A Lawsuit and a Guerrilla Wedding

Anyone interested in learning about the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army (NAUA) might come across some information about a 1999 lawsuit revolving around the authorship and intellectual property rights of “The Encampment Song,” undoubtedly the most famous NAUA military song. Jin Bowen, a former NAUA soldier and wife of General Li Zhaolin, filed suit against her fellow compatriot, Li Min, and her husband, Chen Lei. The plaintiff claimed that Li Zhaolin was the sole author of “The Encampment Song,” whereas the defendant claims to have written some of the first verse. In 2008, another lawsuit was filed in the name of deceased NAUA member Yu Tianfang claiming that he had written the fourth and final verse of “Encampment.” The lawsuit garnered an impressive amount of attention in the media. As Zhao Yan puts it, “the case was the first intellectual property rights lawsuit in China to cross into the new millennium.” Due to these proceedings, the common understanding is that “The Encampment Song” was a collaborative effort by Li Zhaolin, Chen Lei, Yu Tianfang, and other “fine talents” (秀才).

I want to share a few of the articles I’ve encountered in my research about the people and lawsuits mentioned above. Learning about the lawsuit has proved challenging due to the difficulty of finding original news articles online. Ironically for a case about intellectual property, most of the articles have been republished in full on various websites and blogs. Still, with all the republishing, I can’t help but think that the case captured public opinion on some level. I’m going to try my best to discuss not only what I’ve learned from the articles but also some of the larger issues they present to Sinologists.

Article 1:《密林中的婚礼——记金伯文与李兆麟将军》张景作，《今日科苑》7.2003

This article is about how Jin Bowen and Li Zhaolin met, fell in love, and had a wedding in the woods. The author, Zhang Jing, apparently visited Jin Bowen in Beijing in 1979 as a part of a project by Liaoning People’s Publishers to preserve the history of the NAUA  (34). This article came out of that interview, though it was written and published long after the project.

Li Zhaolin is described as tall, handsome, dignified, and looked older than he was (seemed 30 or 40 when he was only 27 because he had gone through periods of starvation and hardship that aged him) (35). Jin Bowen, on the other hand, is described, as if by Li Zhaolin himself, as having eyes full of wisdom and a pleasant personality. Once they get acquainted and Li finds out that Jin Bowen is Korean, “he responds in a respectful tone: Our Third Route Army has many Korean comrades. They are incredibly brave and used to hardship.”

There are a lot of authorly interventions that fictionalize and romanticize the relationship between Li Zhaolin and Jin Bowen, not to mention their time as guerrilla soldiers. For example, the author provides dialogues that read more like lines from a movie. One instance is when Li Zhaolin supposedly can’t eat or sleep because he’s anxious about how Jin Bowen will answer his marriage proposal (36). The author assumes an omniscient perspective and adds details that certainly make their love story more romantic but also give the war and their roles as guerrilla soldiers a rosy complexion. The narrative romanticizes the revolution, the fight against the Japanese, and the relations between people, especially those of an intercultural nature.

At one point, Li asks about Jin’s family, and the subsequent explanation is one of the most interesting aspects of the article. Below is my translation:

Jin’s father had been a part of the Korean Independence movement from a young age and had died at the knife of a Japanese. Her brother had been the political commissar (政委) within the Wangqing guerrilla unit 汪清游击队 [Wangqing is a place in Yanbian autonomous prefecture now and presumably it was then, too], and he’d been killed by a traitor. In 1930, Jin and her mother joined the Women’s 妇女会 and Youth Corps 儿童团, respectively, and started doing reconnaissance missions. Her mother was caught by a traitor and punished to the point that she was crippled, so she went to live at a relative’s place. She was then sent to the wilderness to work with (a local) party committee [not sure about where…Jin says 大荒崴子区委工作]. But the Japanese swept out (扫荡) the area and her unit scattered. She eventually found a unit of the NAUA and got acquainted with them (36).

Jin Bowen’s family story apparently touched Li. “After listening to her story, Li Zhaolin looked at this unyielding, simple Korean woman and couldn’t help but feel admiration. From then on, he supported her revolutionary convictions in every task the leaders shouldered her with and encouraged her to study Chinese (especially reading) and to improve her cultural knowledge,” (36). Li finally declares his love for Jin, who says she has to think it over. She considers Li’s political views and standing as well as his personal qualities. She agrees. Here I can’t help but think of China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation, a collection of interviews that the UK-based journalist Xinran conducted circa 2005. China Witness features stories about a number of couples who were part of work or army units together during the war and after 1949. They all said that marriages often came about in benign ways but that political standing was incredibly important in choosing a spouse. Yet, where couples in China Witness describe austere weddings with little ceremony, Li Zhaolin’s and Jin Bowen’s nuptials were downright lavish. According to Zhang Jing, there were flowers and music, as well as jokesters who built the couple a small tent for their wedding night. Another narrative intervention perhaps?

Despite the liberties taken by the auhtor, this article indicates that Li Zhaolin and Jin Bowen entered the popular imagination in China as a “power couple.” It can be argued that their intercultural marriage became a symbol of the larger united front that the NAUA strived to create among Chinese and Korean soldiers. Moreover, the image of a strong married couple presents a legitimate path towards building a new nation that another strong generation could then inherit. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that the respect and admiration for this couple was one of the reasons that their former compatriots offered themselves as witnesses for Jin Bowen’s case. In the next post, I will discuss the events that led to the hearings, according to the journalist Zhao Yan.