On this date in 1931, the Chinese nationalists executed 23 Communists at Longhua, including five members of the League of Left-Wing Writers.
Early in what would prove to be the very long Chinese Civil War, the Koumintang government in 1930 mounted a suppression* of Communist outposts. That included military campaigns attempting to encircle communist-held regions, as well as an internal crackdown. It’s the latter that concerns us here.
A Communist-founded League of Left-Wing Writers operating in Shanghai was formally banned by the Koumintang in September 1930. Threatened with arrest, the writers struggled to stay underground but at a January 17 meeting in the British concession area,** British police arrested Li Weisen, Hu Yepin, Rou Shi, Yin Fu, and Feng Keng. They were handed over to the Chinese authorities.

The Five Martyrs: From left: Hu Yepin, Rou Shi, Feng Keng, Yin Fu, Li Weisen (Li Qiushi)
They became the Five Martyrs of the League when they were shot this date in 1931 along with 18 other Communist prisoners, one of them a pregnant woman.
Among the five martyrs, Rou Shi† was particularly close to the great writer Lu Xun, who was heartbroken when he received word of his young protege’s untimely end — “one of China’s best youths,” in his estimation. In hiding himself, Lu Xun composed a “Lament for Rou Shi”:
To long and sleepless nights I’ve grown
accustomed in the spring;
Fled with a wife and babe in arms,
my temples are graying.
‘Mid dream there comes an image faint —
a loving mother’s tear;
On city walls the overlords’
e’er-changing banners rear.
I can but stand by looking on
as friends become new ghosts,
In anger face bayonet thickets
and search for verse ripostes.
The poem intoned, my gaze turns low —
one cannot write such down.
Moonlight shimmers with watery sheen
upon my jet-black gown.(as translated by The Lyrical Lu Xun: A Study of His Classical-Style Verse)
The discerning present-day visitor to Longhua can pay respects at the Longhua Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery.
* The suppression claimed, among others, the life of Mao Zedong’s first wife.
** The extraterritorial British concession in Shanghai was a legacy of the opium wars.
† There’s an English translation of Rou Shi’s short story “A Slave Mother” here.
On this day..
- 1935: David Maskill Blake, wedding's eve murderer
- 1391: Agnese Visconti and Antonio da Scandiano, adulterous lovers?
- 1885: August Reinsdorf and Emil Kuchler, Kaiser Wilhelm I bombers
- 1940: Peter Barnes and James McCormack, the last IRA men hanged
- 1896: Benjamin Ratcliff, school shooter
- 1545: Cornelis Appelman and Willem Zeylmaker, Batenburgers
- 1902: Privates Edmond Dubose and Lewis Russell, deserters to the Philippine Resistance
- 1579: Thomas Sherwood, Catholic martyr
- 1714: Various rebel slaves in the Cape Colony
- 1852: Martin Merino, Jesuit assassin
- 1920: The White Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak
- 1868: Susan, a 13-year-old