In the bustling downtown Jing’an District, Shanghai, a row of offwhite Shikumen buildings stand imposingly and quietly with green trees. The buildings keep silent, but every hallway, every room tells the remarkable course of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Here is the Memorial Site of the Second National Congress of the CPC, once known as No. 625 of Fudeli.
From July 16 to 23, 1922, the CPC’s Second National Congress was held, at which the CPC adopted its first Party Constitution, proposed the first program for democratic revolution and the first thought on a united front...
Shudeli where the Party’s First National Congress was held and Fudeli where the second was held have witnessed the founding and the early development of the CPC and left significant revolutionary legacies.
Visiting Fudeli, we can touch the light of revolution a century ago.
A simple site
In the late 20th century, Shanghai designed the east-west Yan’an Elevated Road and intentionally made a detour around the Memorial Site of the Second CPC National Congress, enabling this century-old Shikumen building to be preserved intact.
Nowadays, the inscriptions Xiu Jiu Ru Gu, Teng Jiao Qi Feng (literally meaning repairing the old to make it as it was before and the rising dragon and the soaring phoenix) on the lintel remain legible after renovation in an attempt to restore their original look.
A century ago, revolutionaries may not have noticed this detail. At that time, Fudeli was so unobtrusive that the just-founded CPC convened its Second National Congress here.
“As it was located at the junction of the Shanghai International Settlement and the Shanghai French Concession, Fudeli saw less strict public and security administration. In addition, the same Shikumen buildings stood in a row, so No. 625 did not draw attention. Moreover, the building had both accessible front and back doors for emergency evacuation in that severe context”, said You Wei, Party Branch Secretary and Deputy Director of the Memorial Site.
Back a century ago, the low-key Fudeli gathered so many ambitious young people.
For example, Li Da, then Publicity Director at the Central Bureau, and his wife Wang Huiwu rented a house here. As a scene in the film 1921 shows, Li Da emotionally sings The Internationale on the rooftop, while Wang Huiwu sheds tears, but she has firm eyes, demonstrating her confidence in her husband and the future.
They lived in Fudeli where they also engaged in underground revolutionary activities for the Central Bureau. The CPC Central Committee’s important guidelines, policies, political views, and instructions were developed here and delivered to the CPC organizations across the country. Li Da was responsible for processing and storing files of the Central Bureau, relevant affairs, and meetings. Beneath the staircase to the second floor, Li Da placed a small printing machine, based on which the Party’s first publishing house — People’s Publishing House — was founded. At that time, a large number of brochures publicizing Marxism were sent from the building to the forefront of the labor movement in Shanghai.
The building diagonally opposite the back door of Building No. 625 was Shanghai Pingmin Girls’ School initiated by Chen Duxiu, Li Da, and others. The Party fell short of funds, so Li Da and Wang Huiwu spared a part of their wages and remuneration to rent school buildings and made other preparations.
In February 1922, Shanghai Pingmin Girls’ School was officially opened and offered such courses as Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, economics, education science, and sociology. The faculty team was made up of famous learned scholars, most of whom were Party members, including Chen Duxiu, Liu Shaoqi, Chen Wangdao, and Shen Yanbing. This school had trained well-known female revolutionaries like Wang Jianhong, Ding Ling, and Qian Xijun.
As a young party, the CPC had been crossing the river by feeling for stones. As of the Second CPC National Congress, the number of CPC members across the country had risen from over 50 at the first session to 195. The CPC’s Second National Congress has developed the program for revolution on China’s actual situation to serve as the Party’s guide to action.
Those present at the Second National Congress were 12 representatives at an average age of 29 years old from all over the country, including Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao, Li Da, Yang Mingzhai, Luo Zhanglong, Wang Jinmei, Xu Baihao, Cai Hesen, Tan Pingshan, Li Zhenying, and Shi Cuntong. The last representative remains unknown to us because of the long history.
They were young and passionate. All of them had received a new type of education, among whom many had studied in France, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Their profound learning can bring them a good life even though they would not be devoted to revolution.
They gathered in Fudeli for a common dream. “These high-spirited and vigorous young people had been influenced by Marxism which they used based on China’s actual revolutionary fact. They kept learning, advanced with the times, and dared to make breakthroughs”, said Chen Shirui, Associate Professor at the Teaching and Research Department of Party Building of the Shanghai Party Institute of CPC.
From July 16 to 23, 1922, the CPC’s Second National Congress was held. In her later years, Wang Huiwu recalled that the venue was simply arranged, with a few chairs added. Two crates covered with a cloth were placed near the window to act as a temporary table. “They discussed and shared ideas, even during the meals downstairs.”
Wang Huiwu who participated in the first National Congress of the CPC as a guard resumed her position and witnessed the history at the second session. When the second session was underway, she stood guard outside with her newborn daughter in arms.
In 1958, the authorities in Shanghai testified No. 30, Lane 7, Old North Chengdu Road, Jing’an District (former No. 625 Fudeli, South Chengdu Road) as the venue of the CPC’s Second National Congress through time-consuming investigations. In addition, the venue was restored against the recorded descriptions of Li Da, Wang Huiwu, and others as well as relevant documents. Wang Huiwu wrote back to “explain the venue of the Second National Congress of the CPC”, and invited someone to draw a floor plan of No. 625 in Fudeli, on which bookshelves, beds, chairs, and other articles were vividly shown.
The memorial site restores those scenes. In the middle of the living room is a square table with eight chairs, while on both sides are armchairs and tea tables. Since the memorial site was opened in 2002, numerous tourists have visited here to search for the revolutionary history of Fudeli.
Formulation of the first Party Constitution
A hundred years ago, many people felt drowsy in the sultry and humid summer, but 12 young, passionate people gathered at No. 625 of Fudeli to explore a new free and independent world.
At that time, China faced the most prominent problem of the increasingly intense warlord dogfight manipulated by imperialist forces. When it was founded, the CPC had been aware that the realization of ideals was empty talk if warlords and imperialism brought calamity to the country and people were not overturned and a well-organized and disciplined party was not founded.
In the crowded Shikumen building, representatives discussed by weighing every word. During the three plenary sessions in eight days, they carefully drafted, discussed, revised, and voted for every clause. Eventually, the first Constitution of the Communist Party of China was formulated.
“The first and second national congresses of the CPC jointly marked the founding of the Party, with the formulation of the first Party Constitution as one of the symbols”, said Xin Ping, Chair of the Shanghai Society of History of Communist Party of China.
The first Party Constitution consists of six chapters and 29 articles, with more than 1,000 words, including Party members, organization, meeting, discipline, fund, and supplementary articles, introducing specific requirements on qualifications and procedures of joining the Party, the Party’s organizing principles and chart, and disciplines and systems.
Different from the existing Party Constitution, the first one does not have general principles. The Resolutions on the Articles of Organization of the Communist Party of China approved at the second CPC National Congress mainly served as the general principles. It clarified that the CPC is a proletarian vanguard for the first time as well as two principles that the Party must follow during its building: (1) All Party’s activities must reach the public; (2) There must be organizations and training adapting to a revolution within the Party.
The History of the Communist Party of China describes the second national congress, “The Constitution of the Communist Party of China approved at this session is the Party’s first constitution since its founding. It makes specific provisions on the qualifications of Party members, the construction of Party organizations at all levels and Party disciplines.” Party history experts believe that the first Party Constitution poses strict requirements on discipline. For example, those who, for no reason, fail to serve the Party for consecutive four weeks or to pay membership dues for three months will be expelled from the Party. Those who violate the Party Constitution and resolutions, fail to attend the congress for no reason, and disclose the Party’s confidential information must be expelled from the Party. In addition, it introduces fund management.
“In such a harsh political context, it was hard yet forceful for a new party organization to introduce strict requirements on its members”, said Xin Ping.
In August 1922, shortly after the closing of the second session, Zhu De who was then a member of kuomintang finally found Chen Duxiu in Shanghai despite all hardships and expressed his willingness to join the CPC. Looking at the eager man, Chen told him that the CPC was stricter than kuomintang and all Party members must have a firm revolutionary will and stand the acid test of struggles that would not end in a short time.
Though he was refused, Zhu De did not give up but carefully read books about revolutionary theory presented by Chen Duxiu and continued to apply for joining the Party. Later, Zhu De went to Europe and successfully joined the Party in line with the strict organizational procedures under the recommendation of Zhou Enlai and Zhang Shenfu.
Of course, the CPC, which was still in its infancy then, hoped that more outstanding young people would join it. Doing so was only because of its strict discipline.
At the CPC’s Third National Congress in 1923, Chen delivered a report on behalf of the Second Central Executive Committee. He said, “When the First National Congress was convened, the Party hadn’t developed its creed or regulations, and its requirement for the dictatorship of the proletariat was just in the air. By the time of the Second Congress, however, it had its creed and had identified a suitable path based on China’s actual conditions through its practical efforts.”
In the view of Xu Guangshou, an expert in Party history and a researcher at the Lixin Branch Center of the CPC Great Party Building Spirit Research Center for Colleges and Universities, the “practical efforts” here mainly refer to the formulation of the first Constitution of the Communist Party of China (hereinafter referred to as “the Constitution”) at the Second CPC National Congress, which not only marked the start of the CPC’s self-building but also provided guidance for CPC members’ words and deeds, improved inner-party activities, promoted organizational development and enhanced the CPC’s combat capability. After the Second National Congress, workers went on strikes across the country, with their political awareness raised swiftly and the organization of the strikes much better than before. Also, the movements of youths and women made new progress.
Today, the Memorial Site of the Second National Congress of the CPC has a wall specially designed to display the Party Constitution of different versions from different times. A visitor said emotionally, “The Party Constitution witnessed the CPC’s continuous development from a minor Party to a powerful major Party and reflected its unremitting efforts for the fulfillment of its faiths.”
Safeguard faiths
The academic circles of Party history reached a consensus a long time ago about the content and historical significance of the CPC’s Second National Congress. Compared with the First National Congress, about which there are no Chinese documents left and whose holding time was determined by Party history scholars through multiple clues, the original Chinese documents passed at the Second National Congress have been completely preserved so that what happened in history is clearly presented to researchers.
For example, Article 29 of the Party Constitution reads: “The Constitution was decided by the Second National Congress of the Communist Party of China (July 16-23 1922),” which clearly points out the duration, more accurately, the start and end dates of the Congress.
The preserved Chinese document of the Second National Congress of the CPC—Resolutions of the Second National Congress of the Communist Party of China—contains resolution documents passed at the Second National Congress, including the Party Constitution, which occupies the last part.
The yellowed pamphlet of the Resolutions is now treasured in the Central Archives. It was stamped with “Treasured by Zhang Jingquan (Renya), behind which is a legendary story of a faith guardian.
Zhang Renya, who styled himself Jingquan, was born in 1898 in Xia’nan Village, Xiapu Town, Beilun, Zhejiang Province. He was an early CPC member and once led Shanghai’s gold and silver industry labor movement. “Zhang spent most of his years for the revolutionary cause in Shanghai. He joined the revolution very early and set foot in a wide range of fields, making great contributions to Shanghai’s movements of labor and youths, Party building, secret transportation and publication and distribution under the early leadership of the CPC,” said Chen Caiqin, Deputy Director of the First Research Division of the Party History Research Office of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee.
With an enterprising spirit and through practical efforts, Zhang gradually grew from an ordinary handicraft worker to an excellent Party official. In 1924, Zhang explained in a self-statement why he joined the Party, “Although I represent a handicraft worker of the middle and petty bourgeoisie, what happening to me has made me loyal to the proletariat. As a member of the proletariat, I naturally want it to be stronger and to guide proletarian people to improve their minds. Facts of the past have told me that the CPC is the brain of the proletariat, so I joined the CPC, which is not an impulse decision.”
Loyalty and faith integrated into Zhang’s revolutionary career. In 1927, when the “April 12 Anti-Revolutionary” Coup occurred, China’s domestic revolution took a dramatic turn and the situation worsened. At the critical time, what came to Zhang’s mind first was the Party’s documents and Marxist-related books and periodicals. At the end of this year, Zhang, who had not returned home for a long time, pushed open the door of his home in Xiapu, Ningbo, where after handing over some documents and books to his father Zhang Jueqian, he just left and devoted himself into the revolution.
When the CPC was just founded, it took many of its actions in secret, so that even Zhang’s family did not know where he was. To protect the documents his son left, Zhang Jueqian made up a story that his son was unfilial and died away from home and built him a “cenotaph” inside which the documents were wrapped with oiled paper and hidden in an empty coffin.
As Zhang Renya still did not go home when the People’s Republic of China was founded, Zhang Jueqian asked his third son Zhang Jingmao to hand over the documents and books to a Party organ. The first cover-to-cover Chinese translation version of the Party Constitution was published in September 1920, all issues of the monthly magazine Communist from 1920 to 1921, documents of the Second National Congress of the CPC ... “Because of his shrewdness and farsightedness, some valuable historical documents and stories of the early CPC have been kept,” added Chen.
Zhang Renya’s family had long searched for him. In 2005, his family read in the Red China — the official newspaper of the provisional central government of the Soviet Republic of China — that he died in 1932. The eulogy reads, “Comrade Renya worked staunchly and diligently for the revolution, and he adheres to the path of the Communist Party of China and fought resolutely against all incorrect ideologies ...”
Seeing that, his family felt completely relieved, with their eyes full of tears.
The non-fiction drama Once Upon a Time in Fudeli — which is on the history of the Second CPC National Congress and early CPC members guarding the Constitution — tells this moving story. On the stage, Zhang Renya runs around with an old suitcase for the revolution. In another act, his relatives, who miss him so much that they keep searching for him. When Zhang Renya’s niece Zhang Wanghong finally found where her second uncle Zhang Renya was and “told” her grandfather who died many years before that her uncle sacrificed for the revolution, the audience was focused and quiet, while many were weeping.
Jointly produced by the Publicity Department of the CPC Jing’an District Committee and the Bureau of Culture and Tourism of the District, the drama has toured the country, moving countless young people. Wu Bing, a post-90s scriptwriter, said she was also deeply touched by Zhang’s story. In her opinion, Zhang’s sacrifice was an embodiment of greatness. She hoped that more young people would know the history of the Second CPC National Congress and the guarding of the first Party Constitution as well as the devotion and the sense of responsibility of relevant important historical figures.
Wu wrote her feeling of sentiment for and tribute to Zhang Renya into the theme song of the drama, which sings, “Flowers bloom all over the cliff, and wildfires devour the desolated. A youngster goes away into the distance, carrying an old suitcase packed with aspirations ...”
“Rising Dragon and Soaring Phoenix”
According to the memories of delegates, on July 23, when the Second CPC National Congress concluded, Chen Duxiu forgot that it was a secret meeting, thus standing up directly and reading aloud the documents passed at the congress as if delivering a speech.
This passionate scene is recreated in the drama a hundred years later. Through singing, narration and acting, performers of the drama use two hours to present almost all the highlights of the whole drama and demonstrate the power of youths. One climax of the drama just unfolds when the performers sing “Long Live the Communist Party of China,” accompanied by powerful music.
This resounding cry comes from the Declaration of the Second National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which is a document of great historical significance. It clarified the Party’s lowermost and highest creeds, preliminarily expounded the nature, object, driving forces, strategies, tasks and goals of China’s revolution at that time, and identified the future path of the revolution. At its end, “Long Live the Communist Party of China” was publicly cried for the first time.
The Congress elected Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao and Cai Hesen as members of the drafting committee for the Declaration and other resolutions.
The Declaration pointed out that the object of China’s revolution was “capitalist-imperialism and the feudal forces of warlords and bureaucrats” and the nature of the revolution was a “democratic revolution.” It stated that under historical conditions at that time, the Party’s goal was to “eliminate civil strife, overthrow warlords and realize domestic peace,” “overthrow the oppression of international imperialism and achieve the complete independence of the Chinese nation” and “unify China as a truly democratic republic.” This was in fact the Party’s creed for anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution then, that is, the Party’s lowermost creed. At the same time, it pointed out that the Party was to “organize the proletariat, establish a political dictatorship of workers and peasants by means of class struggle, eradicate the private property institution and gradually realize a communist society.” This is reflective of the CPC’s adherence to the highest creed formulated at its first National Congress.
From the Opium War to the May Fourth Movement, China’s democratic revolution had encountered a lot of setbacks because none of the then political parties had a clear understanding of the object and driving forces of the revolution to formulate a targeted creed for it. Only one year after its establishment, however, the CPC put forward a thorough anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary creed. “It sufficiently proves that only the Chinese working class and political party armed with Marxism can identify a correct way for China’s revolution and lead it towards victory, “ said Xin Ping.
Like a textbook from a hundred years ago, Fudeli vividly showcases CPC members’ aspirations, enthusiasm and struggles at that age. Like a “Teng Jiao Qi Feng (Rising Dragon and Soaring Phoenix),” four conspicuous Chinese characters engraved on the door lintel of the conference site, the CPC has since then embarked on a new journey.
