From 1945 to 1949, the Chinese Communist Party carried out a brutal land reform in the rural areas it occupied, and similar scenes were seen in rural areas across the country after the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1947, land reform worker and writer Zhou Libo wrote the novel The Stormy Wind and the Rain, which described this land reform movement on an unprecedented scale and was widely circulated as an agrarian reform textbook for decades. In the early 1960s, the novel was made into a movie of the same name, which was repeatedly broadcast to further brainwash the nation.
In 2005, the documentary “The Tempest” was released. This is Jiang Yue and Duan Jinchuan after months of detailed research, based on a large amount of historical information and materials, in-depth filming of the prototype of the novel “Stormy Weather” – Yuanbaotun, Yuanbaotun, Shangzhi City, Heilongjiang Province, and took a year to complete. So far, the documentary has only been screened three times.
Why only three public screenings? Director Jiang Yue in the 2006 “First Documentary Young Directors Forum” said in his speech: “I want to tell everyone what is happening today is how it happened. So when I was doing in-depth research, many people I did not believe their words – not distrust, because I lived in the 60s, I was taught as a child about this matter and now I know the exact opposite. Of course there are still many people who tell me that the land reform is a non-issue, that it’s over and settled, and that there are scholars who are doing newer research; (but) I believe that the vast majority of the audience, the people, don’t know what it’s all about. When the first version I made was shown in the Yunnan Image Room, a man in his 60s said to me, “If I believe this film of yours, then Party history will have to be rewritten.”
Historical Propaganda in the Novel and Film “The Tempest
The Chinese Communist Party history says that after the Japanese surrender in August 1945 to early 1946, the CPC North Manchuria Provincial Committee organized a large number of cadres to go to the countryside to mobilize the masses and carry out anti-traitor liquidation and rent and interest reduction campaigns. on May 4, 1946, the CPC Central Committee issued the “Instruction on Land Issues”, or the “May Fourth Instruction”, deciding to shift from the wartime “rent and interest reduction It was decided to shift from the wartime “rent and interest reduction” to the struggle against traitors, liquidation, rent and interest refunds, and to explain that the landless and landless peasants would obtain land from the landlords. The Northeast Bureau then decided to let go of the land issue, and the land reform movement was launched.
With the development of the civil war between the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of China, the CPC policy took another leap in mid-1947 to the very radical Outline of China’s Land Law, which vigorously promoted confiscation and equal division without specifying the criteria for dividing rural classes and with all-out opposition to rightist tendencies. Under such a radical policy, almost all the rural areas where the land reform was carried out were subjected to brutal beatings and killings. It was not until 1948 that the situation was brought under control when the Chinese Communist Party “corrected” the situation.
The writer Zhou Libo came to Yuanbao Village in Zhuhe County (now Shangzhi City), Heilongjiang Province, in September 1946, and became deputy secretary of the district committee, leading the local land reform movement. The upper part depicts the story of Yuanmaotun (i.e. Yuanbao village), which fought against the “bully” landlord Han Laoliu and repelled the bandit attack under the leadership of the task force after the May Fourth Instruction and before the promulgation of the Chinese Land Outline. The next part depicts the further struggle of the land reform movement after the promulgation of the “Outline of the Chinese Land Law”.
In 1961, Beijing Film Studio adapted it into a feature film of the same name, directed by Xie Tieli. In both the novel and the film, landowners such as Han Laoliu, Du Shanren and Tang Gaozi are depicted as oppressive to the people, treacherous and vicious, etc.
According to the Chinese Communist Party, the land reform movement enabled the Communist Party to establish a firm base of rule in the vast countryside, consolidate its base areas, and control large amounts of civilian and material resources to support warfare and construction, and “The Tempest” and others are reflections of this history.
Unlike the history presented in the novel and film “The Tempest”, the documentary “The Tempest” gives us a different view of history through the memories of the old people of Yuanbao Village and the historical materials available.
There were many “dilettantes” who actively participated in the movement
In the rhetoric of the CCP workers, the “most oppressed people” were the “basic masses,” i.e., the very poor people who suffered greatly and were the clearest targets for solidarity. But decades later, Liu Fude, a farmer in the documentary, uses a different expression: “Some people have bad qualities, and because he has this characteristic, he can help set the movement off, and have that positive effect, right?”
A member of the workforce who later worked in a city party office, chose a more blunt tone of voice frankly: the first to approach the task force, actively participate in the movement, “idle, not working, good food and lazy” more people. For such people, the locals called them “dilettantes”.
Under the incitement and training of the Communist Party, these people were soon inspired to hate and understand how “landlords exploit people”, and began to “complain in blood and tears”. Thus, a voice in the movie “The Storm” shouted: “Villagers, come with me if you want to take revenge”, and thus began the fight against the landlords.
The real landlord Han Laoliu
The landlord in the novel and movie “The Storm” is represented by Han Laoliu. In the film, when the work crew approached Guo Changxing, the “child of Guo” who rented Han Laoliu’s land, he replied, “Then arrest Han Laoliu and kill him.”
Guo Changxing’s memory of Han Laoliu was like this: he always wore a hat, a long cloth shirt, a stick, was tall, and walked “neatly”. In the movie “The Tempest”, the landlord called “Han Laoliu” is exactly this image, and is a cunning, greedy and vicious bully. It is said that the two families “did have class hatred”.
However, the memories of the old people in the documentary “Stormy Weather” are completely different for the “president of the Manchukuo Security and Farmers’ Association”, the “chief bailiff Han” elected by the people. Peasant Gao Fengtong remembers that Han Laoliu’s family was “poor and could not make ends meet with the whole two bucks”. His wife teaches music at the elementary school and has nothing to do when she comes home from school, making clothes for the elementary school students to do their play clothes.
With the movie live in a big house, full of baby life, villagers Lv Kesheng’s memory is that the Han family has so three pieces of small straw house, the height of a shed so high. The only thing worthy of praise is “a bit of glass”.
“Han Laoliu actually fucking nothing,” an old man said here deliberately lowered his tone, “and that book is not the same.”
The frugal landowners
The topic of Han Laoliu has brought back collective memories of the “landlords”. From the time he could remember, Gao Fengtong noticed that those famous landlords, such as Li Xingguang, Jia Mingqi and Liu Luopanzi, although they had cars and horses at home, they could not afford to eat or wear clothes, and “saved two dollars to buy some land, saved two dollars to buy some land, they were all such landlords.
Farmer Liu Zhiguo was also impressed by the landlords’ “two halves of a piece of bean curd for two meals”. At that time, a piece of bean curd was one cent. Liu Zhiguo also remembers that early in the morning, the landlords pouting cotton pants pouting cotton jacket tied a rope in the waist, “a bend in the waist are exposed meat”.
Confiscated the family property of the “original landlord” Li Mao Xiu, also finally dared to open their complaints, although the voice is still a bit low: “I struggled to earn, save money, no theft, no robbery, no robbery …… “
Even, even the task force of young people Yu Yang at first also had doubts. At first, he could not figure out: landlords also have labor ah, why do this to them, share their property, share their land. Later, after being instructed by “old comrades”, he was “educated”.
Obviously, without the guidance of the CCP, the peasants would not have realized that the landlords were “exploiting” people. In their eyes, “when people are most tired of shoveling and cutting the land, it’s a real treat.”
Peasant Liu Defu tries to summarize this history: “I can only say that the landlords, rich farmers, than the average person can be more generous, it is true. Also have to go to work, and eat the general coarse food.” “But you can imagine, the two-class division, inevitably to any time is there, people want to change it is not easy.”
The Communist Party’s way to change this “polarization” is to fight the landlords.
A brutal landlord fight
In Liu Fude’s view, the campaign against landlords was “quite brutal. The young Li Mao Xiu became a landlord, and his neighbors surrounded him, “on the house, in the courtyard and on the street, with people pointing at him, and some wanting to beat him up.
And this was almost the most peaceful scene of the struggle that people can remember. More often than not, the masses were already “in motion”, fighting the landlords like a war. Sometimes, when “the people all went up to fight”, the workers would go to maintain the meeting. One of them had the following reason: If you kill them, there will be no one to criticize, not all at once, but three times.
At that time, many landlords were taken to the east gate of the town to be shot. According to the old people, sometimes Yuanbao Village and the neighboring Steel Village would “whisk (than) two families”, “you shoot one, I also shoot one”, and finally, the two villages had to be combined into one village. The final conclusion they came to was that “we were not that far behind” in this movement.
The old people also recalled some unverifiable stories that became a tragic footnote to this long history. Gao Fengtong remembers hearing the sounds of scolding and pleas for help coming out of the nearby school bungalows all night long.
However, he didn’t write about this in “The Storm” written by Zhou Libo. And people don’t remember much about his performance in the campaign. However, some people recall that Zhou Libo would sometimes simply take a stand on other people’s proposals: XX, right, you can fight.
Dividing the landlord’s property
After the landlords were fought, the “second-rate” people and ordinary peasants were given a share of the landlords’ property. The documentary shows that many people still remember the joy of the people after the land was divided. According to the county records of Shangzhi County, where Yuanbao Town is located, more than 20,000 landless peasants were given land in the process. “The wish of many generations came true.” But the problem wasn’t solved. Many went on to make the next demand: with land, they had to have livestock and tools.
Thus, the “cut and dig campaign” began. The grain, livestock, quilts and clothes of the landlords and rich farmers were confiscated and distributed to those who needed them. A cadre of the peasant association remembered that they found the landlords with sticks and rods and interrogated them one by one, handing over all the land, houses and “floating wealth”.
At that time, it became a common sight to go to other villages in the middle of the night with a big cart and a plow to dig up the floating wealth. Later, the countryside was emptied, and people turned their attention to the city people. That winter, farmers from all directions to the county town surrounded the city gates, “which one of the city gates are outside a four or five hundred plows.
The results of the campaign were “abundant”. The scene of “dividing the horses” depicted in “The Storm” was still selected for inclusion in secondary school textbooks decades later. Those who took part in the process are still “moved” by the scene they saw at that time. The peasants who were given a quilt from the landlord’s house were said to have cried as they had “never seen anything like it in their lives”, whether it was a dream or real.
After the storm
A statistic shows that before the land reform, there were 700 families in Yuanbao Village and neighboring villages, and 73 people were shot outside the east gate of the town after the land reform movement began. How many of these were killed by mistake? Gao Fengtong said in an interview, “If I had known that so many people were shot, we would have lied a little, and made a big crime into a small one.”
Liu Fude, who was already in a wheelchair, lamented to the camera, “A storm is not writing and painting, it is a storm, not a small wind and rain, it is bound to hurt people.” The Chinese Communist Party, which started the storm, has not yet been cleared of its culpability. But the documentary “Stormy Weather” has opened another page of false history in the history of the Chinese Communist Party.
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