On August 15, 1958, Mo Guixin, an ordinary rightist and musician of forty-one years old, died of food poisoning on a distant farm in Xingkai Lake. Forty-five years later, if not for a copy of the “Questionnaire on the Status of Dead Rightists” that had been compiled back then and brought to the Panjiayuan yard sale in Beijing, the insignificant Mo Guixin would have been long forgotten by the world.
After his death, Mo Guixin was hastily buried in a mound, with only an earthen plaque inserted, which read: “Mo Guixin, a reeducation-through-labor activist”. It didn’t take long for even this wooden plaque to disappear. He left behind only a watch and a piece of batik cloth, which contains all the love of a musician for the earth and all the faith in life.
“Mo Guixin in the “questionnaire
On March 9, 2002, I found in Beijing’s Panjiayuan thrift market a copy of the “Questionnaire on the Situation of Dead Rightists”, which had been compiled in July 1963 and contained ninety-four rightists who had died in Beijing at Xingkai Lake Farm in Heilongjiang and at Qinghe Farm and Beiyuan Farm in the suburbs of Beijing. Two pages per person, with simple words but “all five”: name, age, home address, date of internment, nature of the case, biography, reasons for reeducation, performance of reeducation, date of death, diagnosis of death and grave markings, and so on. After seeing this “investigation form”, Mr. Du Gao, a literary critic who had gone through the ordeal of rightist reeducation through labor, believed that this item had flowed from the five divisions of the Beijing Public Security Bureau. Du Gao found that Mo Guixin, the lover of China’s famous soprano Zhang Quan, was among them.
Du Gao made a copy of Mo Guixin’s death registration form and passed it to Mo Guixin’s youngest daughter, Mo Yan. When Mo Guixin died in 1958, Mo Yan was only five years old. Looking at her father’s death registration form, she was silent for a long time …… Mo Yan did not want to recall the past, she said, “It was a scar that would bleed if it was uncovered.”
Based on the “questionnaire” and with the help of materials such as “Zhang Quan’s Memorial Essay”, I interviewed Du Gao, as well as Beijng Film director Ba Hong, Beijing Ren Yi actors Wang Hongtao and Jin Zhao, and other people, and Mo Guixin’s image gradually became clear ……
A companion in the storm
After graduating from Nankai High School, Mo Guixin enrolled in the Design Department of Hangzhou National Art College in 1936 to study oil painting. Because of his outstanding voice, he was discovered by a Russian vocal professor who mobilized him to study voice at the same time. Born in Yixing, Jiangsu in 1919, Zhang Quan and Mo Guixin entered the Hangzhou Art College in the same year and studied in the vocal department, where they met and became acquainted.
On New Year’s Day, 1942, Mo Guixin and Zhang Quan graduated from the Qingmuguan National Conservatory of Music and entered into a marriage. In 1943 and 1945, their daughters Mo Jizang and Mo Jilan were born one after another. After the victory of the war, Mo Guixin’s family went north and lived in Minghua Li, Tianjin. Mo Guixin worked as a music teacher at Yaohua High School and organized the influential Yellow Bell Choir with some musicians, often singing progressive songs such as “Yellow River Cantata” together. In June 1947, Zhang Quan went to the United States to further study vocal music.
In April, 1950, Mo Guixin entered North China Military University to study. On September 20, 1951, at the invitation of Premier Zhou, Zhang Quan, who had already received his master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music in the United States, decided to give up his lucrative treatment and set off for China, breaking through the many obstacles. In 1953, the birth of a young daughter, Mo Yan, added to the joyful atmosphere of the family. Mo Guixin and Zhang Quan were assigned to the Beijing Ren Yi and then to the Central Experimental Opera House together.
Mo Guixin’s trouble began with the “purge” in 1955. According to the “questionnaire”, “(Mo Guixin) joined the Kuomintang in 1941 at the Chongqing Conservatory of Music, became associated with the American-Chiangite elements, and joined the Catholic Church. After the Japanese surrender, he became a prominent figure in the cultural circles of the Kuomintang in Tianjin, chairman of the Kuomintang Music Festival and head of the Propaganda Singing Group. Presided over the radio station to carry out counter-revolutionary propaganda, singing counter-revolutionary songs and slandering the Communist Party’s Eighth Route Army …… After liberation, he concealed his history and joined the work.” With the distorted facts and fabricated charges, Mo Guixin was designated as a historical counter-revolutionary. According to the “investigation form,” “at the beginning of the rectification, (Mo Guixin) personally approached the art leaders, questioning back to the purge on his (the) handling of the problem, ‘What is the basis for the purge to conduct searches according to the law.’ Asked to re-investigate his problems and carry out a reversal of the case.”
On June 8, 1957, the People’s Daily published an editorial, “Why is this? that kicked off the prologue of the anti-rightist movement. Mo Guixin was designated as a “historical counterrevolutionary and rightist” for his “concealment of history after liberation” and his attack on the purge during the Mingle release period, in a vain attempt to reverse the case. From then on, he embarked on a road of no return.
Death of Mo Guixin
In January 1958, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted the “Criteria for Classifying Rightists” formulated by Mao Zedong himself. It stipulated that all those who “attacked the purges” were classified as rightists, and all members of the Party and the League who were classified as rightists were expelled from the Party and the League, and rightists were divided into six categories according to different degrees. Mo Guixin was classified as the first category, the most serious one: he retained his public position and was reeducated through labor.
The Beijing Labor Internment and Correctional Institution, surrounded by a high walled grid, was located in the Xuanwu District at Half-Buqiao (now Zixin Road). According to the “investigation form,” the date of Mo Guixin’s admission was February 15, 1958. The facility provided that a person could appeal if he did not agree. In fact, the result of the complaint was to add to the crime by making oneself miserable. The rightists in the prison all wanted to go to the labor camp sooner, hoping to be released from reeducation as soon as possible through their performance; in addition, there was another reason: there was not enough to eat in the shelter, where each person was given a daily ration of three taels and six (sixteen taels and one pound), with two meals in the morning and afternoon, one nest and one bowl of stick noodle porridge, plus pickles or boiled vegetable leaves.
When Zhang Quan went to deliver clothes to Mo Guixin for the last time, he was not allowed to see his husband. Mo Guixin left the internment center on May 8, 1958, bound for Xingkai Lake Farm in Mishan County, Heilongjiang. That night, several trucks with canopies transporting prisoners were parked in front of the camp, with machine guns on their heads, searchlights illuminating the courtyard, and soldiers with loaded weapons standing on both sides. Mo Guixin and hundreds of rightists carrying bunk rolls on the truck, was directly escorted to the old train station in Qianmen.
Xingkai Lake Farm has a rule: where the escapees are caught back, without the approval of the court, can be shot on the spot. Mo Guixin and his party arrived at the main field, was assigned to the seven subfield, seven subfield from the main field about a few dozen miles, a few hundred square meters, stands a few rows of barracks like cottages. Each group of thirty people slept in a room with two rows of big kang on the opposite side of the farm, and the group leader and the deputy group leader slept at the end of the kang in order to supervise them.
On the farm, the rightists mainly did two kinds of work: one was to carry grass. One was to carry the grass from the barren precipice to the farm to be used for burning the kang in winter. Every day, they had to walk two round trips, about 60 miles. How much he carried depended on his own consciousness. Mo Guixin tried his best to carry more grass each time; secondly, he dug the drainage ditch. The purpose of digging drains is to get the water out of the lake so that the land can be turned over. Each person has to dig eight cubic meters of soil with a shovel a day. A cubic meter of soil three thousand pounds, bladder are almost tired of fracture. Everyone worked hard to alleviate the psychological pain, purify the soul, and strive to “remove the cap” as soon as possible, and reunite with their families. At that time, before the three years of hardship, the staple food was casual, one person had a pot of vegetables, and once a week they could eat fine grains (steamed buns or rice). Mo Guixin’s group consisted of only seven or eight rightists, and the remaining twenty or so were hooligans, thieves and hobos. Among the rightists, there were not a few who reported “the same kind” in order to take credit for their crimes. Some correctional officers also used criminal offenders to fix the rightists. At a meeting to criticize the rightists, some rogue thieves, with the connivance of the discipline, even threw the rightists being fought into the cesspit. However, Mo Guixin’s prestige was so high that the criminals never gave him a hard time. He was a decent person, worked hard, treated people kindly, and sometimes said a few humorous words to resolve conflicts. The “questionnaire” recorded his performance as follows: “The person came to the scene and confessed to his crimes and mistakes. He is the leader of the group and takes the initiative to do good cultural activities, such as teaching singing. Labor to do their subjective efforts, lifting soil lifting double baskets, good discipline.”
According to Wang Hongtao’s recollection, “One day in August, because of the rain, people did not work. That day, the canteen improved the food and had steamed buns and pork stew in the evening. About the meat is not clean, the next day began to belly pain, diarrhea, simply can not stop. There were more and more sick people, and eventually there were hundreds of them. So the discipline simply built a straw hut next to the toilet, and all the seriously ill lived inside. Mo Guixin and I also lived in the straw hut, I had up to 70 times a day, while he almost a hundred times. At that time, the farm was first established, all aspects of the conditions are very poor, the medical conditions can not talk about. Although the seventh branch of the farm has a medical room, but the level of doctors is very low, the disease at first did not attract attention, until the discovery of medication, can not be controlled. About two or three days of work, has died six or seven sick. Later I was in a semi-comatose state, Mo Guixin when to go, do not know. I was lucky to escape this hurdle, I heard that Mo Guixin was sent to the General Hospital, where he died.” The “investigation form” recorded the cause of death of Mo Guixin: first, acute enteritis, severe dehydration, acidosis; second, secondary dysentery.
At that time, the General Field Cultural and Educational Team was charged with a special task: every year from April to October without freezing period, to dig a row of pits for burying the dead in the cemetery in advance for use. According to the “questionnaire”, Mo Guixin’s date of death was August 15, 1958, and his pain, humiliation, doubts, helplessness and hope all came to an end with the death of his life.
The “investigation form” records Mo Guixin’s burial site: “Now marked by a cement monument, buried in the Sun Gang.” In December 1958, Wang Hongtao and Ba Hong ran to the Sun Gang to look for Mo Guixin’s grave, only to see a wooden plaque with the words “Mo Guixin, a reformed laborer” stuck in the ground. Later, even that plaque was gone. After Mo Guixin’s death, the farm returned his belongings to his family, including a high-class watch and a piece of batik cloth that is still kept by his daughter.
In the early 1950s, Jiang Deming had listened to the record Mo Guixin recorded to praise the liberation of the Tibetans: “The red sun rises in the east, the red light shines on the top of the mountains. Since the Liberation Army came, the life of Tibetans has changed ……” More than 30 years later, he wrote: “If I really listen to it again, I believe it will contain a bit of bitterness in addition to joy. Of course, this is something that the singer could hardly have predicted beforehand.”
“I Can’t Forget Old Mo ……”
From November 28 to December 9, 1962, Zhang Quan gave thirteen solo concerts in Beijing in his capacity as a “rightist with his hat off”.
Under the personal arrangement of Premier Zhou, Zhang Quan attended the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March 1962. The Premier asked Zhang Quan about her work and life in the Northeast. When Zhang Quan said that Mo Guixin had passed away, the Premier’s eyes suddenly froze.
In 1978, Zhang Quan’s rightist issue was corrected and Mo Guixin was rehabilitated.
Fang Xifen once asked Zhang Quan, “You are not very old, why don’t you consider reorganizing your family life?” Zhang Quan said, “I have music. Besides, I can’t forget old Mo ……”
On June 16, 1993, Zhang Quan died of lung cancer at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital at the age of seventy-four. On the morning of June 28, a memorial Mass was held at the Catholic North Church in Xishiku, Beijing, for Zhang Quan and Mo Guixin. Their wedding was held in the church that year. Zhang Quan’s body was cremated together with Mo Guixin’s relics and buried together in the Catholic cemetery at the back of the Summer Palace.
From the 37th series of Old Photos
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