How Legends Can Be Achieved, From the Battle Hero of "Flying bayonets" to Astronaut Cradle Aviation | China | Astronauts
On the afternoon of August 5th, the first session of the "1925 Red Classic Reading Salon" themed lecture "Listening to the Party's Command for War and Cultivating Talents, Loyally Serving the Motherland" was held at the 1925 Bookstore. The speaker, Qi Lutong, who is almost an octogenarian, still stands tall and spirited, with a strong patriotic enthusiasm soaring, overflowing, and spreading in this bookstore in Shanghai that has been operating for nearly a century.
The 1925 Bookstore was a place where Comrade Chen Yun, a proletarian revolutionary, fought during his youth. In 1925, the predecessor of the Book Company, the Commercial Press Hongkou Branch, opened. That same year, Comrade Chen Yun joined the work here and participated in the revolution. Red is the background color of the 1925 Bookstore. In order to better promote red culture, the Shanghai Yanhuang Culture Propaganda Team and the 1925 Bookstore under the Xinhua Media Chain jointly launched the "1925 Red Classic Reading Salon" series of activities.
Qi Lutong was the former Vice Dean of the Political Academy of the Air Force and the former Dean of Changchun Flight Academy. He was also the former Deputy Chief of Staff and Major General of the Air Force of the Nanjing Military Region. In 1998, he led over a thousand flight cadets and officers to Baicheng for flood control and rescue, and was commended by the Air Force. During his decades working in the Air Force, he served as a military, political, administrative, teaching, and logistics cadre, and his most valued position was the dean of the Changchun Flight Academy of the Air Force.
The former Changchun Flight Academy was the first aviation school founded in China, formerly known as the Northeast Democratic United Army Aviation School, abbreviated as the Northeast Old Aviation School. The Northeast Old Aviation School was established in Tonghua, Jilin in 1946 and has since traveled to Mudanjiang, Dong'an, Changchun and other places. In just 3 years and 9 months, the Northeast Old Aviation School has trained over 100 pilots and over 400 aviation technicians of various types. The establishment of the Northeast Old Aviation School marks an important milestone in the history of Chinese aviation and the development of the People's Air Force, as the Communist Party led People's Army has since established its own aviation education.
On November 11, 1949, the People's Air Force was officially established. On June 9, 2004, the former Air Force Changchun Flight Academy, the Seventh Flight Academy, and the Second Aviation Academy merged to form the only comprehensive military higher education institution in China that focuses on cultivating flight talents and is compatible with aviation flight command and aviation engineering technology majors - the People's Liberation Army Aviation University.
In the lecture, Qi Lutong focused on the establishment, development, and transformation of Changchun Flight Academy, focusing on the talents who emerged from the original Changchun Flight Academy, and cultivating a large number of talents for China's aviation industry from the cradle of pilots; The cradle of models, delivering a large number of talents to various routes of our country; The cradle of generals, cultivating numerous talents for the construction of the motherland's military; The cradle of astronauts, carefully selected talents for the development of China's aerospace, and other aspects will be introduced, with a focus on introducing several combat heroes who made remarkable achievements in the difficult battle of "aerial bayonet fighting" during the Korean War - Li Han, the first to shoot down enemy planes and break the myth of the invincibility of the US Air Force; Zhao Baotong, who shot down 7 American planes and injured 2, set a personal record for the highest military performance of a volunteer pilot; Liu Yudi and others achieved a record of shooting down four enemy planes in an air battle. Following Qi Lutong's vivid narration, on-site readers also got to know Yang Guoxiang, the hero of the hydrogen bomb experiment; Anti hijacking hero Lan Dingshou; The test flight hero Li Zhonghua and the 29 heroic test pilots he represented who sacrificed and made contributions; In May 2018, when driving Sichuan Airlines 3U8633 from Chongqing to Lhasa and encountering a malfunction, heroic pilots such as Captain Liu Chuanjian saved 128 names in 34 minutes.
Since the beginning of the new century, Changchun Flight Academy, a glorious aviation cradle with a glorious history, has nurtured generations of outstanding astronauts to achieve the millennium dream of flying for the Chinese nation. Aerospace heroes Yang Liwei, Fei Junlong, Nie Haisheng, Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang, Liu Yang, Zhang Xiaoguang, Wang Yaping, and Chen Dong all graduated from Changchun Flight Academy. Among them, Liu Yang, Wang Yaping, and Chen Dong were students that Qi Lutong had personally taken care of from enrollment, teaching, training, to graduation and leaving school.
In just one hour, on-site readers embarked on a legendary aerospace journey spanning over 70 years, deeply educated and inspired. After this lecture, a series of activities will continue to invite red culture promoters to visit the 1925 Bookstore, further developing it into an important propaganda platform for red culture.
