Peking University lecturer who wrote the first poster of the Cultural Revolution; one of the five Red Guard leaders of Beijing
From Hua County in Henan, she joined the Communist Party in 1938 and came to know Kang Sheng and his wife in Yan’an. Moved to Peking University in 1963, she was vice-chair of economics and party secretary of the philosophy department. On 25 May 1966 she put up a big-character poster attacking President Lu Ping and others, and when Mao endorsed it as “the first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster in China” the student movement exploded. One of Beijing’s five Red Guard leaders, she became an alternate member of the Ninth Central Committee in 1969 but was soon investigated and sent to labour. Imprisoned in 1978, she was sentenced to seventeen years in 1983 and paroled in 1986. She died in 2019 aged 98.
Activities and affiliations
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1938–
Ideology and propaganda
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1963–1966
People’s Republic of China state institutionsVice-chair, Department of Economics, Peking University
Education - 1966–1968
Career Timeline
- 1938Joined the Communist Party
- 1947Director of the theory section, Harbin propaganda department
- 1963Vice-chair of economics at Peking University; next year party secretary of philosophy
- 1966Poster of 25 May; one of Beijing’s five Red Guard leaders
- 1968Summoned with the other Red Guard leaders by Mao
- 1969Alternate member of the Ninth Central Committee; labour on a farm in Jiangxi
- 1978Imprisoned
- 1983Sentenced to seventeen years
- 1986Paroled