A picture of the former site of Longkang Co. [Photo/WeChat account: qdweishinan]

Situated at the intersection of Zhejiang Road and Hunan Road Shinan district in Qingdao in East China's Shandong province, this old building is unremarkable among the many examples of old German-style architecture in the city.

What makes it special, however, is that it is also the former offices of Longkang Co, as well as the secret site set up by the Jiaodong district Party committee – whose central figure was Wang Yimin, a martyr who died in Qingdao in 1947 during the revolutionary war period.

In 1936, at the age of 17, Wang started class at Liyidu Normal School in Shandong province. In the winter of 1937, he joined the eighth detachment of the anti-Japanese guerrillas.

In 1938, the Japanese invaders occupied Qingdao and Wang wrote to his second brother Wang Wanshou and third brother Wang Songshan – formerly Wang Yongshou – who worked in Mukden, now Shenyang, to persuade them to come back and join the Anti-Japanese War (1931-45).

Wang Yimin's daughter, Wang Lingjun, recalled that in 1945 her father was assigned with his wife and children to Qingdao. They lived in a German-style building that also housed Longkang Company on Hunan Road.

Wang was arrested during an operation in 1946 and sacrificed in 1947.

Wang Yimin, a martyr who died in Qingdao in 1947. [Photo/WeChat account: qdweishinan]