I was deeply influenced by my grand-uncle who had been a member of the Taiping Army. He often told me stories about the Taiping forces. The Taipings, he used to say, had food for everybody, the women unbound their feet, and the land was shared out among the tillers. This instilled in me the idea of taking the landlords’ riches to relieve the poor, of wiping out the landlords and finding a way out for the poor.
Chinese military leader, Marshal of the People's Republic of China (1898–1974)
Peng Dehuai (Chinese: 彭德怀) (24 October 1898 – 29 November 1974) was a prominent Chinese communist military leader who served as China's Defense Minister from 1954 to 1959. He successfully defended the Jiangxi Soviet, participated in the Long March and the Second Sino-Japanese War, and commanded Chinese troops in the Korean War. He clashed with Mao Zedong over Mao’s personality cult and economic policies associated with the Great Leap Forward, which led to Peng being labeled as a leader of an "anti-Party clique” and tortured during the Cultural Revolution. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1978.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Native Name:
彭德怀
•
彭德懷
Alternative Names:
Dehuai Peng
•
Peng Te-huai
•
Pengdehuai
•
Peng De Huai
•
Paahng Dakwaaih
•
Paang Dak-waai
From Wikidata (CC0)
I was born into a lower-middle peasant family on the 10th day of the 9th moon on the lunar calendar in 1898. All my family had at that time were a few thatched huts on eight or nine mu (hectre) of fallow and hilly land. We planted sweet potatoes and cotton on the fallow land and palms, tea, China fir and bamboo on the hill. Working hard and living frugally, the eight of us — my granduncle, grandmother, my parents and four boys barely managed to make ends meet.