China News Service, Ningbo, September 29 (Luo Zeming, Zhu Han) "This honor belongs to every 'Red Child' and 'Red Grandpa'." Recently, Chen Weigao, a red propagandist in Zhenhai District, said in the Chengdong Community of Zhaobaoshan Street, Zhenhai District, Ningbo, Zhejiang.
Recently, Zhu Junying, Secretary of the Party Committee of Chengdong Community of Zhaobaoshan Subdistrict, presented flowers and woodcut rubbings of "Smiling Zhenhai·Houde Runcheng" to Chen Weigao.
On the same day, Chen Weigao was selected into the third batch of "China's Good People List" in 2026. This year coincides with the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army’s Long March. This nearly 80-year-old veteran spent nearly two decades measuring the Long March, and used 17 years of persistence to send more than 100,000 books to children in mountainous areas, spreading the power of faith between the coast of the East China Sea and the mountains of the southwest.
Chen Weigao's red complex originates from his childhood memories. In November 1947, Chen Weigao was born in Zhenhai, a land soaked in red blood. He grew up listening to his grandmother telling revolutionary stories. The most profound object in his memory was an iron pot dug out from the ruins of the Anti-Japanese War. It was the only possession left after the destruction of his homeland, and it was also engraved with the memory of suffering and unyielding character of a generation.
In 1964, 17-year-old Chen Weigao put on a military uniform and rushed to the battlefield to aid Vietnam and resist the United States, and experienced the harsh baptism of artillery fire and gunpowder smoke. After returning to his hometown and taking root in the local area, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to poverty alleviation and public welfare undertakings, and went to remote mountainous areas such as Guizhou, Chongqing, and Sichuan more than 70 times. In Pu'an, Guizhou Province alone, he helped build 15 schools and 5 libraries, and helped more than 500 out-of-school children return to school. After experiencing the suffering of war and witnessing the great changes in the development of mountain villages, Chen Weigao said: "The power of faith lies more in the inheritance of spirit."
With this belief, Chen Weigao, who had just retired in 2009, set out again. He crossed six provinces, retraced the Long March of the Central Red Army several times, and visited Lazishu Village in Pu'an County, Qianxinan Prefecture more than ten times. He integrated his own war experience, historical research on the Long March, and frontline poverty alleviation experiences into vivid red lectures.
Having been traveling in mountainous areas all year round, Chen Weigao is well aware of the desire of children in the mountains for knowledge, and he also understands that the nourishment of the red spirit cannot just stay in the few dozen minutes in class. In 2009, when he visited Lazishu Village Primary School, he saw a few extracurricular books curled up and falling apart, and children lying in front of the window looking curiously. This scene touched him and gave him the idea of the "Books Know the World" charity reading activity.
Since then, every Children's Day, he will carefully select red classic books and send them to schools in southwest mountainous areas for free. Over the past 17 years, he has traveled over mountains and ridges to the donated schools again and again, and stood in the classroom to tell stories to the children: telling the story of national unity during the Red Army's Long March, "Yi Hai Alliance", telling the growth tree planted with the villagers during poverty alleviation, and telling how the leaky "Chacha House" in the past turned into a spacious and bright new building today.
So far, Chen Weigao has given a total of 716 lectures, directly reaching more than 100,000 young people; the charity reading activities initiated by him have given away a total of 108,000 books, benefiting 225 schools in Guizhou, Sichuan and other places. "I believe that the red seeds planted in children's hearts will one day grow into towering trees." He said.
