General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Railway Guerrilla

Railway Guerrilla (铁道游击队, also rendered Railroad Guerrilla) is a 1956 Chinese black-and-white war film produced by Shanghai Film Studio, directed by Zhao Ming and written by Liu Zhixia, adapted from his own 1954 novel of the same title¹. It dramatizes the exploits of a Communist-led railway guerrilla unit that raided Japanese transport on the rail lines of southern Shandong during the Second Sino-Japanese War¹. Its interlude, "Playing My Beloved Tu Pipa" (弹起我心爱的土琵琶), remains widely known in China².

Key fact	Detail
Release	1956, mainland China; black and white, Mandarin dialogue¹
Studio and director	Shanghai Film Studio; directed by Zhao Ming, screenplay by Liu Zhixia¹
Runtime	Listed as 85 minutes by one source and 83 minutes by the film database 1905.com¹^•³
Principal cast	Cao Huiqu, Qin Yi, Feng Zhe, Feng Qi, Feng Xiao, and Deng Nan¹
Source	Liu Zhixia's novel Railway Guerrilla, published January 1954 by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House²
Historical prototype	The Lunan Military Region Railway Brigade, which fought along more than a hundred li of the Jinpu line and the Linzhu branch line for 7 years in over 100 battles²
Theme song	"Playing My Beloved Tu Pipa," composed by Lü Qiming, sung by Chen Jingxi²

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set around 1940 on the railway lines around Lincheng and Zaozhuang in Shandong, where a railway guerrilla unit strikes enemy transport and pins down enemy troops¹. Commander Liu Hong and political commissar Li Zheng first open a charcoal yard in Chenzhuang as cover, then attack trains to arm themselves and supply weapons to the military region; the local people call them the Flying Tigers¹.

The film proceeds through a series of raids on the Linzhu branch line and the Jinpu main line: seizing machine guns from a moving train, attacking a foreign trading house, a night raid on Lincheng, intercepting a cloth train, and demolishing blockhouses³. The Japanese commander Kobayashi sends a special-agent squad under Okamura to destroy the unit; the guerrillas strike first, and Okamura's men cannot find them thanks to their speed and popular support¹. Liu Hong is wounded and sheltered by Fang Lin-sao, a widow whose husband had been killed; the two grow close¹. After the outbreak of the Pacific War intensifies Japanese military transport, Kobayashi masses the forces of the whole Lunan region against Weishan Lake; the guerrillas break out disguised as Japanese troops, annihilate Okamura's squad, and Okamura drowns. Fang Lin-sao is captured while scouting west of the lake¹. In 1945, after victory, Li Zheng returns with new orders: to move into Lincheng to block Nationalist forces moving north and to force Kobayashi's unit to surrender. The unit rescues Fang Lin-sao and captures the fleeing Kobayashi¹.

Historical background and the source novel

During the War of Resistance against Japan, a Communist-led unit, the Lunan Military Region Railway Brigade, operated in the Lunan region around present-day Zaozhuang, Shandong. Using the Jinpu line and the Linzhu branch line, a stretch of more than a hundred li of track, as its battlefield, the unit fought for 7 years in the enemy's core area, took part in more than 100 battles, and hid in the vast Weishan Lake wetlands. Japanese forces called it the "Flying Tigers that fell from the sky"².

The writer Liu Zhixia used this unit as the prototype for his novel Railway Guerrilla, published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House in January 1954. The book was popular with readers and produced a society-wide wave of "reading 'Railway' and remembering the Resistance"².

Production

In 1956 Shanghai Film Studio adapted the novel as a film of the same name, with Liu Zhixia himself writing the screenplay². Zhao Ming directed; the crew included cinematographer Feng Sizhi, art director Zhang Hanchen, and composer Lü Qiming. Two veterans of the real unit, Liu Jinshan and Che Jilin, served as military advisers¹.

Liu Hong had two real prototypes. Hong Zhenhai, the historical brigade's first commander, was sent back to Zaozhuang by the Party to build a secret intelligence station and later led the railway unit until he was killed in action at the age of 32; Liu Jinshan, a later brigade commander who led the unit through the hardest phase of the fighting in Lunan, was the film's military adviser⁴. Their exploits, including the "blood-washed trading house" and the machine-gun seizure from a moving train, became the legendary deeds of the fictional Liu Hong⁴.

The production drew on the memoirs of guerrilla members and used real names and actual locations, which one survey of the film describes as giving it a realism unusual for war films of the period⁵. Filming took place in Wuxi, Jiangsu³.

Music

The interlude "Playing My Beloved Tu Pipa," sung by the vocalist Chen Jingxi, carries the melodic character of a Shandong folk song, moving from a lyrical slow section to a driving fast section. It expresses the guerrillas' resolve and optimism under hardship and is regarded as one of the representative songs among Chinese war-film interludes². The song's lyrics open with the lines "The sun in the west is about to set; Weishan Lake is quiet," which remain familiar to Chinese audiences⁶.

The song has continued to carry cultural weight. In 2026 the Wuhan Culture and Tourism Bureau fined two companies after the comedian Guo Degang altered the lyrics of "Playing My Beloved Pipa" during a commercial performance, stating that revolutionary songs carry the memory of the War of Resistance and cannot be distorted⁷.

Reception and legacy

The film was placed among the ten most popular domestic films of 1957 in a poll run jointly by Beijing People's Radio and Beijing Daily⁸. A contemporary retrospective description notes its combination of suspenseful, episodic plotting with lyricism and revolutionary optimism⁸.

The story has been remade repeatedly: a 12-episode television series in 1985 and a 35-episode series in 2005, the film Flying Tigers in 1995, and Railway Heroes in 2021². In 2019 the novel was included in the "New China 70 Years, 70 Novels" collection planned by ten publishers including Learning Press and People's Literature Publishing House². A restored 88-minute 2D version was re-released in mainland China on 1 April 2021 as part of the Party centennial film program³.

The film's imagery has entered everyday memory. A Zaozhuang native interviewed in Shanghai in 2021 recalled that introducing himself as coming from "the hometown of the Railway Guerrilla" was instantly understood, that classmates asked whether he had ridden freight trains to Shanghai, and that the film was the first he ever saw, at an open-air village screening where latecomers climbed trees for seats⁶.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › War action and adventure › War action films released through 1999 › Released 1934 to 1962

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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