The scenic Lake Honghu was the centerpiece of a revolutionary opera: "The Red Guards on Honghu Lake" (洪湖赤卫队) which was based on a true story about the Red Army and its struggle with the Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War.
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The base area or soviet was under the leadership of communist general (later Field Marshal) He Long through most of its existence, and defended by his Second Army Group.
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Famous for the Gung Ho Cooperative movement that he founded during the Second Sino-Japanese War (World War Two), Alley established half a dozen small-scale industrial co-operatives in Honghu under the revamped Gung-ho movement he led in the 1980s.
In the summer of 1930, a landlord of Pengjiadun named Peng Batian takes advantage of the departure of the Red Army, cooperating with colonel Feng of the Kuomintang to attack the Honghu Base Area.