From Miss Sophia’s Diary to The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River, a writer who lived through Yan’an and the anti-rightist purge
Born in Linli, Hunan on 12 October 1904, she made her name with Miss Sophia’s Diary in 1928, was expelled from the party in 1958 during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and died in Beijing on 4 March 1986.
From Hunan, she made her name in 1928 with Miss Sophia’s Diary, a portrait of the modern woman’s inner life, and joined the party after the Nationalists executed her husband Hu Yepin in 1931. She reached the Red Army area in northern Shaanxi in 1936 and was welcomed by Mao, but her 1942 essay “Thoughts on March 8” on sexism at Yan’an drew criticism in the rectification movement. Her land-reform novel The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River won a Stalin Prize in 1951; in the 1957 anti-rightist campaign she was labelled a rightist and spent more than twenty years labouring on a farm in the Great Northern Wilderness. She was rehabilitated in 1979.
Also known as: Ting Ling · Jiang Bingzhi
Activities and affiliations
-
1932–1958
Political and party leadership
- Party secretary of the League of Left-Wing Writers1932–
-
1979–1986
Literature and arts
Career Timeline
- 1930Joined the League of Left-Wing Writers
- 1932Party secretary of the League of Left-Wing Writers
- 1932–1958CCP member
- 1933–1936Detained by the KMT before escaping
- 1942Criticized discrimination against women in Thoughts on March 8
- 1949–1957Vice-chair of the Chinese Writers’ Association
- 1958Expelled from the CCP and exiled to Manchuria as a rightist
- 1979Rehabilitated; a 1984 CCP resolution reaffirmed the earlier finding of loyalty
Related historical events
- 1937–1945The war with Japan and the second united frontWriter criticised for “Thoughts on March 8”Pointed to sexism at Yan’an and was criticised in the rectification.
- 1956–1957From the Hundred Flowers to the Anti-Rightist CampaignWriter labelled a rightistLabelled in 1957 and spent more than twenty years labouring in the Great Northern Wilderness.
Nanjing Captivity and the "Historical Problem"
On 14 May 1933 Ding Ling was kidnapped from her home in the Shanghai international settlement by the Kuomintang, along with a visiting leftist intellectual, Pan Zinian; the leftist poet Ying Xiuren, ambushed at the flat, jumped from a window to his death rather than be taken. The KMT denied the arrest for a long time and friends feared her dead. Figures including Song Qingling and Cai Yuanpei appealed for her release, and Lu Xun wrote a poem in her memory.
In September 1933, under persuasion, Ding wrote a note saying she had been arrested through a misunderstanding, had received preferential treatment, and had faced no trial or punishment. She hoped it would win her freedom; it did not. That note became the centre of the "historical problem" later used against her, yielding findings that ranged from "loss of integrity" in 1945 to "renegade behaviour and insufficient loyalty and honesty to the party" in 1956 and "traitor, a contradiction between the enemy and ourselves" in 1975. In July 1936, arranged by Feng Xuefeng, she escaped Nanjing for Shanghai and made her way to Shaanxi, reaching the Yan'an base area that November.
At the 1940 review she did not mention the note, and the conclusion, to which Mao Zedong personally added the final sentence, affirmed her as a loyal party member. She first disclosed the note during the rectification and cadre-examination movement of 1943, reopening the question. Successive reviews through the Yan'an years and the early People's Republic reached conflicting conclusions; in 1979 the 1975 conclusion was revoked while the 1956 one was maintained. On 14 July 1984 the CCP's Organization Department issued the notification restoring her reputation, affirming that she had remained loyal during her KMT custody and that the 1940 finding had been correct.