Saturday, October 11, 2008

Xie Jinyuan

Xie Jinyuan , courtesy name Zhongmin , was a military leader and war hero.

Biography


A Hakka native, Xie was born in Jiaoling County in Guangdong. He majored in politics at Whampoa Military Academy, and after graduation was assigned to the 5th Regiment, 2nd Division as a platoon commander. In 1928 he was promoted to company commander, and in 1929 the division was involved in the defence of Shandong from a Japanese invasion and Xie was badly wounded in the defence. After he recovered he took command of the machine gun battalion of the regiment, and was later promoted to a Major and transferred as a staffer in the Wuhan HQ. In 1931 he accepted an assignment to the 78th Division of the 19th Route Army, and in October 1930 he was transferred to the 88th as the battalion commander of the Reserve Regiment, and later served as vice regimental commander and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. From October 1936 he served as chief of staff in the 262nd Brigade.

When he was transferred to the 524th Regiment in October 1937, he was not familiar with any of the men under his command. The 524th Regiment of the defended the Sihang Warehouse, in the final phase of the Battle of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Xie Jinyuan was assassinated on 24 April 1941, by Sergeant He Dingcheng and 3 other of his own troops, who were bought over by Wang Jingwei's collaborationist government. More than 100,000 people turned up for his funeral and he was posthumously made a Brigadier General of the National Revolutionary Army.

He married Ling Weicheng in 1929, and had 2 sons and 2 daughters: Youmin , Jimin , Xuefen and Lanfen .

Legacy


Xie Jinyuan's body was interred in a small garden along Singapore Road where his bunk used to be. In 1947 the Shanghai city government renamed Jiaoyuan Park as Jinyuan Park, and renamed an elementary school in the vicinity 12th District Jinyuan National Elementary School. The road to the immediate north of the warehouse was renamed Jinyuan Road.

On 16 April 1983, Xie's grave was moved to the Wanguo Public Mausoleum. In the same year, the barracks area was rebuilt and named Jinyuan Alley. In March 1986 the city council of Xie's hometown, Jiaoling, Guangdong, set up a monument in his honour, and his alma mater Jiankeng Elementary School was renamed Jinyuan Elementary School.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Does anyone out there knows of the descendants of Maj Gen Xie in China? My grandmother Xie Yamei is related to him. She died in Singapore after a long illness and her body was hang outside the Middleton Hospital by the Japanese Army in Singapore for relatives to claim the body. My father and my grandfather had to forgo her body in order to survive because they found that the Japanese was using her body to capture her relatives in order to blackmail Col Xie in Shanghai to surrender.

Please let me know ASAP. Thanks. David Seow