Wartime Spy Ladies: Liu Hulan

Liu Hulan (刘胡兰) was born in 1932 in Yunzhouxi village, in the Wenshut county of the Shanxi province. She was a young female spy during the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. She has served as a potent and forceful model for various segments of the rural population that needed to be co-opted by the Party in the period preceding the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.

She joined the Communist Party in 1946 and soon after joined an association of women working in support of the Liberation Army. She was actively involved in organizing the villagers of Yunzhouxi in support of the Communist Party of China. As an organizer, she had set up a chapter of the Women's Federation, and in her capacity as secretary of that chapter, she had been actively involved in moblizing her fellow villagers to support the party in the civil war.

On 12 Jan 1947, the Kuomintang army invaded her village in response to the assassination of Shi Peihuai, the village chief of Yunzhouxi, who was known to be loyal to the Kuomintang. Upon entering the village, Kuomintang soldiers rounded up several reputed Communist Party members believed to be involved of the assassination, among them the teenager Liu Hulan. The party members were decapitated in the town square. Before killing Liu Hulan, the executioners paused, giving her one final chance to renounce her allegiance to the Communist Party. She refused, and was immediately beheaded. She was 14 years old.

In that same year, Liu was made a model. Mao penned the slogan "A great life, a glorious death" in her memory. In 1957, the Liu Hulan Memorial Hall was erected in Wenshuixian, Shanxi Province. One of its features became the Liu Hulan statue. Although she seems to have been replaced by more updated successors in recent decades, she remains a fixture in the pantheon of heroes.

Photos found at Chineseposters.net