[3] A former journalist reporting to General Yang Hucheng, Song Qiyun had edited the Northwest Cultural Daily and spoken against the direction of the Kuomintang (KMT) government under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

Correspondence continued until the Lunar New Year of 1949, with one letter including the words "brother" and "sister" written by Song Zhenzhong.

Others included Liu Hulan, who inspired Mao Zedong's slogan "A great life, a glorious death";[a] Liu Wenxue [zh], who was killed by a landlord whom he caught stealing crops;[1] and Wang Erxiao [zh], a cowherd who detained advancing Japanese troops long enough for his peers to escape.

[10] In June 1955, Yang Jinxing [zh], a KMT officer in Geleshan in 1949, was arrested by the Chongqing Public Security Department and charged with the murder of Song Zhenzhong and his parents.

[11] Song's story was incorporated into Luo Guangbin and Yang Yiyan's 1961 novel Red Crag,[1] in which he is depicted as a cute and spry child who yearns to live freely after being raised in prison.

[12] Also that year, the novel Red Crag was adapted to film as Eternity in Flames (烈火中永生); Song was portrayed by the child actress Fang Shu, who remained identified with the role into the 1990s.

Intended as a means of political education, the book presents its depiction of Song's suffering and death as a dark moment before the dawn of the People's Republic of China.

A dramatic stage adaptation by Liu Qinglai, drawing from Red Crag and My Brother, Little Radish Head, was produced later that decade.

[7] The General Yang Hucheng Cemetery, a tourist attraction that has received a rating of 3A, is regularly visited by schoolchildren who clean the tombs.