Generals meeting at Zhijiang’s airfield on 21 August 1945 accepted Japan’s formal surrender in the China theatre, some ten days before the shipboard ceremony in Tokyo Bay that most history books remember instead, built around General Douglas MacArthur and the USS Missouri.
一九四五年八月二十一日,日方代表在芷江机场向中方正式递交投降书,接受了中国战区的受降;而多数历史书更为熟知的,却是十天后在东京湾军舰上举行的那场仪式,以及麦克阿瑟将军与”密苏里号”战舰。
Vice-general secretary Takeo Imai led the Japanese delegation, flying in from Nanjing for talks that ran until 23 August; the site is now home to the only national memorial hall in China documenting the country’s full victory and the Japanese surrender, alongside a separate hall dedicated to the American Flying Tigers who flew missions from the same airfield during the war.
日方代表团由副总参谋长今井武夫率领,自南京乘机飞抵芷江,谈判持续至八月二十三日;如今,这里建有中国唯一一座全面记录抗战胜利与日本投降历史的国家级纪念馆,旁边还设有一座专门纪念曾在同一机场执行任务的美国”飞虎队”的展馆。
Roughly a decade before that ceremony, in December 1934, Communist Party leaders including Mao Zedong held an emergency meeting at a Dong ethnic academy in Tongdao county, arguing over which direction the Red Army should take during the Long March. According to Huaihua’s own municipal government, the meeting adopted Mao’s proposal to turn towards Guizhou rather than continue deeper into Hunan, a decision credited with saving more than 30,000 Red Army soldiers from marching straight into a prepared trap.
而在这场受降仪式发生的约十年前,一九三四年十二月,包括毛泽东在内的中共领导人,曾在通道县一座侗族书院内召开紧急会议,商讨长征途中红军的行军方向。据怀化市政府官方介绍,会议最终采纳了毛泽东转兵贵州、而非继续深入湖南的提议,这一决定被认为挽救了三万多名红军将士,使其免于一头扎进敌军早已设下的埋伏。
An Exiled Poet and a Town Built on Tung Oil
一位被流放的诗人与一座建立在桐油贸易上的古镇
Centuries before either of those events, the poet Qu Yuan was exiled to the Yuanshui River basin that runs through Huaihua, and composed Li Sao, one of the most influential poems in the Chinese literary canon, somewhere along its banks.
早在这两桩历史事件的数百年之前,诗人屈原便被流放至流经怀化的沅水流域,并在这条江畔某处写下了《离骚》,这部作品后来成为中国文学史上影响最为深远的诗篇之一。
Hongjiang Ancient Commercial Town, further downstream, grew rich during the Ming and Qing dynasties on the tung oil trade, its narrow alleys still lined with the old banks, guild halls and merchant houses that gave the settlement its nickname, the Pearl of Western Hunan; the town was upgraded to Huaihua’s first 5A-rated tourist site as part of a wider push that has left the prefecture with 210 recognised ancient towns and villages, more than anywhere else in Hunan.
沅水下游的洪江古商城,在明清两代凭借桐油贸易而富甲一方,狭窄的街巷两旁至今仍保留着当年的钱庄、会馆与商号,这座古镇也因此赢得了”湘西明珠”的美誉;作为地方旅游发展战略的一部分,洪江古商城已升级为怀化首个国家5A级旅游景区,而全市现存的古城古村落多达二百一十处,数量居湖南全省之首。
The Scientist Who Spent 37 Years Growing Rice Here
一位在此耕耘水稻长达三十七年的科学家
Yuan Longping, the agronomist credited with developing the first commercially viable hybrid rice, lived and worked at the Anjiang Agricultural School in Huaihua for 37 years, research that eventually helped raise China’s rice-planting area to some 8 billion mu and add more than 600 billion kilogrammes to national output over the following half-century.
农学家袁隆平,被誉为世界上首个成功培育出可大规模商用杂交水稻的科学家,曾在怀化安江农校工作生活长达三十七年;此后半个世纪间,他的研究成果推动中国水稻种植面积扩大至约八十亿亩,累计增产逾六千亿公斤。
According to the prefecture’s own 2024 economic communiqué, Huaihua’s GDP reached ¥209.4 billion that year, up 5.3 percent, with per capita output at ¥47,116; the permanent population stood at 4.4159 million, down 1.3 percent on the previous year.
据该市自身发布的二零二四年经济统计公报显示,当年怀化市GDP达二千零九十三点八二亿元,同比增长百分之五点三,人均产值为四万七千一百一十六元;常住人口为四百四十一点五九万人,较上年下降百分之一点三。
Huaihua South station now sits at the junction of the Shanghai-Kunming and Jiaozuo-Liuzhou railways, giving the city one of the busiest rail interchanges in western Hunan; the city carried 11.27 million rail passengers in 2024, up 4.1 percent, while Zhijiang Airport’s passenger numbers grew 20.1 percent over the same year, faster than almost any other transport measure the prefecture recorded.
怀化南站如今是沪昆铁路与焦柳铁路的交汇点,使这座城市成为湘西地区最为繁忙的铁路枢纽之一;二零二四年,全市铁路客运量达一千一百二十六点九二万人次,同比增长百分之四点一,而芷江机场的旅客吞吐量同比增长百分之二十点一,增速在当年各项交通指标中位居前列。
Zhijiang’s airfield still stands, its runway now shared between commercial flights and the memorial archway that marks where the surrender delegation once landed; the ceremony that took place there in 1945 rarely gets the same billing as the one on the USS Missouri, though it happened first.
芷江的机场至今犹存,如今的跑道,既服务于民航班机,也毗邻着当年标记受降代表团降落之处的纪念牌坊;一九四五年在此举行的受降仪式,虽然发生在先,却远不及”密苏里号”上的那场仪式那般广为人知。
