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Street preserves memory of heroic general
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TONGLINGE street in the heart of Beijing is one of the few places named after a person in China’s capital.
There used to be a sign at one end, telling people the story of Tong Linge, but it has been removed. When the Japanese assaulted the Marco Polo Bridge in the western suburbs of Beijing on July 7, 1937, Tong, the deputy commander of the Chinese army stationed in the bridge area led his troops to fight and died in the battle. Tong became the first Chinese general to die in the eight-year China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
Tong Bing, 90, regularly frequents the street. Once, when a passer-by asked him if he knew the general, he told them: “Yes, I do. He is my father.”
“To me, he was not only a hero, but also a good dad,” he said.
General Tong had seven children, with Tong Bing the youngest. “He was busy and only came home on Saturdays,” he recalled. “When we heard the beep of cars, we would rush out to welcome dad. He then kissed us one by one.”
Meanwhile, the general was strict with his children. “He told us not to coo the rich and look down upon the poor,” Tong said. While having dinner, none of them were allowed to waste any food.
On July 7, 1937, the Japanese army arrived at Marco Polo Bridge for a military maneuver. They insisted on entering the nearby Wanping Town to search for a missing soldier. When their demand was rejected, they attacked the Chinese troops, who fought back.
The shots heralded the July 7 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which later led to the full-scale war of the Chinese people against the Japanese occupation.
The Chinese soldiers at the Marco Polo Bridge were outnumbered and ill-equipped. Some of Tong’s army were student, not even real soldiers.
The general fought for 20 days, retreating from the Marco Polo Bridge to Guangcai Road about 22 kilometers away in the south.
Liu Su, a fellow researcher with the Beijing Municipal Archives, once met a villager namely Qiao Delin who witnessed the general’s last moments.
“Qiao was 13 in 1937,” Liu said. “The Japanese fired machine guns from the roof of his house, while the Chinese soldiers were in the corn field.”
The general was shot in the leg, before he was killed by shelling.
“His guard Gao Hongxi carried his body,” Tong Bing said. “Gao was later too tired to move and hid the body in a shed. He brought my father’s watch and camera to my home.”
General Tong Linge could hardly be identified by the time his family retrieved the body. His children cleaned the wounds, and put the body into a coffin which had been prepared for the general’s father.
A grand State funeral was held in honor of the general in 1946, one year after the World War II ended and the Japanese surrendered.
The Chinese government in 1945 named the street in honor of the general. The street, about 4 kilometers west to the Tian’anmen Square and 1,500 meters long, is now flanked by more than a dozen restaurants and two schools.
To a 59-year-old cleaner surnamed Yang, it is a street that is hard to clean. “Too many restaurants,” he said.
To Li Dong, manager of a Japanese restaurant, it is a street with not many customers. “We are close to the Xidan high street, but it is not convenient to get there,” he said.
To Tong Bing, however, it is a reminder. “The name of my dad always brings me back to my happy childhood.”
He turned down the invitation of a teacher who asked him to give a lecture to students. “My heart aches whenever I talk about his death.”
But Han Junying, Dean of the Shoushuihe Primary School which was near the street, believed it necessary for students to learn more about the past.
“They should know why the street was so named,” said Han. “They should know that there was such a general, who died for a better future of the nation, which they now enjoy.”
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