Hu Lanqi

Hu Lanqi (; 1901 – 13 December 1994), also spelled Hu Lanxi, was a Chinese writer and military leader. She joined the National Revolutionary Army in 1927 and the Chinese branch of the Communist Party of Germany in 1930. She was imprisoned by Nazi Germany in 1933 and wrote an influential memoir of her experience, for which she was invited by Maxim Gorky to meet him in Moscow. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, she organized a team of women soldiers to resist the Japanese invasion, and became the first woman to be awarded the rank of Major General by the Republic of China. She supported the Communists during the Chinese Civil War, but was persecuted in Mao Zedong's political campaigns following the Communist victory in mainland China. She survived the Cultural Revolution to see her political rehabilitation, and published a detailed memoir of her life in the 1980s.

Based on her early life, the writer Mao Dun wrote the novel ''Rainbow'' (1929), whose heroine, Mei, would become more famous than Hu herself.

She was married and divorced twice. She rejected a marriage proposal from the Sichuan warlord Yang Sen, and was later engaged to Chen Yi, the Chinese communist leader who would become one of China's Ten Marshals and would serve as Foreign Minister, but they never married. Provided by Wikipedia