Chongwu Army Temple

On September 17, 1949, Nationalist forces from Taiwan attacked Chongwu during the Chinese Civil War.[1] The attack occurred when a PLA brigade was preparing to depart Chongwu beach for a landing on Jinmen and Xiamen islands.[2] A teenaged girl named Zeng Hen was also walking on the beach during the attack.[3] Five PLA soldiers threw themselves on top of Zeng to protect her and were killed.[2][3] Sources variously attribute the source of the bombardment that Zeng survived as an attack from a Nationalist ship[3] or plane.[1][2]

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After the attack, Chongwu residents buried the soldiers and, in the local custom, built a simple shrine of straw and thatch.[4] Until this first shrine was torn down during a Maoist political campaign in 1971, residents worshipped at the shrine and burned incense and paper money.[4]

Zeng Hen planned to commemorate the PLA soldiers who saved her.[3] After a prolonged struggle with local authorities, Zeng Hen acquired the site where the attack took place.[3] She raised over 600,000 yuan in donations, and contributed 60,000 yuan of her own savings,[5] ultimately succeeding in building the temple in 1996.[1] The more modest 1996 temple was replaced with a more elaborate structure in 2005.[4] Zeng and her children manage the temple.[6]

The site is half devoted to the nominally secular commemoration of the twenty-seven PLA soldiers and half a Buddhist temple.[3] The temple complex covers 2,500 square meters.[7] It consists of a main hall, a memorial hall, two pavilions, a residence for the Zeng family, and a statute of a soldier holding a girl in his arms.[7] The temple's outward appearance is typical of temples dedicated to local deities in southeast China.[7]

The temple's altar bears twenty-seven wooden figures representing a military unit.[7] Behind them is an inscription in the style of a traditional spirit tablet which reads, "People's Liberation Army Martyrs."[7]

The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government explicitly support the temple.[2] In 2017, Chinese state television broadcast a documentary about the temple and Zeng Hen's story.[4] High-ranking PLA officers have visited the temple, including Major General Shao Hua, daughter-in-law of Mao Zedong.[8] The local PLA garrison visits regularly.[9] Academic Jifeng Liu writes that the temple is included in Party study materials, consistent with Xi Jinpeng's goals of building a "new 'Communist civil religion.'"[10]

Some Chongwu locals venerate the twenty-seven PLA martyrs as deities who can perform miracles.[2]

The authenticity of Zeng Hen's story is disputed by two other Chongwu sites which venerate the twenty-seven PLA soldiers, the Martyr's Palace and the Memorial Hall.[11]

As of December 9, 2022, the identities of twenty-five of the PLA soldiers honored at the temple have been confirmed.[5]