The Tragic Death of Wu Han, Vice Chairman of the Democratic League of China
The first person to be “sacrificed to the flag” during the 1966 Cultural Revolution was Wu Han, a famous historian and author of the historical drama “Hai Rui Dismissed from Office”, who was also a member of the Chinese Communist Party, a vice mayor of Beijing, and a vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Democratic League of China and a chairman of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Democratic League of China.
In his early years, Wu Han studied at the Department of History of Tsinghua University in Beijing. In 1937, at the age of 28, he was hired as a professor of literature and history at Yunnan University, taught at Southwest University in 1940, joined the Democratic League in 1943, and joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1957.
As an expert in Ming history, Wu Han is regarded as “the pioneer and founder of modern research on Ming history”, but he lost his literary character in cultural education, academic activities, the arrangement of ancient books and the preservation of cultural relics and monuments in Beijing. For example, the famous architects Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin both clashed head-on with Wu Han over the preservation of Beijing’s pagodas, and Liang Sicheng was so angry that he lost his voice and cried on the spot. Politics first became Wu Han’s choice.
In the 1957 anti-rightist movement, Wu Han was also the vanguard. Under Wu Han’s chairmanship, the Bright Daily Branch of the Democratic League took the lead in holding a meeting to criticize Chu Anping. At the meeting, Wu Han sternly said, “In the past, the Kuomintang was indeed the ‘party world’, but now Chu Anping said that the Communist Party was the ‘party world’, which was not only a distortion of facts but also a malicious intention.” And he pointed out that the reason why Chu Anping had the courage was because there were people behind him. He asked all the allies of the Guangming Daily to draw a clear ideological line with Chu Anping. His ruthlessness is still fresh in people’s minds.
According to Li Hui, a literary person who worked with Wu Han repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with him, and it was Wu Han’s resoluteness in the struggle that made him become a rightist, suffer injustice and go through 20 years of hardship. Li Hui said that during the anti-rightist movement, Wu Han was not the only one who was deeply hurt by his angry “accusations. Because of his performance in the movement, he was approved to join the Communist Party in that year.
In 1959, Wu Han wrote a series of articles about Hai Rui and later wrote the script of the Peking Opera “Hai Rui Strikes Off”, which was performed in November 1961 to great acclaim. But when the Cultural Revolution began, Wu Han was knocked down for this play and became a prisoner.
Shanghai’s Zhou Xinfang, who played the role of Hai Rui, also began to suffer bad luck, and died in 1975; Ma Lianliang, who played the role of Hai Rui, died on December 16, 1966 after being criticized and having his home raided.
On October 11, 1969, Wu Han was persecuted to death in prison. Six months earlier, his wife Yuan Zhen had been persecuted to death before him, and seven years later, his adopted daughter Wu Xiaoyan also committed suicide in prison.
Seven years later, his adopted daughter Wu Xiaoyan also committed suicide in prison. What does it mean that Wu Han, the “imperial literary figure” who had been loyal to Mao and the Chinese Communist Party all his life, died in a Party prison?
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