Experience: My 1957

Author: He Fengming
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-02-01
Features: During the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, the author and her husband, Wang Jingchao, were both labeled as rightists. Wang Jingchao was further designated as an extreme rightist, stripped of his job, and sent to labor reeducation. They fell into a dark abyss, becoming class enemies, and were sent to farms for labor reform. In the subsequent Great Famine of 1960, Wang Jingchao starved to death in the Jiabianquan Labor Reeducation Farm in Jiuquan, Gansu, while the author miraculously survived and returned to the Gansu Daily. In September 1961, the leadership of the Gansu Daily announced that the author and her husband, along with eight other victims, had their rightist labels removed. They were later assigned to work in the reference room of the Gansu Daily's editorial department. During the Cultural Revolution, the author was again labeled as a rightist, stripped of her job, and sent to rural areas for supervised labor. She was labeled a rightist twice, for a total of 11 years. Over the course of her life, the author endured the misfortune and suffering of losing her family and, during those 11 years, suffered various humiliations and grievances as a class enemy. She endured emotional hardships and psychological trauma that few women could bear. By 1978–1979, the author and Wang Jingchao's rightist issues were finally rectified. All 11 rightists labeled by the Gansu Daily during the Anti-Rightist Campaign were later rectified. This is a heavy history, not only causing suffering to the author's family but also to hundreds of thousands of intellectuals and the entire Chinese people. After the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the subsequent three years of hardship saw the Chinese people, across the vast 9.6 million square kilometers of the country, suffer from hunger regardless of profession, education, ethnicity, social status, or age, with millions losing their precious lives. This is a history written in blood and tears.