Undercover agent who protected the Party

Ti Gong

Jiang Zhaolin, the first female Communist Party member in Songjiang area, was an undercover agent who used to shield leading members of the CPC central committee from danger.

Jiang was born into a poor sishu (old-style private school) teacher’s family in Songjiang. Jiang’s parents struggled to make ends meet for the family of six.

They saved tuition fee for Jiang to enter Jingxian School for Girls.

At the school the young woman was exposed to modern ideas and became promoter of women’s liberation and fought with determination against feudalism, imperialism and warlordism.

In January 1925, Jiang joined the Communist Party of China while she was receiving political training at Shanghai University.

Since then she often disguised herself under various identities such as a housewife or a Christian to transfer ammunition, weapons, documents and instructions to their destinations.

Once, Jiang was asked to transfer three guns and a batch of documents to Songjiang. She tactfully mediated with police on the train to allay their suspicions and fulfilled the task.

Later, when the location of the Jiangsu provincial Party committee was leaked to the enemy, she mediated with five rogue spies by pretending to put on an embroidery show. Thanks to Jiang acting as a shield, her comrades transferred the committee safely to another area.

In 1928 Jiang met her future husband Yan Pu. Yan and Jiang had been ordered by the Party to pretend to be a couple so their true identities as Party members wouldn’t be easily known. The two fell for each other while working together and later vowed to be husband and wife in real life.

When the Long March took place in 1934, Jiang was spared from joining the march as she suffered from cerebral anemia and she continued her work as an undercover agent in east China’s Jiangxi Province.

Jiang was arrested by the Kuomintang and tortured and coerced in the prison. But she revealed nothing and was released.

Jiang begged all the way back to Shanghai and caught pneumonia upon arriving in her hometown. She was bedridden for three years and lost touch with both her husband and the Party.

She tried to find Yan by using a pseudonym to file a missing person notice in a newspaper but failed.

She worked as a doctor for pediatric massage to make ends meet for herself and her adopted daughter Jiang Aihua.

It wasn’t until October 1945 that Jiang was told her husband had been working in the northeast.

She worked successively at a local hospital, the supply bureau of the prefectural Party committee and the commission for women.

Jiang, who died in 1971, wrote a book entitled “Introduction to Pediatric Massage.”