A Time of Endless Flames

Nie Weizhen was born in 1900 in Tonggubao Town, Jianshi County, Hubei Province. In 1952, Tonggubao was placed under Wushan County, Chongqing. He embraced the revolution from childhood. While attending Hubei Provincial No. 1 Middle School in Wuchang, he actively led students in supporting the May Fourth Movement and the great strike on the Beijing-Hankou Railway. In 1924, while studying at Chaoyang University in Beijing, he joined the Chinese Communist Party on Li Dazhao’s recommendation, becoming the first Communist from western Hubei. Nie Weizhen then returned to western Hubei. Using his position as secretary-general of the Kuomintang Jianshi County Party Headquarters as a cover, he secretly recruited Communist Party members, organized the party, and founded the Communist Party of China Jianshi County Committee, the first county-level party organization in the region, serving as its secretary. During this time, he led vigorous peasant movements and armed uprisings, sowing the seeds of revolution across the Sichuan-Hubei-Hunan-Guizhou border region. In August 1931, Nie Weizhen, his cousin Nie Weiyao, and Huang Xingwu, former secretary of the Xianfeng County Committee, were sent by the organization on a mission to Weihai, Shandong. They were killed by the enemy on the way and died as heroes. In March 2010, the Hubei Provincial People’s Government posthumously recognized Nie Weizhen as a revolutionary martyr. Through literary expression, Father’s Generation explores how fully the scene and its details can be reconstructed, and offers a detailed account of Nie Weizhen’s pursuit of revolution and his short but tumultuous life.