), a native of Luoding, Guangdong, was army commander of the 19th Route Army and commander of its right wing.

On 24 January, before the fighting began, Cai Tingkai and Jiang Guangnai issued an "Address to the People of Shanghai and Wusong", declaring that "we are willing, with our dear brothers of Shanghai and Wusong, to join hands and strive to maintain the necessary order, and to make a last, orderly stand".

At the same time they telegraphed the National Government, saying:

"Should the invaders come, we are resolved to resist in the neighbourhood of Shanghai; even if the whole army is sacrificed, that too will not deter us."

"Even if the whole army is sacrificed, that too will not deter us" — that was an army commander's declaration before the war.

How hard this battle was to fight

A comparison of equipment

The 19th Route Army "took on the invading Japanese army without the support of the National Government".

The form of the fighting: street fighting in Zhabei

In the first week of the fighting, the Japanese committed more than 10,000 troops, chiefly marines, and the battlefield was mainly the Zhabei area.

Because the Chinese defenders, with the 19th Route Army as their main force, fought a flexible, mobile street-by-street battle, on the three days of the 3rd, 4th and 5th the Japanese took heavy losses.

The lanes of Zhabei became the Japanese army's nightmare.

The Japanese changed commanders three times

The street fighting in Zhabei cost the Japanese dear:

Forcing the Japanese to change commanders three times — that is the best assessment of the tactical level of the 19th Route Army.

A savage fight: Yunzaobang and Caojiaqiao

The fight at Yunzaobang and Caojiaqiao on 13 February was "the first great bloodbath since the fighting began". One record of it leaves a reader silent:

More than 60 soldiers holding a certain position, at the most critical moment, soaked themselves all over with kerosene, took up heavy bombs, suddenly hurled themselves on the Japanese positions, broke the Japanese line, and all of the more than 60 heroes died a heroic death.

The price of January 28

By incomplete reckoning:

And the starting point of all this was in Zhabei.

The connection with Zhabei: why they are "Zhabei figures"

Jiang Guangnai was a native of Guangdong, and so was Cai Tingkai; most of their lives were not spent in Zhabei.

But they made that decision in Zhabei, and they fired that shot in Zhabei.

This too is the reason this book takes them in: their names are bound up with the fate of this patch of ground called Zhabei.

How to go and look at this chapter today

• the Shanghai Battle of Shanghai Memorial Hall (Baoshan District, in Linjiang Park): a systematic display on January 28 and August 13;
• Bao'an Bridge (Bazi Bridge) (today's junction of Liuying Road, Tongxin Road and Shuidian Road): the place where the 19th Route Army and the Japanese army seesawed for more than a month in the 1932 Battle of Shanghai, and where the August 13 Battle of Shanghai also opened in 1937;
• the various wartime sites in Zhabei: the former site of the Commercial Press, the site of the Oriental Library, the Baoshan Road area;
• January 28 Memorial Road (the original street name, later absorbed into Gonghexin Road): the name itself is a commemoration.

A closing line

The last paragraph of that report is well written, and this book borrows it as its ending:

"Before my eyes two times and places seemed to overlap — the smoke of battle all over Zhabei in 1932 and the flocks of peace doves in today's Jing'an Park; different dimensions produced a strange historical connection, sketching the figure of that Guangdong general who resisted the invaders, pulling the trigger in a blood-red dawn."

Zhabei's January 28 is the best gloss on that sentence: the ordinary roads on the north bank of Suzhou Creek today were, late at night on 28 January 1932, line after line of defence.

Sources: the course of the January 28 fighting follows Shanghai Veterans magazine (the website of the Shanghai Municipal Veterans Affairs Bureau), "Remember · Glory: 93 Years Ago He Sent Out a Secret Order to Resist Japan While Ill"; People's Daily Online's party-history channel, "The January 28 Incident and the Battle of Shanghai"; the "War of Resistance History" section of the Shanghai Battle of Shanghai Memorial Hall; and the Guangxi CPPCC's "The 19th Route Army and the 5th Army in the Battle of Shanghai"; the official assessment of Jiang Guangnai follows the assessment of the 1988 commemorative meeting. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.