Hu Feng was the one among the elders who spent the longest time in prison. As a leading advocate of “subjective fighting spirit” in literature, he was not tolerated by Mao, labeled a counterrevolutionary, arrested in 1955, and not released until 1979. For over twenty years he remained silent and was almost forgotten by the public, as if he no longer existed.

Mao turned to Hu Feng and said: “Elder Hu, you suffered the most. You were imprisoned the earliest. I was in power for twenty-seven years, and you were imprisoned for twenty-four. Fortunately, you survived and were able to walk out alive, living a few more years afterward.”

Hu Feng replied: “I was imprisoned in Beijing in 1955. In 1966, I was sent to Sichuan, to a labor reform farm in Lushan County. In 1967, I was taken back into prison; in 1970, I was falsely accused of writing reactionary poems on Chairman Mao’s portrait and sentenced to life imprisonment. Under torture, I developed schizophrenia and attempted suicide several times without success.

“In 1973, my wife Mei Zhi, nearly sixty years old, voluntarily entered the prison to care for me. I was over seventy, gravely ill, mentally unstable, on the verge of breakdown. Thanks to her patient care, my condition gradually stabilized. Without her accompanying me during those final six years in prison, I would certainly have died there. It can be said that my life was reclaimed by her. Mei Zhi was very strong. After our release, she wrote extensively and spent nine years completing my biography. I died in 1985; she lived until 2004, reaching ninety years old. It was not easy.”

Mao said: “Among the four of you, your case was the largest in scale, the widest in implication, and the longest in duration. I invested the most effort in it. In 1954, you submitted a 300,000-character letter to the Central Committee advocating subjective fighting spirit and personal liberation, opposing my Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art. I instructed Zhou Yang to conduct a thorough criticism of your bourgeois idealism and anti-Party literary thought, preventing you from hiding behind the label of ‘petty-bourgeois views.’ In my commentary, I defined your group as anti-Party and anti-people. I ordered local Party committees and state organs to investigate and deal with ‘Hu Feng elements.’

“According to the 1980 Review Report on the ‘Hu Feng Counterrevolutionary Group’ by the Ministry of Public Security and other authorities, over 2,100 people were implicated; ninety-two were arrested, sixty-two detained in isolation, seventy-three suspended for investigation. By the end of 1956, seventy-eight were officially designated as members of the ‘Hu Feng Counterrevolutionary Group.’”

Hu Feng responded: “You harmed a large number of intellectuals. All of them were falsely accused, framed, and persecuted. Not one was a counterrevolutionary.”

Mao admitted: “My aim was to make intellectuals obedient. Independent and free creation outside my line was not permitted. Through this rectification campaign, intellectuals were deprived of freedom of thought, speech, and even personal liberty. A uniform ideological and cultural system was established.”

Hu Feng said: “I was the first victim of that system. My imprisonment marked the beginning of an era of suffering for intellectuals. Zhou Yang, who led the criticism against me under your directive, was later labeled a revisionist by you before the Cultural Revolution, sidelined, imprisoned, and only rehabilitated afterward. I appreciate that after his release, he reflected on his mistakes and apologized to those persecuted. In 1983, he even advocated humanism and discussions of human nature, but your trusted aide Hu Qiaomu dismissed it as bourgeois spiritual pollution.”

Mao replied: “Targeting Zhou Yang was also my mistake. His reflection and apologies deserve recognition. Hu Qiaomu was conservative but loyal to me. His thinking softened somewhat in his later years, though he passed away before undertaking deeper reflection.”

Thus Mao met with the four elders, listening respectfully as they spoke freely. His purpose was clear: to persuade them to speak kindly of him before the Jade Emperor, in hopes of lessening his own culpability.

NEXT: 79. Lao She (1899–1966)