Site of the Lufang Battle

Site of the Lufang Battle

The Site of the Lufang Battle is a national AA-level tourist attraction.

The Site of the Lufang Battle is located on the sunny side of Phoenix Mountain in Donglufang Village, Anlintan Town, Feicheng City, Shandong Province. The memorial stele marking the site stands north of the Ansun Highway.

On May 11, 1939, over 3,000 troops from the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army along with local Party and government officials were besieged by more than 5,000 Japanese soldiers in the Lufang area. The anti-Japanese forces and civilians held their ground by leveraging the rugged terrain and dealt a heavy blow to the enemy, achieving a successful breakout. To commemorate the battle, on December 23, 1977, the Shandong Provincial Revolutionary Committee erected the “Site of the Lufang Battle” stele.

The “Lufang Martyrs’ Cemetery” was built in 1971, covering an area of 7,000 square meters with a building area of 545 square meters. It includes a mourning hall consisting of five rooms (136 square meters), four exhibition rooms (112 square meters), six offices (132 square meters), and seven other rooms (165 square meters).

Inside the main gate of the cemetery stands the “Lufang Battle Memorial Monument.” The base of the monument is 13 meters long and 6 meters wide. The main body of the monument is 8.8 meters tall, 3 meters thick, and 6 meters wide. The front features an inscription reading “Lufang Battle Memorial Monument,” written by the former Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army. The back is inscribed with the text “Commemorative Stele for the 50th Anniversary of the Lufang Battle,” erected on May 11, 1989, by the Feicheng County Committee of the Communist Party of China and the People’s Government of Feicheng County.

The mourning hall houses the ashes of 206 revolutionary martyrs who died in the Lufang Battle as well as those of other martyrs.

The exhibition is divided into nine sections: Introduction, The Situation Before the Lufang Battle, The Advance of the 115th Division into Western Tai’an, The Japanese Encirclement and Mop-up Campaign, The Course of the Lufang Battle, The Successful Breakout, The Great Significance of the Lufang Battle, Honoring the Martyrs, and Epilogue.

On July 7, 1937, Japanese imperialism launched a full-scale invasion of China, pushing the Chinese nation into a critical situation. In December 1938, Chen Guang, acting commander of the 115th Division, and Luo Ronghuan, political commissar, led their troops into Shandong to establish an anti-Japanese base. They arrived in western Tai’an in early 1939. They assisted the locals in training armed forces, establishing political power, and sparking a new wave of resistance. After entering Shandong, the 115th Division swept through enemy and puppet strongholds, delivering heavy blows. By the end of April, Itagaki Seishirō, commander of the Japanese Twelfth Army stationed in Shandong, gathered nearly two brigades of elite troops and over 5,000 Japanese soldiers from ten towns and cities including Jinan, Tai’an, Feicheng, Ningyang, Dongping, Changqing, and Pingyin, along with artillery, tanks, and other weapons. They launched a nine-pronged encirclement of the Tai-Fei mountainous region. Over 3,000 troops including the 115th Division and local Party and government officials were surrounded. On May 11, the 115th Division and others made a decisive move, relying on the surrounding mountains of Lufang to hold their ground and seek an opportunity to break out. After a day of fierce fighting, they killed over a thousand enemy soldiers and successfully broke out under the cover of night with the help of local civilians via three routes. The successful breakout at Lufang preserved the anti-Japanese forces and opened up the anti-Japanese situation in western Tai’an.

Anlintan Town: Located in the central part of Feicheng City, at the western foothills of Mount Tai, Anlintan Town spans geographic coordinates from 116°39′ to 116°50′ east longitude and 36°01′ to 36°07′ north latitude. It borders Jinan, the provincial capital, to the north — 80 kilometers from Jinan Yaoqiang International Airport and 20 kilometers from the Tianjin-Pukou Railway Line. To the east is the famous tourist city of Tai’an, with the Tai-Fei First-Class Highway providing direct access to the Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Fuzhou Expressways, just a 15-minute drive away. Qingdao Port is 400 kilometers away, about a 3.5-hour journey. To the west lies the scenic Liangshan region; the Beijing-Kowloon Railway is 100 kilometers from the town. The provincial highway Jining Road runs through the entire town, and the Anbian and An... More detailed information about Anlintan Town++

Further Reading:

· First Batch of Shandong Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units