Writer Wu Zuguang wrote an article in 2001, “”Second-rate Hall” strange injustice case,” about the Chinese Communist Party after the establishment of a big case of a strange concoction, but is a farce, many cultural people have suffered, read to make people sigh.
Guo Moruo jokingly called it a “second-rate hall”.
During the war, some people in the fields of culture, theater, art, film, and journalism moved to Chongqing from Shanghai and other places, and lacked a comfortable place to live, so a Burmese returnee named Tang Yu built simple housing for them. These dwellings were made of huge, easily available bamboo bales, which were then tied together to form roofs, doors, and windows, plastered inside and out, and roofed over to become living quarters.
Tang Yu built more than a dozen houses in more than two or three places, all for friends to live in, and his first house “Yi Lu” was for Xia Yan’s family. Tang Yu finally built the biggest house, in the village of Four Virtues on the downhill slope of four Delhi in Zhong Yi Road, there is a very spacious living room and three rooms, more exquisite decoration, named “Bi Lv”.
After the completion of the Bi Lodge, the guests who lived in it were Sheng Jialun, Gao Ji and Wu Zuguang for men, and Fang Jing, Gao Fen and Lu En for women. Many literary and art circles people such as Ding Cong also came and went often, we ate and drank, sat and chatted together. During the New Year’s Festival, there was more than one dance party, which was very lively. Many of these literary and artistic figures were inclined toward the Chinese Communist Party.
One of the things that impressed them most was a small Yangtze opera performance that came from Yan’an. The show was titled “Brothers and Sisters Make a Difference,” and the two actors were Ouyang Shanzun and Li Lillian. In the dialogue of the play, one hears a new and unheard of term from northern Shaanxi province, namely, the younger sister delivers food to the older brother, who pretends to be sleeping in the field.
This word made these artists find it very interesting, because most of these artists did not live a regular life, did not sleep at night, sleep lazy in the morning, irregular meals are common, especially a man named Sheng Jialun, so some people began to call him “second-rate son”. One day, Guo Moruo came to the green hut, heard everyone call each other two streams, casually said: “Give you a hall name. Let’s call it “Erliu Hall,” okay?” Everyone said yes. From then on, the name “Erliu Tang” opened up. Later, more literary circles, journalists, and actors often came here to talk about it.
The relationship between “Second-rate Church” and the Chinese Communist Party
After the establishment of the Communist Party, Zhou Enlai once wondered aloud at a gathering of the literary and artistic circles, “Have all the people of the “second-rate hall” returned? The “second-rate tang” of course came back, because they were inextricably linked to the CCP, and it was impossible for them to leave.
Because that year, in addition to the Chinese Communist Party member Xia Yan was entrusted by the Chinese Communist Party to often come to cage these literary and art circles outside, at that time in the Chinese Communist Party’s Chongqing office of Zhou Enlai, Dong Biwu, Lin Boqu, Wang Ruofei, Lin Biao and so on also came to Bi Lv and literary and art circles many times to talk. It can be said that the “second-rate hall” people and the Chinese Communist Party have a close relationship, and the “second-rate hall” people also take various ways to assist the Chinese Communist Party. Zhou Enlai knew this very well.
The Nightmare of the “Second-rate Hall”
In 1955, the Communist Party of China began a “purge,” and the “Erliu Tang” was described by some as a “counter-revolutionary organization”; in 1957, the “Erliu Tang” was established. “Wu Zuguang, Ding Cong, Huang Miaozi, and Dai Hao were branded as rightists, while Du Gao Tianzhuang, Chen Minfan, and other young people in the film and theater industry with whom Wu Zuguang often interacted, were designated as a small family of “second-rate tang”.
Wu recalled that after he was branded a rightist, a vice minister of the Ministry of Culture summoned his wife, Xin Fengxia, a famous opera performer, and ordered her to divorce her husband. Xin Fengxia refused, and said she could wait for Wu Zuguang, even if it was only for 28 years. Wu Zuguang was soon sent to the North Wastelands for rehabilitation, only to return to Beijing three years later. During this time, Xinfengxia was humiliated at her workplace.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, the “Second-rate Church” again became the focus of some “revolutionary rebels,” and countless broadsheets, tabloids, and slogans pointed their fingers at the “Second-rate Church,” and Wu Zuguang was humiliated. He became a “current counterrevolutionary” again, and on the wall of the famous Union Medical Center near his house, he wrote a slogan “completely smash the counterrevolutionary Petőfi Club Second-Rate Hall” in large letters almost two meters square. On the front door of his home, “Wu Zuguang Second-Rate Hall” was written in white ash. The rebels at Xin Fengxia’s Chinese Opera House gave her a title: “Second-rate Hall, Sister-in-Law Xin Fengxia.
In addition, Central Academy of Fine Arts professor Ye Qingyu was called a “cultural agent of the Sino-American Institute,” cartoonist Ding Cong was said to be associated with the “Army Strategic Intelligence Agency, a U.S. secret service agency,” and even Zhou Yang and Ding Ling became “close friends of the Second-rate Hall,” a case that involved many “cousins,” many of whom were persecuted and brutalized.
Wu Zuguang spent ten years in the Cultural Revolution and seven years in the “May 7 Cadre School”. In 1975, she was paralyzed in her left leg due to a cerebral thrombosis, and in the “small family”, many of her “cousins” were persecuted and destroyed. Wang Ming, a playwright from the “little family,” died in Anhui labor camps after being tortured. The talented playwright Tian Zhuang could not endure the years of hardship and died young. ……
Thoughtfulness
In 1979, after the Cultural Revolution, the Ministry of Culture of the Communist Party of China “vindicated” the “Erliu Tang” case, and all those who had been implicated were rehabilitated. However, the dead cannot be revived, so will those who survived the destruction regret that they were wrong about the CCP? Why didn’t Zhou Enlai, whom they “revered,” lend a helping hand when he knew that the “Second-rate Church” was nothing more than a loosely knit group of intellectuals who dined and drank? Perhaps the burning of the bandits was the beginning of his awakening, which was called out by Joe Wu before his death.
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