Former Residence of General Chang Hsueh-liang to be RenovatedThe former mansion and dwelling of Kuomintang (KMT) General Chang Hsueh-liang in Shenyang City of northeast China's Liaoning Province are to be renovated soon.Over 90 households in the 36,000 square-meter compound will be moved elsewhere and the 36,000-sq.m. garden will be rebuilt within five years. The residence of Zhao Yidi, wife of Chang Hsueh-liang, will be renovated and open to the public by the end of this year. The Liaoning modern history museum and Chang Hsueh-liang former residence exhibition hall in the compound have attracted millions of domestic and foreign visitors so far. Chang Hsueh-liang was well known as "the Young Marshal" as he is the son of "Old Marshal" Chang Zuo-lin, the war lord of Northeast China from the 1911 Revolution until his death in a Kwantung Army bomb plot in 1928. Zhang Xueliang and General Yang Hucheng arrested Chiang Kai-shek, KMT leader, in the famous Xi'an Incident on December 12, 1936, which was eventually settled peacefully with the efforts of the Communist Party of China (CPC). This incident impelled Chiang to fight together with the CPC against invading Japanese troops. However, Chang was imprisoned by Chiang soon after the incident and spent decades under house arrest in Taiwan under the KMT until Chiang died in the 1970s. An official of the provincial cultural department said his department would ask the government to set aside some 20 million yuan for the renovation. |
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