Wu Han (
ChineseA Chinese character, also known as a Han character , is a logogram used in writing Chinese , Japanese , less frequently Korean , and formerly Vietnamese , and other languages...
: 吳晗; 1909 1969) was one of the most important historians in the development of modern historical scholarship in China with his work in the 30's and 40's. In the 1940s he was a leading member of the Democratic League, a non-aligned Third Force. After 1949, he was Deputy-Mayor of Peking. In November 1965, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, he came under severe attack for his play about an upright Ming dynasty official.
Wu Han (
ChineseA Chinese character, also known as a Han character , is a logogram used in writing Chinese , Japanese , less frequently Korean , and formerly Vietnamese , and other languages...
: 吳晗; 1909 1969) was one of the most important historians in the development of modern historical scholarship in China with his work in the 30's and 40's. In the 1940s he was a leading member of the Democratic League, a non-aligned Third Force. After 1949, he was Deputy-Mayor of Peking. In November 1965, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, he came under severe attack for his play about an upright Ming dynasty official. He died in prison in 1969.
Biography
Wu Han was born in
YiwuYiwu is a city of about 2,000,000 people in central Zhejiang Province near the central eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. The city is famous for its small commodity trade and vibrant free markets and is a regional tourist destination...
,
JinhuaJinhua is a prefecture-level city in central Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It borders the provincial capital of Hangzhou to the northwest, Quzhou to the southwest, Lishui to the south, Taizhou to the east, and Shaoxing the northeast.The city is best known in China for its...
,
ZhejiangZhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital...
in 1909. With support from the Wu clan organization and with the money from selling his mother's jewelry, he attended university preparatory schools in
Hangzhou' is a sub-provincial city located in the Yangtze River Delta in the People's Republic of China, and the capital of Zhejiang province. Located southwest of Shanghai, as of 2004 the entire Hangzhou Region or Prefecture-level city had a registered population of 6.4 million people...
and then in Shanghai, where he was inspired by the lectures of Hu Shi. He entered
Tsinghua UniversityTsinghua University , is a university in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Tsinghua University was established in 1911, originally under the name “Tsinghua Xuetang”. The school was renamed the "Tsinghua School" in 1912. The university section was founded in 1925 and the name “National Tsinghua...
in 1931 and came under the influence of
Tsiang TingfuTsiang Tingfu , Chinese historian and diplomat. Tsiang was born in Shaoyang in Hunan province. In 1911, he was sent to study in the United States, where he attended the Park Academy, Oberlin College and Columbia University. After obtaining a Ph.D...
. Since he was responsible for the support of his brother and sister, he was unable to go abroad for study. Wu stayed at Tsinghua as a teaching assistant but began to publish important articles on Ming dynasty history using critical techniques to resolve old controversies and raise new questions.
When the war with Japan broke out in 1937, Wu joined
National Southwestern Associated UniversityWhen the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out between China and Japan in 1937, Tsinghua University, Peking University and Nankai University, merged to form Changsha Temporary University in Changsha, and later National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming...
in
KunmingKunming is a prefecture-level city and capital of Yunnan province, in southwestern China. Because of its year-round temperate climate, Kunming is often called the "Spring City" or "City of Eternal Spring" ....
. While there, he wrote a full scale biography of the founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, published in 1943, expanded and revised in 1947. He became a leading intellectual in the democratic movement of the 1940s, as well as a widely published essayist. Through his part in the
China Democratic LeagueThe China Democratic League is one of the eight legally-recognised political parties in the People's Republic of China.The party was established in 1939 and took its present name in 1944. At its formation, it was a coalition of three pro-democracy parties and three pressure groups...
he was enlisted in the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. When the new
United FrontThe united front is a form of struggle that may be pursued by revolutionaries. The basic theory of the united front tactic was first developed by the Comintern, an international socialist organisation created by revolutionaries in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.According to the theses of...
was founded, as a member of the Democratic League, Wu was asked to take the position of Vice Mayor of Beijing in charge of education and cultural affairs for the 6 county municipal area that became a model for municipalities across the PRC. In the 1950s, Wu represented China abroad on cultural tours and popularized his research at home, using figures from history as models and allegorical figures. He became a member of the Chinese Communist Party secretly in the mid-50's; this was not known by his colleagues or by Party members except at the very highest level. It was only revealed in the Cultural Revolution by the Red Guard accusations after they found his files.
Wu wrote a series of articles and a play originally published in 1951 and revised many times, on the life of
Hai RuiHai Rui , was a famous Chinese official during of the Ming Dynasty. His name has come down in history as a model of honesty and integrity in office and he reemerged as an important historical character during the Cultural Revolution.-Biography:Hai Rui, whose great-grandfather married an Arab and...
, a Ming dynasty official. In 1960 Wu's
Beijing operaBeijing opera or Peking opera is a form of traditional Chinese theatre which combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance and acrobatics. It arose in the late 18th century and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. The form was extremely popular in the Qing Dynasty court...
,
Hai Rui Dismissed from OfficeHai Rui Dismissed from Office is a theatre play famous for its involvement in Chinese politics during the Cultural Revolution.Wu Han, who wrote the play, was a historian who focused on the Ming Dynasty. Wu Han wrote an article portraying Hai Rui, a Ming minister who was imprisoned for criticizing...
became a great success. In November 1965
Yao WenyuanYao Wenyuan was a Chinese literary critic and politician and a member of the "Gang of Four" during China's Cultural Revolution.-Biography:...
, later one of the
Gang of FourThe Gang of Four was the name given to a leftist political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and were subsequently charged with a series of treasonous crimes...
, fired one of the opening shots of the
Cultural RevolutionThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a period of widespread social and political upheaval in the People’s Republic of China between 1966 and 1976, resulting in nation-wide chaos and economic disarray.It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, on May 16,...
when he attacked Wu and his play on the grounds that Hai Rui was metaphorically equated with
Peng DehuaiPeng Dehuai was a prominent military leader of the Communist Party of China, and China's Defence Minister from 1954 to 1959. Peng was an important commander during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese civil war and was also the commander-in-chief of People's Volunteer Army in the Korean War...
, and therefore Mao himself with the un-approachable Ming emperor. Wu admitted ideological mistakes but denied that his motives were counter-revolutionary.
Over the next months the controversy grew, and Wu was finally jailed. Although there were reports that Wu Han committed suicide while in prison in 1969, fellow prisoners later reported that he was beaten in prison about a year before he died. It is also thought his tuberculosis may have recurred so it cannot be established how he died.
Sources
Mary G. Mazur, "Intellectual Activism in China During the 1940s: Wu Han in the United Front and the Democratic League,"
The China Quarterly 133 (1993): 27-55.
“Wu Han,” Howard L. Boorman, Richard C. Howard, eds.
Biographical Dictionary of Republican China Vol 3 (New York,: Columbia University Press, 1970): 425-430.
Safire's Political Dictionary, William Safire, 1978, Random House. "Cultural Revolution," pp. 153-4.