Bai Hua (born 1930 in Xinyang, Henan

Henan

Henan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...

), originally named Chen Youhua (陈佑华), is a Chinese playwright and poet.

Biography

He started publishing poems at the age of fifteen under his current name. Subsequently, he joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1947, but was labeled a “rightist” in 1957. He worked in a Shanghai film studio in the early 1960s, and produced several influential dramas and films in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Currently he is living an obscured life in Shanghai with his wife.

Works

Bai Hua gained his national fame for his plays based on uncompromised historical criticism. Some of his plays were banned because of the description of the political purges and murders in the Red Army in the 1930s and his critical view on the traditional patriotic value. Among these the most famous was the film Portrait of a Fanatic (1982), which was never shown in the public. In this film, Bai depicted an oversea Chinese painter who returned to China in order to devote his life to his motherland but ended up suffering the political prosecution and death. The painter’s daughter asked her father a highly sensitive question in the film: “You love your motherland, but does the motherland love you?” The paramount leader Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...

 was extremely annoyed by the film, who personally organized the old guards to launch a political campaign against Bai in the national media for his violation of the political dogma dictated by Deng

Deng

Deng refers to:*The Chinese surname Deng**Deng Xiaoping, de facto leader of China from 1979 or 1980 until his death in 1997* Dèng Lìjūn, an Asian singer, from Taipei, Taiwan**Deng Yingchao, Chinese communist leader and wife of Zhou Enlai...

 (namely the leadership of the party). The criticism threatens to become another wave of political prosecution until the General Secretary of the party Hu Yaobang

Hu Yaobang

Hu Yaobang was a leader of the People's Republic of China who served as both Chairman and Party General Secretary. Hu joined the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s, and rose to prominence as a comrade of Deng Xiaoping...

 interfered on his behalf. The significance of this episode is that it effectively split the party into two camps, which was going to influence the events of the decade. Bai was later allowed to visit Japan and Southeast Asia and delivered public speeches, but his works were generally suppressed. His late epic poem From Qiu Jin to Lin Zhao was never published.

Quotes

(as a participant of the Democratic movement of 1979):
"Comrade poets, we would rather sing the praises of a brick in the democratic wall. Never should we again sing the praises of any savior".

External links

• http://www.ztwx.net/wxpp/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=616
• http://history.news.163.com/08/0407/08/48TP90DP00011247.html
• http://news.xinhuanet.com/book/2008-12/12/content_10493495.htm