Tag: Slaughter

Twin Sisters Recall 1990 Armenian Pogrom

101 years after the Armenian Genocide began, the world still refuses to recognize the atrocities

By C.S. Hagen

BAKU, SOVIET UNION  – An angry humming noise kept Karine Eloyse Pirumova from her windows. Curtains drawn, she knew the cacophony was heading her way. Despite the fact her husband had begun sleeping with a knife under his pillow, she refused to believe the rumors, until her telephone rang one afternoon mid January 1990.

“We need to flee the city.” Karine’s twin sister’s voice was panicky. “I’ve just been let go. It’s not safe for Armenians in Baku any longer.” They hurriedly agreed to meet at Karine’s apartment.

The line fell silent. Her sister, Marine, was let go? She had a good job working as a communications specialist with the Caspian Shipping Company. She glanced around her government-supplied apartment. Where to go? What to take?

Pirumova sisters looking over a recently-published Russian book about their family history - photo by C.S. Hagen

Pirumova sisters looking over a recently-published Russian book about their family history – photo by C.S. Hagen

Andrey and Genna, her young sons, played contentedly with their toys. Supper simmered on the stove. Pictures of the Pirumova family, once Armenian generals and nobles, hung from her walls. Karine had heard the news of lootings and beatings, not through heavily censored Soviet news broadcasts, but through her Russian husband, who spoke the local Azerbaijani language. She never dreamed the violence could reach their doorstep.

Hands trembling, Karine packed a small suitcase. Her father’s nearly forgotten stories sent chills down her spine. As a child, her father, Abesalom Pirumov, had seen his mother gunned down in the streets. Her dying words to him were, “Run, my children,” Karine said.

“It was the first thing I thought of. And after 70 years it was happening to our family again.”

“Life was getting hard in 1988,” Marine, Karine’s sister, said. Her hometown, a seaside port in the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, was relatively peaceful until the unrest began. Muslims and Christians lived as neighbors with few incidents. “But we kept living our lives. Baku was an international city. We could not believe that in modern Baku this kind of thing could happen again. Just like in 1915. Killing people. Robbing. Raping. It was the same story.”

Karine could almost decipher a chant coming from the rioters in the streets below her apartment. What was to become known in history as “Black January,” Baku city’s Muslim-led pogrom to eradicate Armenians due to ethnic tensions over land claims, had begun.

Bones from the Armenian Genocide, circa 1920s, from The Commentator.

Bones from the Armenian Genocide, circa 1920s, from The Commentator.

No time to pack pictures or jewelry. Food was important. They would need water, and money. In those days, and in the Soviet Union, no one had bank accounts. Cash was the only recognized tender, something of which she had precious little.

Karine stiffened. The chant became clear. “Out! Armenian Christians. Out!” Karine, pronounced Ka-ree-na, told her boys to start calling her Katia, a Russian name, instead of her given and easily recognizable Armenian one.

Marine traveled fast as she could to her sister’s apartment complex. The roads teemed with people. She kept her face lowered to hide her white complexion.  She said there was no time for her to return to her apartment to pack a suitcase.

“I heard screaming,” Marine said. “It was a woman’s voice. And this time I was scared. I asked myself why hadn’t I left already?”

Twin sisters, Marine and Karine Pirumova, with father and brother

Twin sisters, Marine and Karine Pirumova, with father and brother

X Marks an Armenian

The systematic destruction of anything Armenian left approximately 300 dead, and forced 250,000 Armenians into exile in January 1990, according to a 2010 conference made public by the Armenian National Academy of Sciences. From the South Fargo home of Jim and Eloyce Kenward, Karine’s sponsors, the sisters spoke of a secret list marked with X’s for every Armenian in Baku.

News was heavily censored. Information was blocked. The pogrom was a direct response from Soviet Azerbaijan to the Armenian demonstrators urging the Kremlin to allow Karabakh back into Armenia. Both Armenian and Azerbaijani held claims to the area, which had long before belonged to Christian Armenians.

“In 1923, Stalin gave this land to Azerbaijan, and under Gorbachev, Armenians decided to take this land back,” Marine said.

The protests sparked Azerbaijani hatred, long simmered to coals during Soviet occupation. In an attempt to quash the Armenian movement, special forces called Azeri Omon initiated the pogrom in Sumgait in 1988, and later in similar assaults in Kirovabad, Baku, and in Karabakh, according to the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.

Exact numbers of Armenians killed in 1990 are still a mystery. In 2010, the director of the Center for Caucasus Studies at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Vladimir Zakharov, said xenophobia was always a problem, even under Soviet rule.

“Hatred against Armenians passed on from generation to generation and today the image of Armenians as an enemy to Azerbaijan is propagated at the national level,” Zakharov said.

Abesalom Pirumov

Abesalom Pirumov

Hatred, Karine said, that her father knew well. Despite the fact that he watched his mother gunned down, that the family mansion and surrounding city was burned to the ground in 1920, and that he was forced to flee to Baku, her father did not reciprocate the hatred.

Once nobility, and at the tender age of 13, he fled the family’s grand ancestral home in Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh, with nothing but the clothes on his back. He survived, and later married a tailor’s daughter, Evgenia Pirumova, and raised twin daughters and one son. He rarely spoke of the troubles of 1920, except to weep openly when he spoke of his mother. He never uttered a harsh word against the Soviet Union, even after his brother was imprisoned for 17 years under Stalin’s regime for crimes against the communist state. Like the Pirumova sisters, his family in 1920 never expected the violence to reach such a crescendo. A recent book published in Russian entitled Pirumov and Pirumova by Yuri Pirumov, shows pictures of extended family, once generals, intellectuals, and revolutionaries, and the family mansion, now in ruins.

Destitute and orphaned, Abesalom survived the 170-mile journey from Shusha to Baku.   Other family members, including the Pirumova’s maternal grandfather, was forced into the death caravans and into the Syrian Desert. He too survived, but rarely spoke of the ordeal while Karine and Marine were young.

A bookkeeper by trade, Abesalom’s aspirations in life were to sleep peacefully at night, and never overstep his bounds. He was an honest, hardworking man, who sipped a little vodka to calm his nerves at night.

Pirumov family mansion ruins1920s

Pirumov family mansion ruins 1920s

During the first pogrom against Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire, which began on April 24, 1915, more than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred in what most historians now call the Armenian Genocide, according to the New York Times and the Armenian Genocide Museum. Some scholars claim the “Great Crime” was the first genocide of the 20th Century, even though the word genocide was not coined until after World War II.

During the first phase of the organized extermination, young men were conscripted into the Ottoman army, then forced to give up their weapons, dig their own graves, and face firing squads, according to the Armenian Genocide Museum. The second phase began with the arrest of several hundred Armenian intellectuals and elite, who were summarily beheaded. Mass exile began the third phase. Thousands died from organized attacks along the way, epidemic disease, and starvation, according to the Armenian Genocide Museum. The forced marches, nicknamed “Caravans of Despair” sent thousands of Armenians into the Syrian Desert, only to be attacked by Sultan-backed bandits, according to the Armenian National Institute.

Pirumova sisters' grandparents - seated (pre 1915)

Pirumova sisters’ grandparents – seated (pre 1915)

American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire before and during World War I, Henry Morgenthau, reported on the widespread slaughter vigilantly, and later wrote a book called Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.

“Cold-blooded, calculated state policy,” Morgenthau wrote. “I am confident the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this.”

Escape to Moscow

Under cover of night, the Pirumov family piled into a Lada taxi. The driver was a friend. Streets teemed with rioters. Men with clubs banged on the taxi’s hood, peering inside, asking if Armenians were inside.

The twin sisters crouched low, covering their dark hair and faces as best they could. Andrey and Genna clung to their mother’s waist.

“No.” The taxi driver waved the rioters away. “There are no Armenians in here.”

The drive to a Russian friend’s home was tense, Karine said. “I don’t know if she hadn’t heard the news, or if she was a hero, but she rescued us.”

Despite the growing violence, family friend Marina Korchazhkina endangered herself by giving food and shelter to the Pirumov family for two days, Karine said, until she received word a ship from her trading company could ferry them across the Caspian Sea to Krasnovodsk. During the wait, the sisters learned both their houses had been burgled.

“The very next day men in leather jackets robbed my house,” Marine said. She was single when the troubles began. “If I had been there, I would have been killed.”

While in hiding, the sisters’ also discovered their cousin, Melik, was attacked and nearly beaten to death inside a public bus. If the driver had not taken pity, he might have died, Karine said.

At the shipyard along the Caspian Sea, however, the Pirumovs and thousands of Armenians found some semblance of safety. The growing crowd pushed and shoved. The winter cold was bitter during the hours long wait. Azerbaijani ship crew teased the crowd, lowering the narrow gangplank to arms reach before hoisting it back up, Marine said.

“And we still weren’t sure if we would have been thrown off the ship,” Karine said. But the Pirumovs had no other place to go.

Soviet troops made their presence known throughout Baku, Marine said. “But it seemed they were waiting around for orders. Eventually, some soldiers started to help, like when we were at the shipyard they surrounded us. They were controlling so it was good.” Their encirclement kept rioters at bay, Marine said.

At midnight, the gangplank hit the dock. The crowd jostled forward. Marine screamed at the crowd to board slowly, for the walkway was narrow, and the icy seawaters below would surely swallow anyone who fell. Once on board, Marine found the captain, a former co-worker, who gave them a cabin.

“There were hundreds of people sleeping in the hallways,” Marine said. “We were very fortunate.”

From Krasnovodsk the Pirumov family traveled by plane to Moscow, at one time sneaking Karine’s two sons on board while Marine asked the captain for assistance, which was given. “The Russians were sympathetic,” Marine said. “But the Soviet government did very little to help, many times troops who were supposed to be protecting us turned their backs on us or stood there and watched.”

In Moscow, they stayed with their brother until kindly villagers accepted them in. Karine remembers being treated as an outsider because of her black hair. When her family was given an apartment with two rooms, neighbors bickered. She responded by telling them hard work, and no vodka, was her secret.

Refuge in Fargo

Marine was the first to see the Statue of Liberty from an airplane. Months of waiting in lines, bribing Soviet clerks, procuring the proper documents as a refugee took its toll, but when she landed with twenty dollars in her pocket, she felt happiness, and peace.

Marine's Soviet passport - photo by C.S. Hagen

Marine’s Soviet passport – photo by C.S. Hagen

Her sponsor, Lutheran Social Services, had arranged for her to travel to Fargo, North Dakota. She had never heard of the city or the state before, saw on a map it was close to Canada and wondered if Fargo was cold.

“But I was so happy I was going to the United States, I didn’t care where I was going.” Marine laughed. “I wondered if I could go to South Dakota because it sounded warmer.”

Lutheran Social Services offered Marine a job as a butcher, but she refused, saying she needed to learn English. Her first job was at Kmart, and although she wanted to work in the back, away from people, Kmart managers placed her at a cash register.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t understand,” Marine said. Both sisters no longer have English problems. Their Slavic accents are a delight to the ear. “And I learned quickly when I was on my break to take off my work vest, or customers would ask me questions I could not answer.”

She met the Kenward family through Olivet Lutheran Church, who agreed to become her sister’s sponsor.

“We met 24 years ago,” Jim Kenward said. “And since then we haven’t broken ties. Their family is our family.”

“I am so thankful to them and to the United States,” Marine said. “Our father lost everything, and we lost everything.”

Karine and her two sons arrived in Fargo years later and because they no longer held the status of refugees they arrived as “Privileged Immigration Parolees,” Karine said. She held up the documents proudly to prove it.

In Fargo today, the Pirumovs can find some of the comforts from their former lives. Karine cooks traditional dishes at home. Marine and her husband opened their own business, Anytime Transportation, and employed Karine as their bookkeeper.

“I am so glad I came here,” Karine said. One of her sons graduated from North Dakota State University, the other from Concordia College. She found Marina Korchazhkina, their savior in Baku, on Facebook, and is in frequent contact.

When asked about President Obama’s recent failure to publically recognize the Armenian troubles of 1915 as genocide, Karine sighed. “If genocide had been recognized by the world when this happened, maybe today would be better. Maybe, it wouldn’t have happened to the Jews.”

With the recent rise of ISIS near their home country, the Pirumova sisters are disturbed. There is little difference with the terrorist group’s systematic slaughter to the Ottoman savagery, or the 1990 Azerbaijani pogroms, they said. Armenia, ancient land of the Hittites, once the most powerful kingdom east of the Roman Empire, now a fledgling republic established in 1991, is the only Christian bastion in Central Asia.

“I am always thinking about the refugees, because I was one of them,” Marine said. “America takes immigrants, and this is what I appreciate about the United States. We are a country of immigrants.”

Pirumova sisters enjoying cake with the Keywords - photo by C.S. Hagen

Safe in Fargo, North Dakota, the Pirumova sisters enjoying cake with the Kenwards – photo by C.S. Hagen

 

The Warlords – Tientsin at War – Part V

TIANJINThis is the fifth story in the “Tientsin at War” series,which starts in 1918 and ends a few years before the Japanese full-scale invasion of mainland China. Although much of this true story takes place long before World War II, greedy warlords and the Zhili-Fentian civil wars drained China’s central government treasuries and weakened the country as a united military power, opening the coast to invasion.  The personalities of this time period are villains and heroes both, and far too many to include in one story. It was a time with no right and no wrong, for these people, there was only victory or defeat. 

By C.S. Hagen

Tientsin, China – If trees are the spirits to a city, then the old crabapple at Zhongshan Park is a broken one.  Its now gnarled trunk was only a sapling during China’s Warlord Era; its brothers – the vibrant cypress and weeping willows – have long since been replaced by younger strains.  Once, not so long ago, street side hawkers combed its lower limbs clean of its tart, coin-sized fruit for skewering and sugary glazing.

The tree’s too old for bearing fruit anymore.  If the old crabapple had a memory, or more appropriately if humans had ears that could hear, the tree might quiver before sharing the story of a murdered father and a son’s revenge.  Swaying a little closer to the ground, its voice low as a Mongolian throat singer’s, it might tell another similar tale, but this time of a daring woman’s vengeance upon a bloodthirsty warlord.

Then, straightening one twisted branch, scattering turtledoves, the old crabapple would point to a nondescript spot.

The spot where “Little Xu” executed “Slaughter Lu.”

 

A Gentleman’s Vengeance Can Wait Ten Years and Not Be Late [1918 – 1925]

Lu Jianzhang (陆建章)

Lu Jianzhang (陆建章)

Like most ambitious people in the Warlord Era, the decade after the Qing emperor’s abdication, Lu Jianzheng, or “Slaughter Lu,” rose and fell with his allegiances.  He was a married man, had at least one son named Lu Chengwu (陆承武), but built a reputation for being a black sheep, and in revolutionary circles was greatly feared.  When offered a chance to become the head of security for the new secret police in Peking, he leapt at the opportunity.

“It was a useful institution,” The Brisbane Courier reported on Friday, September 13, 1918 about Peking’s old secret police called Yuan Shi-kai’s Martial Court.  “The purpose of this position was to condemn to death political recalcitrant[s], without regard to the law.

“Its many victims were arrested in secret and polished off without a trial.”

The Martial Court became legal after Yuan Shi-kai, the dogmatic general who ousted the last Qing emperor from power to become the Republic of China’s first president then monarch, decided to rid the country of revolutionaries.  He was known as the “Father of Warlords,” and when he died unexpectedly of kidney failure in 1916, his armies fragmented into factions and Slaughter Lu lost his power.  He joined the clique closest to home.

“After Yuan’s death Lu found himself of little account,” The Brisbane Courier reported.  “Took the side of the Zhili Clique, and got himself greatly disliked.”

"Little Shu" (徐树铮)

“Little Shu” (徐树铮)

The two cliques vying for national power were the Zhili Clique, founded by Feng Guozhang, but led by Wu Peifu, and the Fengtian Clique, led by Zhang Zuolin, the “Rain Marshal.”

The Zhili Clique, named after modern day Hebei Province, was backed by western powers such as Great Britain and Germany.  The Fengtian Clique, named after modern day Liaoning Province, had Japan at its back.  Both cliques differed on who should be the next president, and Slaughter Lu traveled to Tientsin to discuss options to avoid war with Fengtian General Xu Shuzheng, who, despite his enormous size was better known as Little Xu.

While in Tientsin, Little Xu invited Slaughter Lu for tea at the Fengtian headquarters, formerly the Tientsin Yamen, or Qing Dynasty magistrate’s office and home, which is at the southern corner of Zhongshan Park.

“Unfortunately, he seemed to have thrown caution to the winds,” The Brisbane Courier reported.  “General Xu himself shot down the victim with a revolver.”

On the pretense of taking a pleasurable stroll through the garden, Little Xu’s soldiers first gunned down Slaughter Lu’s bodyguards, and then forced Slaughter Lu to his knees while Little Xu walked up behind him and put one bullet into the back of his head.

An old picture of former Tientsin Yamen area, Fengtian HQ, now near Zhongshan Park

An old picture of former Tientsin Yamen area, Fengtian HQ, now near Zhongshan Park – online sources

“From any point of view,” The Brisbane Courier reported, “it was a commendable murder, for Lu Jianzhang [Slaughter Lu] seems to have had a mind almost worthy of Prussians.”

Little Xu fled to Peking and procured a meeting with the Republican Cabinet, who whitewashed him.  Nobody wanted Slaughter Lu alive, and Little Xu endured no lengthy trial or jail time.

Slaughter’s Lu’s assassination carried few headlines in Western and Chinese press.

The same area today

The same area today – online sources

The Tientsin and Peking Times, one of North China’s most prominent newspapers at the time, smelled scandal.  “On that occasion General Lu accepted an invitation to lunch with General Xu.  On arriving at the latter’s residence he was arrested, taken out into the courtyard, and shot, without any form of trial or any charge being preferred against him.  A day or two later an attempt was made to regularize this murder by the issue of a mandate over the seal of President Feng Guozhang, accusing General Lu of attempting to incite the Zhili troops to revolt, and ordering his immediate execution and the cancellation of all his honors and titles.”

Besides the Tientsin and Peking Times, few cared, and there was a war to be fought, which the Zhili Clique won two years later.

Slaughter Lu’s son, Lu Changwu, or “Little Lu,” however, didn’t forget.  He quietly climbed military rank and file for the next seven years becoming a captain in the Zhili Clique’s army.    He was a cousin to Feng Yuxiang, the “Christian General,” also of the Zhili Clique, and married the daughter of a Tientsin flour and cotton taipan.  Little Lu waited, savoring vengeful thoughts, for the perfect time.

Little Xu quickly rose to military prominence through his notoriety as a bandit leader, the Examiner reported on Friday, January 1, 1926.  He was also called notorious, by the Riverine Herald, on August 9, 1921.  When Little Xu fell out of favor, he hid, mostly in the Japanese Concession at Tientsin.  Once, according to the Riverine Herald, when he was sentenced to death he fled to Peking’s Japanese Legation to hide.  He escaped on August 8, 1921 through a military cordon by being stuffed inside a trunk as officer’s luggage.

“Now he is again loose in China, and has recommenced his depredations,” the Riverine Herald reported.

He continued his “depredations” until December 29, 1925.

Little Lu was ready.  He attacked Little Xu’s train at the Langfang Train Station, sixty miles to Tientsin’s north.  A bomb, according to some newspaper sources, stopped the train and killed Little Xu’s bodyguards.  And then, just as with his father, Little Lu led Little Xu out into the train station’s platform and shot him in the back of the head.  At least twenty bystanders watched the execution, none were threatened or killed for what they saw, which alludes, ever so slightly, that Little Lu was confident with his guanxi, or powerful relationships.

Little Lu wasted no time.  He immediately began contacting local newspapers, admitting his guilt and describing his reasons with a confession he had written prior to the assassination.

“I waited seven long years to avenge the shooting of my father,” Little Lu wrote in his pamphlet.  “By the help of his spirit, Xu has not escaped my hand.”

This time, the murder did not escape the press.  From Paris to Tokyo, Mississippi to London, Little Lu became a filial son, seeking revenge for the cowardly murder of his father.

“Slayer, apparently still free, declares act revenge for murder of father,” The Evening Independent reported on December 30, 1925.

Reuters reported he was accompanied by a large amount of troops at the time of the assassination, and as of January 9, 1926 still had not been arrested.

“A Chinese Son’s Vengeance,” was another headline.

“Dramatic Climax to an old Chinese Feud,” reported another.

The British Consulate in Tientsin and again the Tientsin and Peking Times held a differing opinion.  Both believed another man, much more powerful than Little Lu was pulling the strings.

“His murder was accomplished with the connivance and active support of…  Marshal Feng Yuxiang [the Christian General].  It suggests, too, that those who planned the murder went to considerable pains to reduplicate, as far as possible, the circumstances in which Lu Jianzhang [Slaughter Lu] was shot in “Little Xu’s” back garden in Tientsin in June 1918.”

The Tientsin and Peking Times uncovered information other journalists had missed.

“Little Xu, on the 29th ultimo, appears to have been invited to tea… He declined the invitation, and was then forcibly removed from the train, trussed up like a fowl, and shot during the following night.”

While other newspapers sympathized with the image of a grieving son sworn to vengeance, Little Lu’s plot miscarried, according to the Tientsin and Peking Times.  The newspaper connected both murders to a conspiracy and cover-up leading straight to the Zhili Clique’s top officials.  Conveniently, the Christian General, accused by the newspaper of wrong doing, decided to retire from public office soon after the assassination.

“It is quite clear that those responsible for the murder were highly-placed officers… It may further be possible that Feng Yuxiang’s much advertised decision to retire, at any rate temporarily, to the sands of the Gobi, was influenced by the unexpected number of witnesses to the crime whose presence at the wayside station of Langfang can scarcely have assisted the plot.”

Little Lu surrendered to authorities a few hours after the assassination, the Tientsin and Peking Times reported, saying he had been an intimate friend of Little Xu’s, and had studied with him at the military college in Japan.  Although his actions that morning had been illegal, so also was his father’s murder.

“Lu Chengwu, who boasts that he committed the actual murder, was not only permitted to go scot free, but seems to have been given every facility for broadcasting telegrams glorifying in his act.

“We cannot pretend to have felt any regret of hearing of Little Xu’s death.  But a murder is a murder, by whomsoever committed.”

Precious little is known about what happened to Little Lu after journalists tired of his story.  Not long after the Zhili Clique won the first war, a second war began and the Christian General betrayed his comrades by shifting his allegiance to the Fengtian Clique, thus ensuring the Zhili Clique’s demise.  Little Lu most likely followed his cousin’s example, and for a time, in Tientsin, there was a semblance of peace.

Until Wednesday, November 13, 1935, when another assassination with alarming similarities took place inside a Buddhist temple, only this time committed by an untrained woman.

 

Bloodbath in a Buddhist Temple [1926-1935]

The day Shi Mulan dedicated her life to murder; she chose to unbind her broken lotus feet.

The process was painful.  Even as an adopted daughter, lotus feet had been a Shi family tradition for centuries.  Lack of the disfigurement meant a lesser dowry, perhaps even a poor choice for a husband.  Although she was noticeably pretty and said to be a filial daughter, nobody wanted a twenty-year-old big-footed girl.

“Binding feet is painful,” a commentator for a special report on China’s CCTV7 reported.  “But to unwrap her feet was even more painful.”  The healing process would take months, re-breaking every bone in both feet before she could walk on ten toes.

Shi Mulan was born in a Shandong Province village, but was adopted by Fengtian General Shi Congbin, who had been promoted to director of military affairs in Shandong Province and served as brigade commander under the local warlord Zhang Zongchang, widely known as the “Monster.”  In October 1925 after the Fengtian Clique regrouped from its losses and invaded once again, Shi Congbin found himself surrounded by Zhili General Sun Chuanfang’s troops.

(Left) Shi Mulan (施剑翘), name later changed to Shi Jianqiao (施剑翘) in Tientsin - online sources (Center) Shi Congbin (施從濱) (Right) Sun Chuanfang (孙传芳)

(Left) Shi Mulan (施剑翘), name later changed to Shi Jianqiao (施剑翘) in Tientsin (Center) Shi Congbin    (施從濱) (Right) Sun Chuanfang (孙传芳) – online sources

He was caught and Sun Chuanfang beheaded him.  His severed head was wrapped with chicken wire, and strung from a telephone pole at the Bengbu Train Station for three days.

“Killing an enemy was nothing to Sun Chunfang,” CCTV7 reported.  “But they had a kind of soldier’s understanding, a moqi, with each other, that they would not kill captives.  “It is not known why Sun Chuanfang killed him, maybe he was just being a headache.”

News traveled fast to Tientsin, where Mulan was studying at the Tianjin Normal University.  The local Red Cross in Bengbu gathered her father’s head and body, and she risked her life to retrieve the body for burial.

Gulan was Shi Congbin’s adopted daughter, but he loved her like a real daughter, CCTV7 reported.  At her father’s grave she swore vengeance.  “I am just a girl, with no gun, no power.  Wait until I have the power, and I will avenge you, dieh.

She first went to a tangge, or unrelated brother, named Shi Zhongcheng, who promised he would see her avenged.  His promises fell through, however, when he was promoted to a military commander position.  Her tangge would not dare risk his prestige.

Next, she sought help from a marriage suitor, Shi Jinggong, who promised to assist her kill Sun Chuanfang if she married him.  And she did.  She bore two children while waiting for her husband to fulfill his promise, but he assumed time as well as their children would tame his wife’s vengeful ambitions.

“She was extremely disappointed in her husband’s failure,” CCTV7 reported.  “Two men in her life failed her, but she was cemented in her need for vengeance.  She decided she would personally see to it that Sun Chuanfang would die.”

Sun Chuanfang's house at 15 Tai'an Road

Sun Chuanfang’s house at 15 Tai’an Road, Tientsin – online sources

Once an infamous warlord, Sun Chuanfang could not hide easily in Tientsin.  Everyone knew where he lived.  With her big, stable feet, Mulan was able to move relatively freely about Tientsin, discovering the license plate number of Sun Chuanfang’s car.  She watched him exit a movie theater in the British Concession, and followed him home only to realize there was no way in.  Cars were searched.  Two guards stood at tall iron gates at all times.  When she lingered, soldiers ordered her away.  Everywhere Sun Chuanfang went, heavily armed men accompanied him.

Mulan worried she would fail her promise to her father.

While walking through the British Concession one day, she saw protestors marching, vehemently damning Nationalist policies of softening relations with Japan, many of which had been instigated by Sun Chuanfang.  The sight of so many people united in a common cause gave her an idea, CCTV7 reported.  Although she never received a proper education, Mulan vent her frustrations by writing a manifesto that she had printed into pamphlets, signing the declaration under a new name, Jianqiao, meaning “edge of the sword.”  In the pamphlet she wrote that she killed Sun Chuanfeng for vengeance, but that he was also a danger to China, and was scheming with the Japanese to sell Qingdao, in Shandong Province, her home.

“She realized that she needed to gather society’s sympathy if she was to succeed,” CCTV7 reported.  “She realized this when she saw the thousands of people marching down the street in protest.”

Mulan also made out a will, advising her brothers Erli and Dali to take care of mother and her children.

Her eldest brother, Dali, gave her a pistol.

Armed with a new name, new determination and a fully loaded Browning, Jianqiao went one last time to a local temple

Shi Mulan (施剑翘), name later changed to Shi Jianqiao (施剑翘) in Tientsin - online sources

Shi Mulan years after the killing in Tientsin – online sources

to burn incense.  A temple monk noticed her grief, knew of her father’s grisly death, and thought a salve was in order.

“Don’t be so disheartened,” CCTV7 reported the monk said.  “When Sun Chuanfang was young he was a tyrant, but now, he’s a devout Buddhist.”

The news took Jianqiao by surprise, and it didn’t take long for her to find the right temple, not more than a few blocks away from the Zhongshan Park in the Qingxiaoyuan Hutong.  She began frequenting the temple, telling monks her name was Dong Hui, which means “director” and “intelligent.”  She discovered Sun Chuanfang led chants and prayers every Wednesday and Saturday, sometimes bringing his family, and rarely his bodyguards.

According to a British Consulate at Peking report, dated January 8, 1935 and written by Sir A. Cadogan, Sun Chuanfeng had many enemies, and spent his ill-gotten gains by fixing the temple.

He retired from military career and founded the Tianjin Qingxiu lay-Buddhist Society, according to the Guangming Daily.

“Maybe the gods looked down on her with favor,” CCTV7 reported.

It was raining the morning of November 13, 1935.  Sun Chuanfang’s guards were nowhere to be seen.  Jianqiao first knelt in the back row, then made her way forward.  As Sun Chuanfang ended his prayers, she stood to his right side, slipped the Browning from a pocket and without waiting for him to turn, fired three bullets into his back.

Sun Chuanfang died instantly.  Monks screamed.  Worshippers backed away in panic.  She threw a handful of her pamphlets into the air.

Huala, huala.  The papers fluttered.

“Don’t be afraid,” CCTV7 reported Jianqiao said.  “I have come to avenge my father.  I will only kill this one person.  Nobody else needs to get hurt.  Don’t be afraid.”

She then sat down and waited for police.

Tianjin Jushilin Temple 天津居士林 “The Layman’s Forest” (old and recent) in the Number 1 Qingxiuyuan Hutong, Nankai District (天津居士林(南开区清修院胡同10) 669 Chengxiang Middle Road, built in the late Ming Dynasty, known as a Buddhist lodge.   Closed in 1952 after the death of the head monk, and was a hospital during the Cultural Revolution, fell into disrepair until 1982 when the lodge was restored.  It is an important historical relic.

Tianjin Jushilin Temple 天津居士林 “The Layman’s Forest” (old and recent) in the Number 1 Qingxiuyuan Hutong, Nankai District (天津居士林(南开区清修院胡同10) 669 Chengxiang Middle Road, built in the late Ming Dynasty, known as a Buddhist lodge. Closed in 1952 after the death of the head monk, and was a hospital during the Cultural Revolution, fell into disrepair until 1982 when the lodge was restored. It is an important historical relic. – online sources

Once again, media from around the world leapt like wolves to fresh blood.  Although news of warlords, kidnappings, Japanese troops and British warships filled the papers every day in Tientsin, the media hadn’t had a case as exciting as Jianqiao’s since 1925 and Little Lu’s assassination of Little Xu.

Jianqiao pleaded guilty in court, but said she was only doing her duty as a filial daughter.  The papers called her a heroine.

“Chinese Marshal Assassinated by Woman,” The Daily Perth reported.

“Woman Avenges Father,” The Mercury reported. “The assassination occurred while Sun was attending a Buddhist meeting.  The woman stepped forward and shot him three times.  He died instantly, and she then quietly awaited the arrival of the police.”

“Chinese Warlord Assassinated,” the Northern Standard reported.

Local newspapers made parallels to a female character in famed Chinese author Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, who carefully planned and avenged her father’s death before hanging herself from the rafters in an act of filial piety.

Tientsin courts first sentenced her to 10 years imprisonment, and then later changed her sentence to 1,000 years imprisonment.  And then, her father’s comrade, the Christian General Feng Yuxiang stepped in, and on October 1936 she was pardoned.

Many journalists, authors and government and consulate officials have made the connection that Feng Yuxiang, the Christian General, dealt a heavy hand in both assassinations.  Some said she was Generalissimo’s personal assassin.

“In his dreams Sun Chuanfeng could never have imagined this man’s daughter would come for revenge 10 years later, “ CCTV 7 reported.

Jianqiao, who later became an active communist, denied any secret deals with Feng Yuxiang or Chiang Kai-shek, remaining adamant until her death that she was only interested in avenging her father’s murder.

Perhaps, the old crabtree in Zhongshan Park would share a different story.  If only the tree could speak.

The first and second Zhili-Fengtian Wars lasted from 1922 to 1927, with few years of peace. It was a time of chaos and betrayal. Newspaper headlines during that time daily recorded the movements of various warlords from Shanghai to Tientsin, and their battles bathed the fields between Peking and Tientsin in blood. – artwork by C.S. Hagen

The first and second Zhili-Fengtian Wars lasted from 1922 to 1927, with few years of peace. It was a time of chaos and betrayal. Newspaper headlines during that time daily recorded the movements of various warlords from Shanghai to Tientsin, and their battles bathed the fields between Peking and Tientsin in blood. – artwork by C.S. Hagen

 

 

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