Before and after the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, there were some talented musicians and dramatists who were compelled by its ideology to take up the path of propaganda for it, including Tian Han and Nie Er, the lyricists of the “March of the Righteous Army”, and Li Zhaofu, who composed a series of Mao’s poems and quotations.
For all Chinese today, the “March of the Volunteer Army” is more than familiar, as this national anthem “full of the spirit of struggle” is played on all major occasions, and naturally, many Chinese are not unfamiliar with its lyricists, Tian Han and Nie Er. However, what many people may not know is that Tian Han and Nie Er were already members of the Chinese Communist Party underground when they composed this song, and it is no coincidence that after 1949, the Chinese Communist Party, which has always advocated violence and struggle, chose this song, which was produced during a specific period, as its national anthem. But what is saddening is that both Tian Han and Nie Er’s lives ended in bitterness.
Nie Er drowned and Tian Han died in the Cultural Revolution
Born in 1898 to a peasant Family in Changsha, Hunan Province, Tian Han studied at the Changsha Normal School and then studied in Japan at the age of 19, majoring in Education and with a particular interest in theater. Upon his return to China, he founded the Nanguo Society in 1925 to make films, and in 1928, he expanded the Nanguo Society into the Nanguo Art Institute. “In 1932, under the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideology, he joined the Chinese Communist Party and became an active member of the underground in the literary and artistic circles of Shanghai.
After the Kuomintang’s “purge” in 1927, the CCP’s power weakened and it was forced to retreat to the remote countryside, but the CCP still did its best to develop and strengthen itself. The establishment of the Drama Federation was one of these methods.
According to the instructions of the Communist Party, the main task of the Federation was to carry out theatrical activities for workers, students and peasants in the National Unification Area and to create a proletarian theatrical movement, i.e. to spread the beliefs of the Communist Party through literature and art. Tian Han, who had already become a member of the CCP, became one of the leaders of this movement and wrote a large number of plays. At the same Time, he also entered the film field with underground CCP members Xia Yan and Yang Han-sheng to create so-called “progressive” film scripts for “propaganda purposes in the interest of the proletariat” (Xia Yan).
The KMT government’s censorship of theater and film was not as “reactionary and conservative” as later left-wing writers described after 1949, but relatively lax. Most of the film scenes deleted by the Kuomintang government were offensive and politically oriented dialogues, but not too much attention was paid to subtle ideological propaganda. This explains why left-wing writers and art figures were creating a lot in Shanghai at that time.
Among these active left-wing writers and artistic figures was another young man, Nie Er, who was born in 1912.
He joined the Communist Youth League in 1928 and came to Shanghai in 1930, where he soon joined the Anti-Imperialist League, a mass organization led by the Communist Party of China’s Shanghai underground. “In 1933, he began composing Music for left-wing films and plays. In the same year, Nie Er was introduced by Tian Han to join the CCP.
While Tian Han, Nie Er and other leftists were active on the second front of the “anti-KMT” movement in Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek, who had already realized that the CCP was the greatest scourge, began a siege on the CCP under the policy of “to secure the internal affairs before the external ones”. However, with The Japanese invasion of Northeast China and North China in September 1931, the Kuomintang was forced to stop its military operations against the CCP and go north to fight against Japan. Considering the actual situation in China and the lack of military preparation, Chiang Kai-shek adopted a “peace and war” approach against Japan, that is, he sought international support through diplomacy on the one hand, and resisted the invading Japanese army on the other, with the aim of delaying Japan’s full-scale invasion of China. At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek also ordered the Kuomintang army to make the necessary military preparations before the full-scale war.
The “peace and war” approach adopted by the Kuomintang towards Japan was a treasure for the CCP, which made use of public opinion to criticize the Kuomintang for not resisting the war, thus stirring up public sentiment against Japan and pointing the finger at the Kuomintang authorities for not resisting Japan, while taking the opportunity to continue to develop and strengthen itself. Communist artists and left-wing figures in Shanghai, including Tian Han and Nie Er, were instrumental in stirring up the anger of the Chinese people.
In early 1935, Tian Han adapted the film “Children of the Wind and Clouds” to reflect the people’s resistance to Japan, and wrote the theme song, “March of the Volunteer Army,” which Nie Er then composed. After writing the lyrics, Tian Han and Yang Hansheng were arrested, and Nie Er was instructed by the Chinese Communist Party to go to the Soviet Union via Japan to avoid capture by the Kuomintang. In July of the same year, he drowned in Japan at the age of 23.
Since Nie Er went abroad after the Japanese invasion of China and was famous for composing anti-Japanese songs, and since his body was recovered from the sea with “a little blood coming from his mouth and a little blood coming from his head,” there was a lot of suspicion for a long time, and some people thought that he was probably killed by Japanese or Kuomintang agents.
However, after detailed examination, some people think that such an inference is not credible. The reasons are: when Nie Er went to Japan, no one knew about his identity as an underground member of the Chinese Communist Party; the final draft of “March of the Volunteer Army” written by Nie Er was sent back to Japan after he went there, while the movie “Children of the Wind” did not reach Japan; Nie Er’s diary and family letters did not record that he was followed by Japanese agents; the Kuomintang did not know that Nie Er had gone to Japan; and Nie Er was not very famous at that time. Now Nie Er is known as “the pioneer of Chinese revolutionary music”, “an outstanding representative of advanced Culture“, “a great people’s musician”, and “a hero who made great contributions to the founding of New China”. Nie Er is now regarded as “the pioneer of Chinese revolutionary music,” “an outstanding representative of advanced culture,” “a great people’s musician,” “a heroic model who made great contributions to the founding of New China,” and so on, thanks to the Chinese Communist Party. Therefore, although Nie Er was a good swimmer, it is likely that he was unaware of the waters he was swimming in and met with an untimely death. It is also known that bleeding to death by drowning is not uncommon.
Compared to Nie Er, who died prematurely, the fate of Tian Han, who lived to the age of 70, was even more tragic; after the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, Tian Han, who was a member of the Communist Party, came to Beijing and became a senior leader of the theater community. Because he retained the simplicity and frankness of a literati, he dared to speak out against the injustices suffered by opera artists, thus arousing the discontent of the Communist Party. Although he was not branded as a “rightist,” he did not escape the Cultural Revolution and was beaten down and criticized as a “bourgeois reactionary academic authority” and suffered the shame of the world. According to Wei Junyi’s book, Tian Han was eating in the cafeteria when he threw up because his bones were stuck in his throat, which was considered a bourgeois revolt. Moreover, his son openly declared that he was clear of him. In addition, the lyrics of the “March of the Volunteer Army” were also modified as a result of Tian Han’s defeat.
In 1968, Tian Han died in a ward in the 301 Hospital, which was shaped like a prison cell. He died without a single relative by his side, and no one came to collect a single piece of his clothing.
Li Zhaofu’s Life of ups and downs
The name Li Zhaofu is unfamiliar to many people in the non-music industry, but when it comes to popular red songs such as “We are walking on the road”, “Revolutionaries are always young”, “Singing Two Little Cowherd Boys” and “Parents are not as close as Chairman Mao”, many people are familiar with them, and they even evoke memories of that crazy era, and Li Zhaofu was the composer of these songs. He was also the composer of a series of Mao poems and quotations songs.
Born in Jilin Province in November 1913, Li Jiefu, formerly known as Li Yunlong, was influenced by Chinese Communist propaganda and went to Yan’an in 1937, where he worked for the Northwest Field Literary and Art Service Group of the Eighth Route Army. In 1948, he was transferred to the music department of the Northeast “Lu Yi”, and in 1953, he became the president of the Northeast Music College, which later became the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, where he continued to serve as president. It can be said that the vast majority of songs written by Li Jiefu during his life were in the service of politics, and it is not too much to say that he was a “red musician”.
According to the biography of Li Zhaofu written by Huo Changhe on the mainland, Li was almost branded as a rightist during the “anti-rightist” campaign in 1957, but fortunately he was protected and escaped death. However, during the “anti-rightist” campaign in 1959, Li was labeled as a “right-leaning opportunist” because of his business-first, political-second style.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, knowing that he would not be able to escape, Li waited silently to be criticized and have his family raided. He chose to stay in Beijing for a long time.
During this period, Li Jiefu’s creative work reached its peak. He not only composed music for all of Mao’s published poems, making Mao’s poems popular and singable, but also wrote a large number of so-called “quotations songs” for those “quotations of Mao” that did not rhyme, and were widely sung in those days. Li Jiefu also led a tasty life in those crazy times.
However, such a musician, who was instrumental in bringing Mao to the altar, suddenly disappeared from the beginning of 1972, and his works were banned from broadcasting. It is said that he was involved in the Lin Biao affair. After Lin Biao’s “escape” in 1971, the Chinese Communist Party began a major purge, and Li Zhaofu, who had a close relationship with Lin Biao and his crony Huang Yongsheng, had bad luck and was accused of “defecting to Lin Biao’s counter-revolutionary group”.
When Li was in Beijing, he strengthened his ties with Huang Yongsheng’s family. In 1962, he went to Guangzhou for a meeting and met Huang Yongsheng, who was then the commander of the Guangzhou Military Region. When Huang Yongsheng’s wife Xiang Huifang learned that Li Jiefu was the director of the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, she asked him to recruit his third son, Huang Chunyue, to study music at the Shenyang Conservatory. As a result, when 12-year-old Huang Chunyue arrived at the Shenyang Conservatory, Li let him live in his own Home so that he could take care of the young child from a living perspective. Later, Xiang Huifang also made Huang Chunyue Li’s godson. With this relationship, Li Jiefu had more contacts with Huang Yongsheng’s family, who also lived in Beijing at that time, during his stay in Beijing in 1967. The two wives also called each other sisters. This is one of the origins of Li’s later crimes.
Because of the close relationship between the two families, Li and his wife Zhang Luo learned a lot of insider information about the high level, which led to the incident of finding a date for Lin Liheng (Lin Doudou) and then being received by Lin Biao. After being received by Lin Biao, Mr. and Mrs. Li wrote a letter of thanks, expressing their “eternal loyalty to Chairman Mao and Vice Chairman Lin” and so on. This letter, naturally, became a crime for Li Jiefu later.
In September 1971, he learned from an overheard message broadcast by a radio station in Outer Mongolia that a Chinese plane had crashed while flying to Outer Mongolia and that something had happened to the top of the Chinese Communist Party, so he thought it was a serious problem and that Lin Biao had taken over. He composed a song “Follow Chairman Lin Forward” in advance, but only the title was written.
Li Jiefu’s unfinished song “Follow Chairman Lin Forward” eventually sent the couple to a “study class” in Shenyang for censorship. The “study class” lasted for more than five years until the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, and there was no sign of its dissolution. On December 17 of that year, Li died suddenly of a heart attack in the “study class”.
In 1979, the “Discipline Inspection Committee” of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee made a decision on November 20: “Li Zhaofu actively joined the Lin Biao counter-revolutionary conspiracy group, the nature of the problem is serious, but considering his entire history and all his work, it is classified as a serious political error, and because he has died, his punishment will not be mentioned. ” This was the final official conclusion on the issue of Li Zhaofu, whose red songs were unbanned in 1981 and continue to poison the Chinese people.
Conclusion
Both Nie Er, Tian Han, and Li Zhaofu were undoubtedly quite talented artistically, but they used them in the wrong places, especially the latter at the top of their game. It is fortunate that Nie Er died early, otherwise he, too, would probably have been like Tian Han and Li Zhaofu, not only aiding and abetting, mentally paralyzing and poisoning the Chinese people, but also having his own life eventually swallowed up by the party he served. They have, so to speak, harmed themselves and others.
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