I was today years old when I found the epic discovery that my Great-great Grandfather (more specifically, my father’s great Grandfather, or more specifically, my father’s mother’s grandfather) was a high ranking officer of the National Revolutionary Army (if you don’t know, they were the military arm of the KMT, the nationalist party that toppled the Qing Dynasty and ruled most of China before ww2.)
His name was Chen Peiyu (陈佩玉), and was a Lieutenant General/Major General of the National Revolutionary Army (I wrote above). I’ll call him General Chen for respect. He was born in Liantang, Nan’an, Fujian Province in 1899
I have a biography of him (written by a few officers that General Chen had trained and given to me by my grandmother when I visited her). Naturally it was published in Taiwan, not China (because the KMT was routed by the CCP and fled. Yes I’m using a VPN for the fact I wrote Taiwan. Also because the book was published in Taiwan, it was in traditional Chinese. I can only some traditional, but I still understood).
Before you get your hopes up about finding out my last name, no it isn’t Chen, but my Grandmother’s last name is. Obviously, a last name alone isn’t firm proof that I’m related to him. Rather, it was the fact that names of other relatives were listed (There were a lot I didn’t even know they existed, but an important one was my Grandmother’s grandmother.) Should you still doubt me, I don’t know how to convince you otherwise.
This is him from a video on a page about him on Baidu:
(By the way the link to about him is here, run it through a translator if you can’t read Chinese: 陈佩玉（原国民党陆军中将）_百度百科)
And this is him in the Biography book:
This is the Biography (People that live in Taiwan, I’m not sure if they have this book in stock anymore.) In simplified Chinese it’s: 陈将军泽卿传述
General Chen was assassinated on the 1st of March, 1941 (which explains why my parents were from the Mainland, not Taiwan). Not by the Communists, but by assassins with contracts linked to a smaller faction.
I don’t know about you, but the discovery that my Great great Grandfather was a KMT General (and his achievements) was pretty darn cool. I’d like to thank the officers that he trained for writing this biography (their names are actually listed in the book in the form of messages written by themselves.)
Thanks for reading, I hope you found it interesting.
