Nie Gannu entered the second class of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924 and went to Moscow Sun Yat-sen University in 1926. He joined the Communist Party in 1934 and in 1936 escorted Ding Ling to Yan’an. In 1938, Zhou Enlai sent him to the New Fourth Army, where he lived in the headquarters with Chen Yi. In 1945 he became a professor at Southwest University in Chongqing. In 1949 he went to Beijing to attend the founding ceremony of the People’s Republic.

In 1955, during the Hu Feng case, he was isolated and investigated for three months. In 1957 he was labeled a Rightist and expelled from the Party. In 1967 he was arrested on the charge of “slandering the proletarian headquarters as a counterrevolutionary in action” and imprisoned for nine years and eight months. He was released in September 1976, rehabilitated and declared innocent in 1979, and died of illness in 1986 at the age of eighty-three.

In the underworld, Mao read Nie Gannu’s works and greatly admired him. Sensing certain affinities in temperament between them, Mao hoped to win Nie over and persuade him to lobby the Jade Emperor for a lighter sentence.

Knowing that writers enjoy praise, Mao flattered him at their first meeting: “Under my rule in New China, you suffered wrongs. You were a living Lu Xun, the foremost essayist after Lu Xun, strikingly similar to him. Your classical-style poetry was eccentric yet exquisite, unique in the literary world. In strategy you could be a general; in letters you could be a prime minister.”

Nie replied: “You overpraise me; I dare not accept it. I am one who neither commands nor obeys commands. I go my own way, careless of trifles. Zhou Enlai once said I was a great liberal—doing things and writing as I pleased.”

Mao said: “You had Lu Xun’s style—laughing loudly in joy, crying out in sorrow, cursing fiercely in anger. Your character and literary flair were unparalleled in China. People said of you: ‘You have toured hell entirely, becoming a ghostly genius among men.’”

Nie answered: “I acted from genuine temperament; I could not restrain myself.”

Mao asked: “I’ve heard your study was called the Studio of Three Reds and Jin-Shui. What does that mean?”

Nie replied: “The inscription was written for me by Huang Miaozi. It refers to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Dream of the Red Chamber, Jin Ping Mei, and Water Margin. I loved studying classical literature.”

Mao smiled: “Very tasteful indeed. During the Cultural Revolution, was your home raided? Did the Red Guards give you trouble?”

Nie said: “When the Red Guards saw the plaque of my study, they demanded to know its meaning. I panicked but improvised: ‘Three Reds’ means red thought, red line, red life. ‘Jin’ refers to the gilded characters of the Little Red Book; ‘Shui’ comes from the radical in the name of standard-bearer Jiang Qing.’”

Mao laughed: “You’re quite inventive. Did you fool them?”

Nie replied: “They said I had no right to speak that way—and smashed the plaque anyway.”

Mao continued: “I’ve heard you were close to Hu Feng. Did you see him after your release?”

Nie answered: “Once. In 1980 Xiao Jun found a car and took me to see Hu Feng. We met and took a photograph together. I was even more Hu Feng than Hu Feng—a madman among madmen. For his eightieth birthday I gave him a couplet: ‘Laughing wildly without cause, crying wildly without cause; three hundred thousand words, thirty years.’ After his release he sometimes suffered mental breakdowns, laughing and crying unpredictably.”

Mao said: “You were persecuted terribly. Thirty years left aftereffects.”

Nie responded: “My family suffered too. My daughter Haiyan committed suicide in August 1976, a month before you died. I was still in prison. If she had believed I would return, she would have waited and not taken her life. A week after her death, my son-in-law, unable to endure it, also committed suicide.”

Mao said quietly: “Then you truly have no descendants.”

Nie replied: “I left behind a large body of manuscripts. Later generations published a ten-volume collected works. That counts as descendants.”

Mao said: “You once wrote a poem, ‘If I Were King,’ saying: ‘If I were king, I would become a tyrant, kill all my subjects; I would have no subjects left, and I would consider that my greatest shame.’ Were you alluding to me?”

Nie answered: “You are merely fitting the cap to your own head. I wrote that poem in the 1930s. I had no such foresight as to predict that twenty years later you would become an emperor.”

Mao pressed: “You also wrote: ‘At night suckled on Marx and Lenin to overturn heaven and earth; by morning nursing wolves to devour the ancestors.’ Were you referring to me?”

Nie replied: “Again, you put the cap on yourself.”

Mao asked: “How did you spend your final years?”

Nie said: “In prison I developed severe emphysema. After 1980 I could only lie in bed, though I still tried to write a little. Later I lacked even the strength to eat. My last words were: ‘My mouth is very bitter; I want a honey tangerine.’ My wife peeled one and fed it to me. I ate it all and said, ‘Very sweet, very sweet.’ Then I fell asleep and never woke.”

Mao said: “You met a peaceful end. Do you have any final words for me?”

Nie raised five fingers: “I give you five phrases: Lies told to the end; evil done to the extreme; crimes overflowing; no descendants; infamy for ten thousand years. If you do not repent, it would not be excessive for the Jade Emperor to cast you into a nineteenth level of hell.”

Having said this, Nie turned and walked away. Mao stood there in deep shame, like a block of wood, watching him stride off.

NEXT: 84. Feng Zikai (1898–1975)