Former Site of the Dushan Uprising Command

Former Site of the Dushan Uprising Command

The Former Site of the Dushan Uprising Command is a protected cultural heritage site of Anhui Province and a classic destination on the Red Tourism route.

The Dushan Uprising, also known as the Liuhuo Uprising, took place on November 7, 1929, in Lu'an City, Anhui Province. It was a large-scale peasant armed uprising following the Huangma Uprising and the Shangnan Uprising, and played a pivotal role in establishing the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Revolutionary Base.

In November 1929, when the Lu'an County Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was earnestly implementing the spirit of the Party’s August 7th Meeting, carrying out land revolution and armed resistance against the Kuomintang rule, and preparing to launch a full-scale armed uprising across the Liuhuo region, an incident occurred on the evening of the 7th: He Shouquan, secretary of the Peasant Association in the Second Township of the Third District of Dushan, along with two female members of the association, were arrested and a membership roster of the Peasant Association was confiscated. To prevent the destruction of the Party organization and the Peasant Association, Zhou Juanzhi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Lu'an County Central Committee, and Wu Gancui, a committee member, along with the Third District Committee, rushed to the Fourth Higher Primary School in Dushan that night to hold an emergency meeting, where they decided to advance the uprising. At dawn on the 8th, nearly ten thousand peasants from fifteen townships around Dushan gathered from all directions, armed with broadswords, spears, steel awls, and homemade firearms, and converged on Dushan Town. They surrounded the Ma’s Ancestral Hall, the base of Wei Zhusan’s Self-Defense Corps. Two sentries were killed and a gun was seized. Intimidated by the uprising masses, the enemy was forced to release He Shouquan and the others and hand over the roster. The besieged enemies, seeing the ever-growing and increasingly courageous rebel peasants, felt trapped and hopeless, so they set fire to civilian houses and fled. The insurgents took control of Dushan Town in what became known as the “Dushan Uprising.” Subsequently, peasant armed uprisings broke out in places like Xizhen in Huoshan, marking the climax of the peasant armed struggle in the Liuhuo region.

The victory of the Dushan Peasant Uprising established three “firsts” in the province's armed revolutionary struggle: it fired the first shot of the Liuhuo Uprising; it formed the first workers’ and peasants’ revolutionary armed force — the First Guerrilla Column of the Anhui Red Army, which later merged into the 33rd Division of the 11th Army of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army; and it established the first workers’ and peasants’ democratic revolutionary government — the Third District Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Committee.