r/16knorthsouth

Hong Shui (洪水), born Vũ Nguyên Bác in Gia Lâm, Hà Nội (1908). When he came to China, Nguyễn Ái Quốc, then operating with the alias "Comrade Li Rui", adopted him as his little brother Li Yingsi. He joined the CCP during his time studying at the Whampoa Military Academy and participated in the Guangzhou Uprising, and was the only Vietnamese to complete the Long March. He was expelled from the CCP three times.

In spite of his participation in the Second Sino-Japanese War, he was one of the first and most enthusiastic supporters in recruiting Japanese officers and soldiers to serve as deputies and staff officers in the Việt Minh (led by Hồ Chí Minh, formerly known as "Nguyễn Ái Quốc). In his return to Vietnam, he adopted the name "Nguyễn Sơn" (阮山) and was granted the rank of Major General (there was only one Army General and one Lieutenant General in the North Vietnamese military at the time). Hong Shui's colorful experience in China made him one of the forefathers of Vietnam's military education system. But his talents were not only restricted to military expertise. In fact, one of Vietnam's leading educators, Professor Đặng Thai Mai, once said: "Mr. Sơn's recitation of [The Tale of] Kiều was even better than me!"

On his return to China, he was designated the Director of the Vietnam Section of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee and later Deputy Director of the Regulations Bureau of the Central Military Commission. In 1955, he was made a Major General in the PLA. The next year, Hong Shui died of a malignant tumor in his left lung. Thus, he was the first and remains the only "General of Two Countries" in Sino-Vietnamese history.

Chairman Hồ called him "Sơn đệ" (山弟). It's possible that by the late 1940s, he was the only one that Hồ still addressed with such an intimate honorific, as he called those esteemed and at an older age "cụ" (Vietnamese version of "老"), and addressed himself as "uncle" in front of (generally) younger people.