Li Clan Ancestral Hall (Former Site of Whampoa Military Academy Chaozhou Branch)

Li Clan Ancestral Hall (Former Site of Whampoa Military Academy Chaozhou Branch)

The Li Clan Ancestral Hall (Former Site of Whampoa Military Academy Chaozhou Branch) is a municipal cultural heritage site in Chaozhou City.

The Li Clan Ancestral Hall is located in the middle section of Zhongshan Road in downtown Chaozhou. Originally a clan ancestral hall for the Li family, it was designated as a municipal cultural heritage site in 1987 because it served as the former site of the Whampoa Military Academy Chaozhou Branch.

As early as March 1925, after the Eastern Expeditionary Army captured Chaozhou, in order to allow students from the second class of the Whampoa Military Academy who had accompanied the army on the expedition to catch up on their studies, plans were made to establish a Chaozhou branch of the Academy. Less than a month later, the military academy students were ordered to return to the main school.

In October 1925, the National Revolutionary Army launched the Second Eastern Expedition. In November, they recaptured Chaozhou again and re-established the Whampoa Military Academy Chaozhou Branch at Lica Temple (renamed on May 1, 1926, as the Chaozhou Branch of the Central Military and Political School). The student recruitment scope included students from Hui, Chao, Mei, Haifeng-Lufeng, and other regions. Chiang Kai-shek, president of the Whampoa Military Academy, also served as the principal of the branch. He Yingqin was the educational director and acting principal, Zhou Enlai was the political department head, and Wang Kunlun was the secretary and political instructor. At the same time, members of the Communist Party from the main school—Xiong Xiong, Yun Daiying, and Xiao Chunu—were hired as political instructors, while Chen Mianwu, Zhang Guang, Zhang Jingcheng, Fang Wanfang, and Zhang Yuesong served as military instructors. This reflected the historical reality of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in founding the academy. The opening ceremony was held on December 18, initially under the name “Chaozhou Branch of the Army Officers Academy.” Aside from students recruited from the aforementioned regions, some untrained soldiers from the Eastern Expeditionary Army also studied there and were respectively called cadets and recruits. Administrative offices, quartermaster services, and classrooms were housed inside Lica Temple, while the students lived in simple temporary barracks nearby, and the recruits stayed at the Haiyang Confucian Temple.

During the branch’s operation, over 990 cadets were enrolled. The first class of 348 students (some sources say 335) graduated on June 1, 1926, and more than 380 students from the second class graduated by the end of that December. They were treated the same as the third and fourth classes of the main Whampoa school and were assigned to various revolutionary army units (for example, the first class was assigned to the 2nd Division and the 27th Division of the First Army). These graduates played a significant role in the Northern Expedition. Thereafter, the Chaozhou Branch was not reopened.

This place trained many talented individuals for the revolution during the First United Front period.