"The Blockade Before Dawn" is based on the 1949 Hunan Campaign and focuses on the key Majitang Blockade. On April 21, 1949, the Battle of Crossing the Yangtze River began. The People's Liberation Army's million-strong army crossed the Yangtze River in overwhelming numbers. The Yangtze River defense line that the Kuomintang had worked so hard to build instantly collapsed, and the army was defeated like a mountain.
At that time, Bai Chongxi served as the chief of the Central China Military and Political Office of the Kuomintang and was based in Wuhan and responsible for river defense. The war situation took a turn for the worse, and he led his troops to rush south in panic, trying to withdraw westward from Guangxi via Changde and Majitang in Hunan, and resisted stubbornly to maintain the reactionary rule. The People's Liberation Army pursued the victory, and the battle around strategic arteries began in Hunan. Majitang became a battleground due to its important geographical location, and the war was about to break out.
Through the combat trajectories of the two heroic regiments 440 and 441, the work panoramically reproduces the military miracle of the People's Liberation Army using two regiments to block the three reorganized divisions of the Kuomintang. From the night crossing of Zijiang to the bloody battle of Huangli, from the fight for Wu Jialun to the tug-of-war in the Jiuli Mountains, during the fifty-six hours of fierce fighting, the strategic wisdom of commanders and soldiers such as Zhan Yigui and Xu Changgeng was portrayed, the heroic sacrifices of grassroots officers and soldiers such as Qiu Wanshun and Cui Qiang were recorded, and a touching chapter of the unity of the army and the people was written. When the artillery fire from the mountain artillery battalion tore through the last line of defense, this blocking battle poured out with youth and blood shattered Bai Chongxi's group's attempt to escape westward, and played the dawn prelude to the liberation of Hunan with a bright red background.
