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A Private Ceremony to Mourn Deng Tuo, Wu Han, Liao Mosha and Liu Ren

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Mary G. Mazur
Mary G. Mazur
Affiliation:
Ding Yilan, 17 May 1996
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Extract

Abstract:On 17 May 1996, in a crypt at Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing, a private memorial was held by Ding Yilan to commemorate the deaths in the Cultural Revolution of her husband Deng Tuo, Liu Ren, Wu Han, and later of Liao Mosha. The date was the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Cultural Revolution and the suicide death of Deng Tuo. Mourning for Deng Tuo had been forbidden at his death when Ding Yilan was ordered to have the body cremated under a false name in a distant crematorium. Mourning ceremonies at the tenth and 20th anniversaries were impossible. In 1996 when it seemed that she might not live until the 40th anniversary, she decided time was running out. With no possibility of public commemoration because of the known disapproval of the Central Party authorities, Ding Yilan, in failing health, had arranged a private memorial for Deng Tuo and the other two members of the Three Family Village, with 40 invited guests. She included Liu Ren, the second secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Type
Translation
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 151 , September 1997 , pp. 654 - 658
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1997

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References

1 For DengTuo see Timothy Cheek, Propaganda and Culture in Mao's China: Deng Tuo i and the Intelligentsia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

2 See Ma Zimei (Mary Mazur), Shidai zhi zi Wu Han (Son of the Times, Wu Han) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1996).

3 Deng Tuo died in his home in the very early morning of 18 May 1966; Liu Ren in 1973; Wu Han in prison in 1969; and Liao Mosha in 1990. The Cultural Revolution is considered f to have begun on 16 May 1966.

4 The Three Family Village (Sanjia cun) of Deng, Wu and Liao took its name from the, newspaper column the three wrote under a joint pen-name from 1961 to 1964 in Qianxian (Frontline), the Beijing Party journal. In 1966 these authors received the brunt of the vicious attacks on Peng Zhen and themselves which opened the Cultural Revolution.

5 Han Yu, “Ji Shi Erlang wen”, Guwen guanzhi.

6 Deng Tuo's name in his childhood was Deng Zijian. In 1937 he took Yunte as a pen-name and it was the name Ding Yilan always called him. Deng Tuo was the revolutionary name he was known by in JinChaJi.