I.The Ceremony for the Establishment of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China*** and the State of China;
II.The Ceremony for the Military Parade of the People's Liberation Army;
III.The Parade of the People's Masses and Fireworks Display.
The venue for the celebration is Tiananmen Square.
However, before that, there were two options regarding the choice of the celebration venue.
The first option was to arrange the celebration at Tiananmen Square. The other option was to have it at Xiyuan Airport, on the grounds that Mao Zedong and the central leadership had held a successful military parade at Xiyuan on March 25th. The more important reason is that it is located in the suburbs, the terrain is open, and it is easy to evacuate and hide in case of an attack by the Kuomintang air force.
Zhou Enlai, who was also head of the preparatory committee for the founding ceremony, decided to set the venue for the ceremony at Tiananmen Square after much deliberation.
In response to a possible air attack by the Kuomintang Air Force on the day of the Founding Ceremony, Zhou Enlai instructed that the PLA's first group of fighters with the ability to lift off and fight be concentrated at Nanyuan Airport in Peking, and that antiaircraft artillery batteries be placed around the perimeter of Peking for anti-aircraft defense.
Cleaning up cesspits
After receiving the central government's approval, Zhou Enlai immediately notified the relevant departments to quickly repair the Tiananmen Citadel and Tiananmen Square.
From the photographs of that year, you can see that the walls of the Tiananmen Square are speckled with broken bricks and tiles, and the beams and pillars are covered with feces of wild pigeons. In addition to these patches of weeds on the square, there were piles of garbage and flies and rats with the garbage.
On Aug. 9, 1949, the first congress of representatives from all walks of life was held in Beiping, where Peng Zhen, then secretary of the municipal party committee, announced a resolution to refurbish Tiananmen Square and the Citadel, the main venue for the Founding Ceremony.
September 10, 1949 was a Saturday, the day before dawn, people to participate in voluntary labor from all directions to Tiananmen Square, by 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the number of people to participate in the voluntary labor reached more than 6,000 people. A few days later, the square's garbage and weeds disappeared, and the putrid smell dissipated, revealing a large square with a capacity of 160,000 people.
After the Tiananmen Square and the square were cleaned up, the next step was to renovate the Tiananmen Square. This included hanging red lanterns on Tiananmen, writing huge slogans on both sides of the wall and hanging a huge portrait of Mao Zedong above the gate.
The newly liberated city of Beiping was a ragged city with garbage everywhere. After the liberation of Beiping, the Beiping Municipal People's Government declared war on the ancient city's garbage. At that time, the Beiping Military Management Committee had a hard and fast rule: no matter public or private cars, when cars left the city, they had to piggyback on the garbage. According to statistics, before the Founding Ceremony, Beiping City **** removed more than 200,000 tons of garbage. The work continued until the end of 1949 before coming to an end.
Troops on parade
While the people of Beiping declared war on garbage, preparations for the parade for the Founding Ceremony were in full swing.
One day in early July 1949, the central leaders listened to a briefing by the parade's commander-in-chief, Nie Rongzhen, and deputy commander-in-chief, Yang Chengwu, as well as other leaders of the troops on parade, at Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai. At the end of the report, Mao Zedong said in a solemn and witty tone, "We have always advocated caution in the initial battle, the first time the country was opened, it must be done well."
The military parade at the founding of the country, in the history of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), whether in terms of military branches, types of troops, or scale, is the largest and largest one, with a total of 160,000 troops put in.
The naval contingent participating in the parade consisted of the Naval School and the East China Fleet; the army contingent consisted of the Infantry Division, the Artillery Division, the Combat Vehicle Division, and the Cavalry Division; of which the Combat Vehicle Division included the Motorized Infantry Regiment, the Armored Vehicle Regiment, and the Tank Vehicle Regiment.
The infantry squad on parade, on the other hand, was the 199th Division of the 67th Army of the 20th Corps.
Li Shuiqing, at the time, was the commander of the 199th Division.
Li Shuiqing: "After we received this task, all the officers and soldiers are very happy, feel very honorable, especially when it comes to, we are to represent the National People's Liberation Army, to accept Chairman Mao's parade, so, especially happy."
The parade at the Founding Ceremony was grand and unprecedented, and Yang Chengwu, who was responsible for the parade training, not only consulted domestic and foreign information about the parade, he also sought out other PLA generals to ask for advice.
Nanyuan Airport
July was the height of summer in Beiping, and more than 10,000 men of the 199th Division were assembled on the outskirts of the city. According to the requirements of the parade command, the infantry division put out 12 squads during the parade, each consisting of 144 commanders.
Li Shuiqing: "More than 10,000 people only need more than 2,000 people, so everyone desperately practice, all write a letter of determination to participate in the parade, so we in addition to this more than 2,000 people, we have another organization to select more than two hundred people, to do the reserve."
The pre-training preparations were basically ready, but new problems followed: the People's Liberation Army (PLA), which has 22 years of war history, did not have a book of articles on formation training and guidelines for standardizing movements. What will they use as a reference?
Li Wanheng: "This regulation is the beginning of the Kuomintang, later is the Soviet Union, and finally in accordance with Liu Bocheng that drill code for the formation training, in the formation training period, this step forward, this thing is your step out 70 centimeters, the height of 15 centimeters, this is a step forward, step 30 centimeters of height. "
Three volts of hot sunshine in the Temple of Heaven Park, the park wall outside the open space is organized training ground, the edge of the field set up their camp tents. 199 Division officers and men here began a rigorous separate training.
In the blink of an eye, it was August 1, 1949. On this day, the parade commander-in-chief, Nie Rongzhen, on behalf of the Central Military Commission, awarded the flag to the newly established special forces unit. The special forces belonged to the army sequence, which mainly included salute artillery units, mule artillery and armored troops.
Yang Chengwu
Li Jian, who once served as commander of artillery in the Beijing military region, was then chief of staff of the special forces command.
Li Jian: "The criteria for selection are basically party members, in addition to most, more than 40 percent are heroic company, have made great achievements, the young men are taller, usually one meter seventy-eight, one meter eighty so, indeed, also very standard."
Hearing that the training of the parade troops is very hard, love soldiers like children, Commander-in-Chief Zhu De can no longer sit still, he personally rushed to the premises of the parade troops, to visit the commanders who are training. Back to Zhongnanhai, he instructed the relevant departments to participate in the parade of soldiers and officers each increased by one egg per day.
The first program of the Founding Ceremony is to raise the national flag, fire a salute and play the national anthem. The Special Forces Command gave the task of firing the salute to Han Huaizhi, chief of staff of the Chariot Regiment.
People and guns are mobilized, Han Huaizhi will be focused on the training. He left his newlywed wife behind.
The cavalry team, consisting of three divisions of the cavalry of the North China Military Region, is made up of most of the fighters from the steppes of Inner Mongolia.
The charioteer regiment set up its training ground in the wasteland on the western outskirts of Beiping.
While the chariot regiment is stepping up its training, the military band, which lives in the West General Cloth Hutong on Dongdan Street in Beiping City, is also making good time for rehearsals.
Soldiers participating in the parade
The military band, which plays for the Founding Ceremony and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), is known as the "God of Ceremonial Music".
The parade headquarters instructed that the pipe bands of the North China People's Literary Troupe and the military bands of the military divisions of the parade troops should be merged to form a joint military band, and a joint military band of more than 200 people was born, with Luo Lang serving as the chief conductor.
Luolang, who returned to China from Malaysia in 1937, was a student of the famous musician Xian Xinghai, and in 1939 he arrived in the Jinchaji military region, an anti-Japanese base behind enemy lines, where he later became the first director of the People's Liberation Army's military band.
One day, the parade command headquarters in Zhongshan Park to come to this rain Xuan, held a meeting of the heads of troops with the participation of Soviet experts. At the meeting on the use of what kind of music as a parade ceremony music divergence: the first opinion is to casually find a good parade march on the line; the second opinion is to use the Soviet parade song.
Luolang: "I say is not we can use our own has been used, used some of the revolutionary songs adapted military music tunes as our parade ceremony music, as our parade music."
There was a heated debate on the matter at the meeting, and in view of the fact that opinions were difficult to unify for a while, the deputy commander-in-chief of the parade, Yang Chengwu, instructed Luo Lang to write a repertoire of music for the parade and the mass procession for report to the central government.
Tanks participating in the parade
Soon, Mao Zedong gave instructions to "take me as the master, take our country as the master". It was decided to adopt five pieces reported by Luo Lang, including "The East is Red", "The Three Disciplines and Eight Points of Attention" and "The Army March", as the music for the Founding Ceremony.
After the military parade repertoire was finalized, in order to make it suitable for the music used in the ceremony, Luo Lang picked the lamp and worked overnight to modify the melody and orchestration of the music.
Time soon came to September 1, 1949, the day the parade commander-in-chief, Nie Rongzhen, said in conveying the central government's instructions on the parade for the founding ceremony, "The central government has decided that on the day of the founding of the new China, in addition to the ground forces, the air force should be deployed as well."
One day in early September, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and other central leaders arrived on Nanyuan Airport, where nine fighter jets took off from the runway one after another with a loud roar, soon adjusting their zig-zag formation in the air and passing over the airport twice.
Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and other central leaders who watched the air show on the ground clapped their hands and cheered for the pilots. When the show was over, Zhu De said in an expectant tone: "Can we have a few more airplanes, any kind of airplanes?
Lin Hu: "Later, after they left, we studied, and added two "Mosquito" fighters, this plane is made in Britain, it is the fuselage, what, are all wooden, in fact, on the engine is metal, some of the equipment is metal, but this aircraft can be both light bombers, and can be a fighter! bomber and a fighter."
Bands in the parade
A few days later, three more restored transport planes, a communications plane, and two trainer planes were included in the parade flight.
The Bureau of Aviation of the Military Commission finalized that 17 planes would pass over Tiananmen on that Oct. 1 day.
September in Beiping, already in early fall, the training of the parade troops has entered a "countdown".
One night in September, the troops on parade received a notice to rehearse at Tiananmen Square.
Li Shui-Qing, the confident commander of the 199th Division, led the troops, who had been training for more than two months, to Tiananmen Square. When the troops passed through Tiananmen Square in a positive step, something unexpected happened: the troops, who had been doing well on the training ground, were in disarray: they kicked their right leg when they were supposed to kick their left leg.
The band's commander-in-chief, Luo Lang, realized that the soldiers' pace could not keep up with the band's drums, and he immediately made adjustments to the band's beat.
After the news of the founding ceremony spread, there was an unusually large number of units and people who signed up for the event.
Changxindian railroad workers have a glorious revolutionary tradition. As early as the May Fourth Movement, China's early ****productivist intellectuals came here to carry out the workers' movement. Mao Zedong also visited this factory twice.
The Beiping City Federation of Trade Unions gave Changxindian railroad workers 2,000 places in the grand ceremony.
Xixinfang village in the town of Mentougou is located in the mountains on the far outskirts of Beiping, more than 30 kilometers from Tiananmen Square.
In September 1949, more than a hundred villagers were notified to attend the founding ceremony. Jiao Tonglan and a few 15- and 16-year-old girls were also authorized to attend the Founding Ceremony. In order to get to Tiananmen Square and meet Chairman Mao earlier, Jiao Tonglan and her friends chipped in and bought an old bicycle with no brakes and no bell.
September 30, 1949, was the ninth day of the eighth month in the Chinese lunar calendar. It was the night before the birth of a new China, and many people spent it in excitement and waiting.
Li Shui-Qing: "All stayed up there, polishing their steel helmets to look clean and shiny."
Peiping Xiyuan
Jiao Tonglan: "did not sleep a night, did not sleep after that is to think of Chairman Mao there, see Chairman Mao how to express the mood, see Chairman Mao is what kind of, look like it."
That night at 10 o'clock, Zhou Enlai went to Tiananmen Square, the city building of the layout of the last check. When he saw the words "Comrade Mao Zedong" written underneath Mao's portrait hanging on the Tiananmen Tower, he immediately sent for Zhong Ling, director of the Zhongnanhai Club.
Zhong Ling: "He said we can't have this because the founding ceremony is very serious."
The portrait of Mao came from Zhou Lingzhao, who, on Zhou Enlai's instructions, carefully covered the words underneath the portrait with paint. It was the early hours of Oct. 1 when Zhou finished the job.
The restored Tiananmen Square and the square in front of it are welcoming the birth of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China*** and the State.