First Sail of the Eastern Line: This Place Brings the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign Scene to Life More Vividly and Realistically

"Cross the Yangtze River, Liberate All of China." 71 years ago, at the call of the Party Central Committee, a million brave soldiers gathered on the north bank of the Yangtze, starting from Hukou in the west and stretching to Jingjiang in the east, forming a thousand-li front for crossing the river. Jingjiang was the eastern bridgehead of the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign, truly the "First Sail of the Eastern Line."

Today, where heroes once fought, a memorial park named "First Sail of the Eastern Line" has been carefully built. The park follows the Yangtze riverbank and was constructed on the original wetlands. By the river stands a group of sculptures depicting a million troops crossing the Yangtze, making one feel as if they are seeing the smoke of gunpowder and hearing the booming cannon fire from those days.

I stood before the sculptures in deep thought. The scene of thousands of sails and hundreds of boats racing forward played out vividly before my eyes like a film: thick smoke billowing, cannons roaring, huge waves churning on the river surface, soldiers leaping onto boats and advancing toward the opposite shore through a hail of bullets. These vivid images are excellently captured in the sculptures.

"First Sail of the Eastern Line" was inscribed by General Ye Fei in 1999. The word "first" carries several meanings. It refers to the first in time: without counting the Central Group that crossed earlier, the main offensive of the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign commenced from Jingjiang. For the entire campaign, the success or failure of the crossing at Jingjiang was pivotal to the overall situation. After the Central Group crossed, the Kuomintang's Yangtze defense line showed signs of fragmentation and even collapse. If the Eastern Group at Jingjiang failed to cut off the enemy Tang Enbo Group's retreat to Shanghai and Hangzhou, the campaign would not achieve its goal of destroying the enemy's main force along the Yangtze. If the Kuomintang main force retreated to major cities like Hangzhou and Shanghai to hold out, it would drag the People's Liberation Army into a brutal urban battle, causing tremendous losses to the people.

What determined the success of the Eastern Group's crossing on the night of April 21 was precisely the support work of the Jingjiang people. The people of Jingjiang and the vast liberated areas, with the determination to give everything for the cause, provided the material conditions needed for 1.2 million troops to break through the natural barrier of the Yangtze. This set of sculptures in the park depicts the Jingjiang people's support efforts: a group of ordinary folks pulling from the front and pushing from behind, some carrying loads on shoulder poles, transporting combat supplies along village paths to the frontline amidst the roar of artillery. This once again illustrates that the victory of the Chinese Revolution was pushed forward by the common people with their wheelbarrows.

In the First Sail of the Eastern Line Memorial Park, there are also many sculptures of People's Liberation Army training and battles. In addition to these sculptures, a memorial hall has been built. The hall uses written materials, photographs, historical artifacts, and more to recreate and narrate history, showcasing the touching deeds of the Jingjiang people in building bridges and paving roads for the front. The support roads built back then were also the prototype of Jingjiang's rural roads, fostering the spirit of "gathering sand into a continent, striving and surpassing" and the character of "unity of hearts, perseverance, and daring to be the first" that Jingjiang possesses today.

To get rich, first build roads. Following these support roads, through seventy years of hard work and construction by the Jingjiang people, what now greets our eyes are broad highways, expressways, and clean, tidy rural roads. These "Four Good Rural Roads" have become the roads for Jingjiang's common people to achieve moderate prosperity.