Martyr Liu Zeyuan’s Tomb

Martyr Liu Zeyuan’s Tomb

Martyr Liu Zeyuan’s Tomb is a classic red tourism destination and a base for patriotic education.

Martyr Liu Zeyuan’s Tomb is located in Group 1, Zeyuan Village, Danzhou Township, Wuling District, Changde City.

Liu Zeyuan (March 1907 – March 1929), courtesy name Zhengzhao, also known as Hechu, was a native of Liugongqiao in Danzhou Township, Wuling District. In the spring of 1920, he enrolled in the First Higher Primary School of Changde County. In 1923, he was admitted to the Central China College of Fine Arts in Changsha. With the help of progressive classmates such as Li Qingnan and Zhou Xiling, he read many progressive publications and actively participated in the anti-imperialist and patriotic struggles continuously launched by students in the provincial capital, becoming an activist. In September of the same year, he joined the Socialist Youth League.

In early 1926, he graduated and returned to his hometown. He actively engaged in educational and rural movement work. After being elected by fellow villagers as the principal of the clan school, he established a night school for farmers at Siguang Temple, organizing them to learn literacy and revolutionary principles. That spring, after the first peasant association in the county was founded at Yanqiao Temple in the western suburbs, he promptly mobilized people to secretly establish the Siguang Temple Peasant Association, which quickly grew to over 300 members. At the same time, he organized more than 80 local young women to form the area’s first women’s federation. In May of the same year, when a labor movement against excessive taxes and levies broke out in urban Changde, he responded actively in accordance with Party organization directives, organizing over a hundred young peasant association members to raze four tax offices located in the western suburbs.

In 1926, after the Northern Expeditionary Army entered Hunan, Liu Zeyuan, following directives from the Changde Communist Youth League Committee, joined the Kuomintang under his own name and worked with Chen Renjin and others to help establish the Changde County KMT Committee. He was elected as an executive committee member of the county KMT committee and concurrently as head of the youth and women’s department. In late September of that year, introduced by Li Qingnan, he joined the Communist Party of China. Thereafter, he volunteered to carry out rural movement work in the remote Huangzhou mountainous area, where he deeply empathized with the impoverished lives of the mountain farmers. In early 1927, he was appointed as the presiding judge of the county’s special tribunal for trying local tyrants and evil gentry. In March of that year, with the support of the county peasant self-defense force, he resolutely and successfully tried and executed Yang Zhongda, the largest local tyrant and evil gentry in the county, thus advancing the struggle of the county’s peasant associations against them.

On May 24, 1927, the “Jingri Incident” occurred in Changde. Liu Zeyuan, under the protection of the wife of a teahouse owner in Changde, disguised himself as a vegetable farmer and cleverly slipped out of the city, narrowly escaping harm. He then went into hiding with Chen Changhou, chairman of the county peasant association, in Hefu Mountain, organizing a peasant uprising team and vowing to settle the score with the enemy. In November, the CCP Western Hunan Special Committee was established in Changde, and Liu Zeyuan was appointed as the committee’s publicity officer. He then devoted himself to organizing peasant militias and covert operations to seize enemy weapons and ammunition. In January 1928, he was relieved of his position on the special committee. However, he remained undeterred by personal loss and actively implemented the provincial party committee's directive to launch an uprising at year’s end. In the early hours of February 3, he led a team of over 20 elite “assassination squad” members and, as planned, eliminated three vicious local tyrants and evil gentry in the western suburbs within one night. Among them, Liu Caiqing was the perpetrator who had had Communist Party member Xiao Honggui tortured to death. In March, he regained his position on the special committee.

In June 1928, under heavy attack from the Kuomintang’s forces during the “cleansing” campaign, he was forced to lead the peasant militia to retreat to Taifu Mountain and join the 4th Detachment of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army under the leadership of the special committee. In late July, the 4th Detachment was also defeated by enemy forces. After breaking through the encirclement, he, along with Wang Qianxiang, Dai Xianfan, Ouyang Jun, and others, moved to Hepu Bridge in Xinglong District at the junction of Changde and Hanshou, attempting to organize a peasant militia but without success. In August, he traveled to Nan County to reconnect with Zhan Lepo, Cui Hanzhang, Xu Shaobao, and other former leaders of the Yiyang Special Committee and the Nan-Hua-An Special Committee. He consolidated the Party organizations of six counties—Nan, Huarong, Anxiang, Yiyang, Yuanjiang, and Hanshou—and re-established the Western Hunan Special Committee of the CCP, assuming the role of secretary.

On the night of January 1, 1929, due to the arrest and betrayal of Ouyang Jun, Liu Zeyuan was captured at the Chenmaohao embankment public house in Dalianzhang, Hanshou. Faced with enemy inducements and torture, he remained resolute and unyielding. On March 4 of that year, Liu Zeyuan and 10 other revolutionaries were executed by the reactionary Kuomintang forces at the age of 22.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Party and government renamed Siguang Temple Village in Danzhou Township, Wuling District—the martyr’s hometown—as Zeyuan Village, and erected a memorial stele and pavilion in front of his tomb.

In November 1995, Martyr Liu Zeyuan’s Tomb was designated as a Changde Municipal Patriotic Education Base by the Propaganda Department of the Changde Municipal Committee.