These 12 women, who are all talented and beautiful women active in various fields, were persecuted by the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution and eventually had to fight against brutality with death.
Zhu Meifu, born in Nanhui County, Shanghai, was originally named Zhu Meifu, because she was born on the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, when the wax plum was in full bloom. She was the wife of the modern Chinese literary scholar Fu Lei. Yang Jiang described her as a gentle wife, loving mother, beautiful lady in the salon, and capable housewife all in one.
At the age of four, Zhu Meifu’s father was unjustly imprisoned and her mother was too busy to care for her young daughter to clear her father’s name, resulting in the death of her two younger brothers and one younger sister. When she was 14, she was engaged to Fu Lei, and in 1932, she married the famous translator Fu Lei in Shanghai.
After the marriage, she had three sons, the eldest of whom died young; the second son, Fu Cong, born in 1934, stayed in England and was a pianist; the third son, Fu Min, born in 1937, was an educator and edited “Fu Lei’s Letters”.
On September 3, 1966, the Cultural Revolution broke out and the times were chaotic. Embarrassed, she and her husband Fu Lei chose a death, she prepared warm water for Fu Lei to take poison, in order to maintain the dignity of the sofa will be squarely on him, after tearing off the bed sheet hanged themselves. She was fifty-three years old.
Zhu Meifu 1913.2.20. – 1966.9.3.
Yan Huizhu 1919–1966.9.11.
Yan Huizhu, formerly known as Lai, academic name Zhongming; Mongolian flag people, ancestral origin Beijing, Peking Opera performer, Peking Opera, Kunqu Dan actress.
Daughter of Yan Jupeng, disciple of Mei Lanfang and wife of Yu Zhenfei. She was the vice-principal of Shanghai Opera School and was good at performing in “Yutangchun” and “Dream in the Garden”.
“During the Cultural Revolution, she was severely criticized and beaten, and suffered great physical and mental injuries.
On the night of September 11, 1966, he committed suicide after writing three desperate letters in quick succession.
Gu Shengying 1937.7.2. – 1967.1.31.
Gu Shengying was a famous Chinese pianist, originally from Wuxi, born in Shanghai.
In 1958, she participated in the 14th International Music Competition in Geneva and won the highest prize in the women’s piano competition.
In 1960, she was awarded the highest prize at the 6th Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. In the same year, she received an honorary diploma from the Central Conservatory of Music.
In 1964, she won the Grand Prize again at the International Piano Competition in Belgium.
On January 31, 1967, he and his mother and brother committed suicide by turning on the gas.
Chen Lian (1919.10.13–1967.11.19)
Chen Lian, a native of Cixi County, Zhejiang Province, was the daughter of Chen Bure, a senior member of Chiang Kai-shek’s staff who was known as “the courage of literature”.
As a young woman, Chen Lian was a radical who defied her father’s opposition and enrolled in the Hangzhou High School. She gradually came into contact with the Communist Party due to her dissatisfaction with KMT policies.
She joined the Communist Party in 1939 and served as deputy director of the Education Department of the Ministry of Forestry and executive member of the All-China Women’s Federation.
“On November 19, 1967, at the age of 48, Chen Lian jumped to her death from an 11-story building.
Xiaobai Yushang 1922.-1967.12.21.
Little Bai Yushang, formerly known as Li Zaiwen, nicknamed Fuzi, was of Shandong origin. She fled to Beijing from Tianjin with her father at the age of 5. Her parents could not afford to raise her, so they sold her to Bai Yushang, a famous opera critic and founder of the Bai School, as an adopted daughter.
As an heir of the Bai School, she was a titan and leader in the 1950s and 1960s in critical opera.
She was received by Mao Zedong at the first meeting of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 1950.
On December 21, 1967, she was persecuted by the Gang of Four and committed suicide at the age of 45 by swallowing sleeping pills after being severely beaten.
Yan Fengying 1930–1968.
Yan Fengying, formerly known as Yan Hongliu, is a native of Luoling, Tongcheng County, Anhui Province.
She was an outstanding performing artist of Huangmei opera, one of the creators of the development of Chinese Huangmei opera, the shaper of the “Seven Fairy Girls”, and an important pioneer and contributor to the development of Chinese Huangmei opera heritage.
During the Cultural Revolution, she was accused of being a “black-liner in literature and art” and a “beautiful snake propagating feudalism”, and was slandered as a Nationalist secret agent.
On the night of April 7, 1968, she committed suicide.
Zhang Qinqiu 1904.11.3.-1968.4.22.
Zhang Qinqiu, a native of Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province, graduated from Zhejiang Provincial Women’s Normal School under the name of Zhang Wu.
Zhang Qinqiu was a famous female general of the Red Army. During the Long March, she served as the director of the Political Department of the Fourth Red Front Army and a member of the Northwest Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, among other important positions; she later served as the deputy secretary of the Party Group and deputy minister of the Ministry of Textile Industry.
Her husband Shen Zemin’s family is famous in this way. The older brother was the famous writer Mao Dun, the first Minister of Culture of the Chinese Communist Party.
Versatile himself and fluent in several foreign languages, Japanese, English and Russian, he defected to the Chinese Communist Party and died at the age of 33.
In 1968, he committed suicide by jumping from a building after being slandered as a traitor due to cruel persecution on April 22.
Yang Bi 1922.-1968.-
Yang Bi, a native of Shanghai, was originally from Wuxi. He was a famous translator. He was an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages of Fudan University in Shanghai, and the sister of Yang Jiang, wife of Qian Zhongshu.
She graduated from the AURORA Women’s College of Arts and Sciences in her early years, and then stayed on to teach at the school. After the restructuring of the faculty, she was an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at Fudan University in Shanghai. In 1968, she was persecuted and committed suicide during the “purge of the class ranks”.
Wu Xiaoyan 1954–1976.9.23.
Wu Xiaoyan, the adopted daughter of the famous historian Wu Han, was beaten into a gangster in 1966, and her mother, Yuan Zhen, was sent to a labor camp and her legs were paralyzed.
Because she was a child of the gang, she suffered from the torment of life and mental devastation and developed schizophrenia in 1973.
In the fall of 1975, he was detained by the Beijing Public Security Bureau and was subjected to inhumane torture in the detention center, which aggravated his mental illness. He committed suicide in a psychiatric hospital on the eve of the end of the Cultural Revolution because he was physically and mentally disabled.
Shangguan Yunzhu (上官云珠1920.3.2.-1968.11.23.)
Shangguan Yunzhu, a native of Changjing Township, Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, was a woman named Eminent, Chaoqun, nicknamed Yadi, also known as Wei Yajun.
She experienced the most chaotic era in China, and it was because of this that Shangguan Yunzhu reached her goal step by step through her beauty.
When Shangguan Yunzhu discovered that her beauty could attract people, she made up her mind to be a movie star like Hu Die, she wanted to shine.
After becoming popular, Shangguan Yunzhu was invited seven times by Mao Zedong, but perhaps she was an ill-fated woman from the very beginning who was affected by the changes of the Cultural Revolution at the peak of her career.
This was just the beginning. In 1968, Shangguan Yunzhu was diagnosed with breast cancer, which spread to her brain at a very rapid rate, and soon she lost her ability to read and write.
It was also in this year that Shangguan Yunzhu was arraigned again, and it was as if this was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. At the age of 48, she took a leap from a building, ending her difficult life.
Li Cuizhen 1910.12.15. – 1966.
Li Cui-zhen was a native of Nanhui, Shanghai. Since her childhood, she practiced piano at home and showed her special musical talent.
In 1930, she entered the Shanghai Music College, and in 1934, she went to the Royal Conservatory of Music, and after 1942, she taught in the piano department of Chongqing National Conservatory of Music and Shanghai National Music College.
She suffered great humiliation during the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards forced her to crawl across tables and chairs on the floor.
In 1966 this noble lady was too humiliated and resolutely chose the elegant way to end her life.
Zhao Huishen 1914.5.1.-1967.12.4.
Zhao Huishen, a native of Yibin, Sichuan, participated in theater performances at the age of 12, and performed with her brother Zhao Jingshen in such plays as “The Shrew”. He became famous in Tianjin when he worked with Tao Jin and others in the play Thunderstorm.
She then won recognition for her role as Xiao Yun, a prostitute, in the film “Angel on the Road” by Star Films. This was her only film production.
During the Cultural Revolution, she was branded as a “three-revolutionary element” for her film script “The Story of Fearless Ghosts” and her poor family composition, and was repeatedly criticized; she was also ridiculed and insulted by the rebels for her role as Xiao Yun, a prostitute in “Angel on the Road”.
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