Chen miancheng in his elderly

In November 1937, North China fell into the hands of the Japanese army and Shanghai was on the brink of falling. On November 2, the national government officially ordered Long Yun, a Yunnan-based KMT officer to allocate 2 million yuan from the Executive Yuan, to build the Burma Road within one year as an international traffic line.

Chen mian-cheng, who was then working for the engineering department of the Ministry of Communications, became one of the many engineers building the road.

A life-saving vest

Chen miancheng, a civil engineering major, was then in his 40s. He and the whole Ministry of Communications retreated from Nanking to Kunming. He was assigned to build one section of the Burma Road.

Before he left, his wife sewed him a very small vest, on which she had made many small bags with the sewing machine. Each bag was put in a thin piece of gold or a bag of salt wrapped in oil-paper. His wife warned that he should always wear this vest in case of troubles.

The construction work of the road kept suffering from the Japanese army’s bombings. The section Chen responsible for was on the front line, where the bombs were like rainfalls from the Japanese planes, along with heavy machine gun fires. A lot of people were killed. Out of desperation, Chen hid himself behind a clay sculpture in a Burma temple and escaped death.

Later when Chen mian-cheng retreated with a Chinese driver, the vest played its role.

The pieces of gold sewn in his vest covered his traveling expenses. The mountain road was so difficult to drive that vehicles were often seen overturning. Sometimes they were stopped by the aboriginal mountain people. At that time, local people suffered from goiters due to the lack of supplies. Salt was in desperate need, so it was even more effective than gold here. Chen remembered the salt bags in his vest, took them out, gave the locals and got away.

In this way, Chen was kept safe by his wife's wisdom. He was the only one survived in the engineering department.

Rear not peaceful

Chen mian-cheng returned to the rear and moved his family to Kunming. Later he was assigned to participate in the construction of Kunming airport to receive Chennault's "flying tigers".

Kunming was full of wounded soldiers with deformed bodies. Bad news kept coming from the occupied areas. Chen sadly received the message that his parents in the southern part of Jiangsu province died on their escaping way, and his younger sister was raped by the Japanese soldiers, which added to his hatred of the Japanese invaders. People who had experienced the bombing in Nanking said that people were blown up, their skin clung to the wall, and their intestines hanging on the wire. Kunming was also bombed by the Japanese army, so during the construction of the airport, the arrival of the "flying tigers" was very thrilling to Chen miancheng.

After the victory

After the victory of Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Chen miancheng was finally able to return home with his family.

On the dock of Nanking, three disarmed Japanese soldiers appeared in front of the rickshaw the family were sitting. The soldiers all bowed their heads and stood aside.

Chen mian-cheng said to his children: “Hold up your heads and chests. We have won.”

On the train back to the hometown, passengers saw surrendered Japanese soldiers all kneeling down in the fields as the train passed. Many people cried out: “We won! The Japanese soldiers are kneeling down!”

After liberation, the Chen family all joined the Chinese Communist Party. In 1956 his youngest daughter Chen Ping settled in Nanking and later worked in the city's culture department. In the 1980s, Chen ping participated in and witnessed the excavation of the "mass grave" site of the Nanking massacre.

The construction of the Burma Road was very arduous.

The Japanese army bombed the Huitong Bridge.

People participated in the construction of Kunming airport.

Chen Ping, Chen miancheng’s youngest daughter, former deputy director of the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Culture

This article is written according to Chen Ping's dictation.