Anfuzhen, Neijiang, Ziliujing

Thursday, 21 March

At 7.15 in the morning I departed from the Round House. My companions included Deng Zhaoyin, Wen Yuanning(溫源寧),[1] Mei Xinru(梅心如), Zeng Qihui(曾啟輝), as well as Chief-of-staff Zhao Juxu (趙巨旭) who was sent by Deng Xihou (鄧錫侯, Jinkang晉康)[2] to take care of us along the way. Sun Fo, Wen Yuanning and Zhao Juxu were in the same car, while I was in the car with Deng Zhaoyin, Zeng Qihui and Mei Xinru. Although, with four of us in the car, it was quite crowded we enjoyed ourselves by chatting all the way. The weather was dull but with no rain so we did not experience any difficulty. We passed through Laifengyi, Yongchuan, Rongchang – and at 11.45 we arrived at Anfuzhen. (The common name was Shaojiufang.) Yu Jitang (余際堂) prepared lunch for us at his residence. Yu had been the army commander under Xiong Kewu (熊克武),[3] who had quite a long history in the Guangdong revolution. Now he focused on enterprises and it was quite wonderful for him to do so. Many of his children and nephews studied in Germany and France. I met his nephew, Yu Zhiyuan (余子元), at Wei Daoming’s place in Nanjing. Yu Jitang had great prestige in the nearby areas. His residence was also quite spacious. After lunch, I originally wanted to go to town to have a look for and buy renowned earthenware. (It was similar to Yixing (宜興)and Qinzhou (欽州).) But because time was limited I did not go. At 1.15 in the afternoon we left Anfuzhen, going through Longchang and Shuangfengyi. At three o’clock we arrived at Beimuzhen and crossed the river. The Chengdu-Chungking Road, Tuojiang Iron Bridge, was not yet finished, so cars still need to be transported by wooden ships, which takes a lot of time.  Luckily we had a special pass so we had priority in taking the ship, otherwise we would have had to wait for one or two hours as there were many lorries waiting to board. The Tuojiang scenery is quite nice and the water really clear. But its water flow is so fast the ship-trackers had to pull hard. Still it was not very fast. At 3.30 p.m. we reached Neijiang. We refilled our cars with petrol, so I, Deng Zhaoyin and Zeng Qihui took a walk in the commercial district. Neijiang is famous for sugar production. There are many shops selling sweets. We bought some. At four o’clock we left Neijiang. At five, we arrived at Ziliujing. Commissioner Zhang Xiuwen (張繡文) welcomed us to his apartment. Mayor Cao Shiwu (曹四勿) and the comrades of the Party headquarter also came. As the weather was bad we had dinner here and went to bed early.

[1] Wen Yuanning(1899-1984) was a native from Lufeng of Guangdong, who graduated from Cambridge University. He was an expert on English language and literature.

[2] Deng Xihou (1889-1964) was a military commander from Sichuan.

[3] Xiong Kewu(1885-1970) was a veteran revolutionary leader and military commander from Sichuan. He had studied with the military in Japan.