“Yi Dan Pi Luo (A Pair of Large Bamboo Baskets)” means waiting for a lifetime; a suitcase witnesses a history; and a wedding is a choice of destiny... On November 27, the final of the 2024 Hunan First Short Red Play Contest was held in Changsha. The 20 touching red stories were presented in the form of short plays in the contest. In the end, the“Yi Dan Pi Luo” submitted by the Tongdao Zhuanbing Memorial Hall stood out and won the top prize.
The short play Contest of this year, one of the important innovative supporting activities of the 2024 Hunan Red Tourism Festival was co-hosted by the Hunan Provincial CPC Committee Publicity Department and the Hunan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism. Twenty institutions, including the Hunan History Exhibition Hall of the Communist Party of China and the Mao Zedong and First Normal School Memorial Hall, which passed the preliminary contest, participated in the on-site contest for the finals. Some of the winning works, such as “Yi Dan Pi Luo”, “Monument in the Snowy Region”, and “The Waiting under the Masmulberry Tree”, will be performed at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Hunan Red Tourism Festival.
“Yi Dan Pi Luo” was submitted by the Tongdao Zhuanbing Memorial Hall, with guidance provided by the Tongdao County CPC Committee Publicity Department, the Culture, Tourism, Radio, Television, and Sports Bureau of Tongdao County, the Tongdao County Center of Culture and the Tongdao County Musicians’ Association. Set in Tongdao Liuyuan Village, the play tells us the touching story that Dong nationality teenager Yang Changbin, his father and his elder sister rescued the injured Red Army soldier named Qiu Xianda and took in him in the winter of 1934. Yang Changbin’s family spent two months with Qiu Xianda day and night, giving Qiu Xianda, a Red Army soldier who was injured by a gunshot wound, a new life. When returning to the army after recovery, he himself knitted a pair of exquisite large baskets and gave them to his saviour----Yang Changbin’s family. Yang Changbin had been waiting for the return of his Red Army brother, waiting affectionately for the baskets for 85 years until he passed away at the age of 98.
(Translated by Yang Sigui)