Han Fuju

Han Fuju
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Han.

Han Fuju or Han Fu-chü (simplified Chinese: 韩复榘; traditional Chinese: 韓復榘; pinyin: Hán Fùjǔ; Wade–Giles: Han Fu-chü; 1890 in Ba county, Hebei - 24 January 1938 in Hankou) was a Kuomintang general in the early 20th century. He rose up the ranks of the Guominjun clique in the Warlord era but then went over to the Kuomintang, and held the position of military governor of Shandong from 1930 to 1938. Han had one wife, two concubines, and four sons.

Biography

Han Fuju was born in Dongshantai Village (Chinese: 东山台村; pinyin: Dōngshāntái Cūn), Ba County (Chinese: 霸县; pinyin: Bà xiàn) in Hebei Province. He had had little aptitude for schooling. Nonetheless, while quite young, he had worked as a clerk in his hsien ("county") until his gambling debts forced him to run away and enlist in the army of General Feng Yu-hsiang. Han rose quickly, from clerk to chief clerk, to lieutenant, to captain, and after an uprising, to major. During the warlord upheavals of the 1920s he emerged as commander of General Feng's 1st Army Group.

Governor

In 1928 he was appointed chairman (governor) of Henan province by Feng, and in 1929 he was confirmed in office and concurrently named commanding general of the 11th Division. When the Christian general revolted later in the year, Han declared his allegiance to the central government of Chiang Kai-shek. In the Central Plains War in 1930, Han fought against the rebel troops of Yen Hsi-shan and his former commander Feng Yu-hsiang in Shandong and was rewarded with appointment as governor of that province.[1]

Warlord

He took over Zhang Zongchang's role as the warlord in Shandong Province. In autumn 1932, unified the province after defeating the rival warlord Liu Zhennian, who controlled the eastern part of the province (in particular the sea port of Yantai) and was known as the "King of Eastern Shandong ". As governor, Han was a stern disciplinarian with civil servants and the military. He had virtually wiped out banditry and traffic in narcotics in campaigns of suppression. Through commercial operations, principally in cotton, tobacco, and real estate, he grew rich and gave generously to schools, hospitals, and civic improvements.[2]

In the mid-1930s he was the target of Japanese attempts to get him to incorporate his province of Shandong into one of the North China puppet states they were attempting to construct. After the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he commanded the 3rd Army Group and in 1937 was made Deputy Commander in Chief of the 5th War Area defending the lower Yellow River valley. Han was suspected of having conducted secret negotiations with the Japanese to spare his province and his position of power. When the Japanese crossed the Yellow River he abandoned his base in Jinan. Han abandoned his army on January 6 and fled to Kaifeng, where he was arrested on 11th and brought to Wuchang and was later executed by Chiang Kai-shek for disobeying orders from superior commanders and retreating on his own accord.[3]

Chiang did this to set an example for those not following his orders. According to one account, Han Fuju was executed in the sanctuary of the Changchun Temple (长春观), a Taoist temple at the outskirts of Wuchang (now, almost in the center of modern Wuhan) by a single pistol bullet fired into the back of his head by Chiang Kai-Shek's chief of staff, General Hu Zongnan.[4][5] There are only second-hand accounts of the execution.[6]

Career

Besides for his execution as a traitor, Han Fuju is remembered for his bad jokes and poetry.[7] One of his poems is about the Daming Lake in Jinan:[6]

大明湖 明湖大
Dàmíng hú míng hú dà
The Daming (the name "Daming" means "big bright") Lake, the bright lake is big
大明湖里有荷花
Dàmíng hú lǐ yŏu hé huā
In the Daming Lake are lotus flowers
荷花上头有蛤蟆
Hé huā shàng tóu yŏu há má
On the lotuses are toads
一戳一蹦达
Yī chuō yī bèng dá
[You] prick them once, [the toads] leap once

Sources

  1. ↑ Frank Dorn, The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-41: From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor (New York: Macmillan, 1974), pg. 81-82
  2. ↑ Dorn, pg. 81-82
  3. ↑ Dorn, pg. 82
  4. ↑ MacKinnon, Stephen R.; Capa, Robert (2008). Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China. University of California Press. p. 18. ISBN 0-520-25445-7.
  5. ↑ Stephen MacKinnon, "The Tragedy of Wuhan, 1938", Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, Special Issue: War in Modern China (October , 1996), pp. 931-943
  6. 1 2 Diana Lary, "Treachery, Disgrace and Death: Han Fuju and China's Resistance to Japan", War in History, 2006
  7. ↑ Diana Lary, "China's Republic", Cambridge University Press, 2007
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