Red Guard Artists, 1966-1968: The Overthrow of the Establishment

Political histories of the Red Guard movement rarely mention Red Guard from the art academies, for their small numbers and generally pacific attitudes had little influence on the movement as a whole. Art histories, similarly, are unlikely to mention Red Guard art, for it was, by definition, unofficial and was produced and publicized in chaotic circumstances. In any event, most young artists devoted more energy to political activities than to art of any kind. Nevertheless, academic artists, including Red Guard art students, proved crucial in establishing the visual images of the Cultural Revolution.^[28] For example, two contending Red Guard groups from the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, called, respectively, East Is Red and Jinggang Mountain, seized control of the huge billboards at the northeast and northwest corners of Tiananmen Square. Their competition was played out in the design and execution of huge painted images, which became models for billboards nationwide.^[29]

During the spring in which the Cultural Revolution was launched, college students and many teachers from CAFA were laboring in the countryside as part of the rural Four Cleanups campaign. The middle school students and their teachers, who had remained on campus, avidly joined the movement. They threw themselves into painting murals, cartoons, and posters in support of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution, the most important functions of young professional artists during the first three years of the Cultural Revolution. Among the activities in which they later participated was preparation of a Red Guard exhibition that included propaganda pictures and confiscated property.^[30]

In late May, CAFA college students were ordered back to campus. Soon thereafter, in the earliest days of the movement on campus, the Mao Zedong Thought Red Guard was formed, a student group that counted the oil painter Ge Pengren and the guohua painter Deng Lin (a daughter of Deng Xiaoping) among its officers.^[31]

The split between the pro-work team and anti-work team students mentioned above was only the first issue that factionalized the Red Guard. The next step came in July 1966 with the "matched couplet debate."^[32] According to scholars of Chinese politics, the crisis began when a group of middle school

students at the Beijing Aeronautical Institute posted a slogan in the form of matched couplets reading: "If the father's a hero, the son's a real man; if the father's a counterrevolutionary, the son's a bastard."^[33] The slogan, which sought to make class distinctions hereditary, spread throughout the city, provoking controversy and antagonism within the Red Guard movement. Red Guard students in the colleges of music, drama, and art had particularly intense reactions to the slogan, for many of them came from "bad" class backgrounds. A Beijing artist recalls that Red Guard from revolutionary families began marching, demonstrating, and chanting the slogan. He remembers with particular indignation how the mob would apprehend any fellow Red Guard at will and require him or her to state loudly his class background. Students from ill-favored backgrounds, such as the children of bourgeois intellectuals, organized antislogan groups. More demonstrations in favor of the slogan were held, and a formal debate between advocates and opponents of the concept took place on August 6,^[34] the day after Mao Zedong wrote his big-character poster calling upon Red Guard to "Bombard the Headquarters."

According to one former Red Guard, CAFA was occupied for three days by middle school students from all over Beijing who came to observe or participate in a debate at the Beijing Conservatory.^[35] Some children of high officials, including Deng Xiaoping's artist daughter, publicly opposed the slogan. Siblings and friends found themselves bitterly divided. Heavily outnumbered CAFA Red Guard opposed the slogan with great vigor but were nonetheless defeated.^[36] As proslogan students eventually prevailed nationwide, aspiring Red Guard from bad backgrounds were required to denounce their parents. A Hong Kong newspaper reported in November that students from the "seven black categories" were expelled from schools in Canton by the Red Guard unless they condemned their families.^[37] For most of the subsequent decade, a person's class background was considered hereditary and determined access to employment and education.

Mao Zedong and the reorganized CCP leadership received Red Guard who traveled to Beijing from all over the nation on eight occasions. between August 18 and December 1966. It has been estimated that the total number of Red Guard assembled at Tiananmen Square in the course of these receptions was between ten and thirteen million.^[38] CAFA faculty and students hastened to participate in these patriotic events; as a result, Mao's meetings with the Red Guard became a favorite subject for young artists. An anonymous oil painting, Chairman Mao's Heart Beats as One with the Hearts of the Revolutionary Masses (fig. 110), published in 1968, was prepared for one of the Red Guard art exhibitions held in 1967.^[39] Mao, dressed in a military uniform, strides across a stone bridge in front of the old palace to shake the hands of his young supporters on Tiananmen Square. The demonstrators are a carefully varied group of student Red Guard, workers, and soldiers of both sexes. Be-

hind Mao are key Cultural Revolution leaders: Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and Zhou Enlai. All but Kang and Zhou are garbed in military uniforms, emphasizing Mao's reliance on the army to maintain order after his purge of the CCP.

The authors of this painting are believed to have been a group of teachers and young students from CAFA—including one Soviet-trained artist and one taught by Xu Beihong—who worked collectively.^[40] Because the socialist realist style encouraged by Jiang Qing and other Cultural Revolution leaders requires more technical skill than most Red Guard had, and because the paintings in major exhibitions tended to be extraordinarily large, collaboration in the planning and execution of the compositions was common. If Mao were to be the focus of the picture, as he usually was, it was especially important that his face be executed as skillfully as possible. In many cases, then, an experienced oil painter—normally a teacher—would be sought to help with this crucial part of the picture.

In Chairman Mao's Heart Beats as One , the artist who executed the face of Mao Zedong was a painter capable of both subtle effects of chiaroscuro and representational accuracy. The hand responsible for depicting the students at the right, by contrast, was far less skilled. The images of Chen Boda, the plump bespectacled figure, Jiang Qing, Lin Biao, Kang Sheng, and Zhou Enlai are technically superior to those of the Red Guard opposite them, but still weaker than the rendering of Mao. The image of Zhou Enlai, who stands prominently in the painting's foreground, is the least well rendered of the government officials. Thus, at least three different hands may be discerned in the execution of this picture, a situation typical of the collaboration encouraged by the communistic ideals of the Cultural Revolution. Another group of CAFA professors, including Hou Yimin and Jin Shangyi, were required to paint a more polished version of this composition for the 1972 National Exhibition (fig. 111).

The precise course of development of the Red Guard movement among art students in Beijing remains unclear, but former Red Guard from CAFA agree on the major events of the 1966-1967 period, namely: the 1966 smashing of the plaster casts used in drawing instruction; the Black Painting Exhibition of 1966 and the beating of old professors; the bloodlines debate of 1966; the factional battles and hostage taking of 1967; and the "Long Live the Victory of Chairman Mao's Revolutionary Line" Exhibition of October 1967. Although some CAFA Red Guard were in the crowd that watched the torching of the British embassy in August 1967,^[41] most considered it a minor event.

Early in the 1966 frenzy of student activism, sometime around August 25, "revolutionary students and teachers of the Central Academy of Fine Arts" conducted a dramatic symbolic event: the smashing of the instructional plaster statues.^[42] An integral part of the CAFA curriculum, as of European academies

Image not available

Figure 110
Anonymous, Chairman Mao's Heart
Beats as One with the Hearts of the
Revolutionary Masses, ca. 1967, oil
painting.

on which that curriculum was based, was the rendering in pencil or charcoal of plaster casts of famous European and Asian sculptures. Now, however, declaring that the academy's collection of plasters, which included reproductions of such works as Michelangelo's David , the Venus de Milo , and the Apollo Belvedere , represented the "four olds," CAFA Red Guard ritually destroyed the pieces with axes and shovels. They then threw the remnants onto a bonfire, parading around it in a victory celebration. Since completion of the ambitious undertaking required a great deal of physical exertion, the art students were assisted by students from the physical education department of Beijing Normal University.

One of the most appalling events of the early Cultural Revolution period involved violence against people as well as property. In order to smash "the power-holding faction," a black painting exhibition was held at CAFA by the ' Red Army group of the CAFA middle school, a group composed chiefly of radicalized sons and daughters of high-cadre families. Works of art, including paintings by Dong Xiwen, were stripped from the academy gallery for castigation. At least four faculty members, Ye Qianyu, Luo Gongliu, Li Kuchan, and Huang Yongyu, were beaten with belts and belt buckles by Red Guard students and faculty. Witnesses and participants in this dreadful spectacle still recall vividly the conduct of each victim as he was publicly tortured. After being physically humiliated, most old artists and administrators were incarcerated in

Image not available

Figure 111
Hou Yimin, Deng Shu, Jin Shangyi, Zhan
Jianjun, Luo Gongliu, Yuan Hao, and
Yang Lin'gui, We Must Implement the
Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the
Finish, 1972, oil on canvas.

makeshift prisons on campus, referred to as ox-pens, since the prisoners were called, in Mao's terms, ox-demons and snake-spirits.

The CAFA Red Guard, like those in other institutions, formed themselves into small activist groups that coordinated revolutionary activities. One artist in Shanghai maintains that all members of his work unit were Red Guard, unless they received the label of ox-demon or snake-spirit. This high level of participation appears to have been the case in Beijing arts units, as well, though some young people, particularly early Red Guard activists and others who withdrew after their parents fell victim to the campaign, declined to take part.^[43] In practice, the movement pitted young artists against their older teachers.

In the fall of 1966, Red Guard were encouraged to make "Long Marches," in emulation of the earlier travels of the Red Army.^[44] Most Red Guard from CAFA went to the countryside, including Yan'an, known as "the sacred spot of the revolution." One typical group of young artists went to Datong during the winter of 1966-1967 to make propaganda paintings for a memorial to coal miners who died during the Japanese occupation. While the students were away, workers at the college guarded their captives in the ox-pens. Art students from other parts of China camped out in Beijing art institutions while the usual occupants were absent.

In January and February 1967, the "National Assembly of Red Art Rebels" met in the National Art Gallery in Beijing to attack "the seventeen years of the black line in literature and art" and to struggle against the capitalist roaders in the art world.^[45] The "rebels" included students and young artists affiliated with art and film academies, the CAA, and institutes of Chinese painting; they had traveled to Beijing from all over the nation. The Ministry of Culture auditorium, the National Art Gallery, and the CAFA auditorium were converted into "national liaison stations" for Red Guard affiliated with arts institutions. One important function of such stations was to arrange shelter for fellow radicals from out of town. According to one former Red Guard leader, his group was granted $3,000 RMB by the Ministry of Culture, which can have been no more than a hollow shell by this time, to fund their criticism meetings and to publish a set of propaganda posters.^[46] If that indeed occurred, "rebellion" in the art world had taken on an "official" face.

The primary targets of the rebels' campaign were the national CAA leaders Hua Junwu, Cai Ruohong, and Wang Zhaowen, although academy leaders Liu Kaiqu and Zhang Ding were presented for criticism as well. (A participant who traveled from Kunming to Beijing to attend the conference recalls that the seriousness of the event was marred by the cartoonist Hua Junwu's presentation. He was required to stand for criticism before the audience with an example of his politically erroneous art held above his head. His cartoon was so funny that the audience began to titter and was unable to generate the necessary indignation at his alleged crimes.) On the second day of the meeting, the rebels confiscated the official seal of the CAA. This traditional Chinese gesture of seizing power had the practical effect of preventing deposed CAA officials from issuing any official documents or correspondence. On January 19, the Ministry of Culture was seized by a group called the Revolutionary Rebel Joint Committee.^[47]

By February 15, 1967, a Red Guard art periodical had been founded in distant Kunming. Qianjunbang (The One-Ton Cudgel; fig. 112) was a single-sheet poster issued by the Yunnan Red Art Rebels Liaison Station, which occupied the local CAA branch, and cost five Chinese cents. According to one contributor, it was one of the earliest publications for Red Guard of the art world and was avidly read by artists all over China. The provincial branch of the FLAC was not actually abolished, though it changed both its function, which now was to issue Red Guard propaganda, and its name, which became Revolutionary Rebel Corps. The new propaganda publications, not surprisingly, bypassed regular pre—Cultural Revolution dissemination procedures. Rather than working with a publisher, the Red Guard artists simply took their artwork to the printing factory, which produced it at cost, as an act of patriotism. The Red Guard then distributed their product nationally.

Several of the artists who emerged in Yunnan were trained at CAFA. One

Image not available

Figure 112
The One-Ton Cudgel (Qianjunbang),
broadsheer, no. 1, Feb. 15, 1967, published
by the Yunnan Red Art Rebels
Liaison Station, collection of Sun Jingbo.

of them, Sun Jingbo, a graduate of the CAFA middle school, produced a poster in 1967 to promote the slogan "Struggle with words, not with weapons" (fig. 113). The fierce expression on his figure's face is typical of Red Guard propaganda and was probably influenced by theatrical conventions of Jiang Qing's model operas. Otherwise, the charcoal rendering of a well-muscled female figure with arm extended is a testimony to his academic training in anatomy, perspective, and Soviet-style rendering. Similarly, an exhibition poster announcing a "Proletarian Cultural Revolution Painting Exhibition" in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mao's Yan'an Talks has been attributed to Jiang Tiefeng, a 1964 graduate of the CAFA printmaking department (fig. 114).

In June 1967, the CAFA Red Guard began publishing a monthly magazine called Art Storm (Meishu fenglei ).^[48] Although the editorial offices were on the CAFA campus, the periodical was in fact a joint effort of Red Guard groups

Image not available

Figure 113
Sun Jingbo, "Struggle with words, not
with weapons," 1967, poster, published
by the Studio of the Yunnan FLAC
United Struggle Team and Yunnan Red
Art Rebels Liaison Station, collection of
the artist.

from most Beijing art institutions. The sponsoring organizations were the Great United Congress of CAFA Classes and Departments; the Red [Guard] Congress Central Academy of Fine Arts Prairie Fire Armed Struggle Team;^[49] the Red [Guard] Congress Central Academy of Arts and Crafts East Is Red Commune; the Middle School Red [Guard] Congress CAFA Middle School

Image not available

Figure 114
Jiang Tiefeng, "Proletarian Cultural
Revolution Painting Exhibition," 1967,
poster, collection of Sun Jingbo.

Antirevisionist Brigade; the CAA Red Rebel Group; the Museum of Chinese Revolutionary History Revolutionary Rebel United Committee; the Chinese National Art Gallery Red Rebel Group; the Chinese Art Research Center Cultural Revolution Delegates Small Group; the Beijing Painting Institute Mao Zedong Thought Armed Struggle Group Revolutionary Committee; the People's Art Press Red Small Soldiers Armed Struggle Corps; the People's Art Press Prairie Fire; and the CAFA Sculpture Creation Studio Ten Thousand

Mountains Red Corps.^[50] Many of these units were dominated by CAFA students or graduates.

The first issue of Art Storm reported on a June 6 conference entitled "Cut Off Liu Shaoqi's Black Hand in the Art World—Thoroughly Eliminate the Poisonous Weeds Erected as Steles and Biographies for Liu Shaoqi." Art and culture leaders were brought to the Museum of Revolutionary History for face-to-face attacks before delegates of the labor congress (gongdaihui ), military, and art world revolutionary rebels. Those who appeared—Qi Yanming, Xu Pingyu, Wang Yeqiu, Cai Ruohong, Hua Junwu, Shao Yu, Li Zhaobing, Xu Binru, and Chen Pei—were held responsible for the production and publication of "dog portraits" of Liu Shaoqi.^[51]

The remainder of the June issue was devoted to castigating art in which portraits of Liu Shaoqi appeared. In one heinous example, it was found that 172,077 copies of Hou Yimin's oil painting Liu Shaoqi and the Anyuan Coal Miners (fig. 78) had been published by People's Art Press between 1962 and 1965.^[52] Hou Yimin, notably, was considered by Xu Binru, director of the Museum of Revolutionary History, to be an expert in painting the "Liu-demon." Other targets included the Hangzhou professor and Maksimov student Wang Dewei, who had exhibited a handsome painting of Liu Shaoqi in the forest talking to lumbermen in the 1964-1965 national exhibitions;^[53] and the CAFA professor Li Qi, who had painted a guohua portrait of Liu. In a pattern we observed during the anti-Jiang Feng campaign, the erroneous art produced between 1961 and 1965 was blamed both on its artists and on politicians, in this case Deng Xiaoping, Lu Dingyi, and Zhou Yang.^[54]

On May 23, 1967, after a year of destruction, the Cultural Revolution Small Group announced the establishment of a literature and arts group under the direction of Jiang Qing. Other members of the group included Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Qi Benyu. Liu Jucheng was to direct artistic activity. May also featured an exhibition of paintings by the Proletarian Cultural Revolution Red Painting Guard at the former Rongbaozhai Gallery. It was sponsored by various other Red Guard art groups from the publishing industry, including publishers of the periodical Art War Gazette (Meishu zhanbao ).^[55] Another exhibition, called "Long Live the Victory of Mao Zedong Thought Revolutionary Painting" and prepared by eighty rebel units, was held at the Chinese National Art Gallery on May 28, 1967, in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Yan'an Talks. A meeting of almost a thousand people was held in conjunction with the exhibition, at which former art leaders, including Cai Ruohong and Hua Junwu, were once again attacked and humiliated.^[56]

In June, the Red Guard Congress CAFA Prairie Fire Great Criticism Brigade began a campaign against artists who had worked in Chongqing during World War II, allegedly in collaboration with Liu Shaoqi. Their leader was

said to have been former culture Minister Xia Yan, and they included the prominent artists, critics, and cultural figures Zhang Ding, Ye Qianyu, Huang Miaozi, Zhang Guangyu, Zhang Zhengyu, Hu Kao, Yu Feng, Ai Qing, and Ding Cong.^[57]

The following issue of Art Storm included an attack on the Beijing Chinese Painting Institute for being a royal painting academy run by Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi. Liu was attacked for the mild comments he had made in support of guohua during the Hundred Flowers campaign (see above, p. 180). The Red Guard asserted that Mao and Zhou Enlai had intended the institute to paint socialist realist pictures but that the Propaganda Department and Beijing municipal government had led it astray. The original leadership, significantly, included no party members, and two of the four directors were rightists. The director of the Beijing Cultural Bureau had apparently claimed that the Chinese Painting Institute was rather like a Culture and History Hall (Wenshiguan ) and need not be so politically activist.^[58] Emphasizing those circumstances, its director, Cui Zifan, had, according to the Red Guard, devoted himself to raising birds. The institute was always deserted, with only a few doves strutting about, like an old temple. Even worse, the Red Guard asserted, was that many of its artists had held exhibitions and published one-man albums during the famine years.^[59] As in the Anti-Rightist campaign, the facts may have been accurate, but their interpretations were somewhat hysterical.

Between June 10 and 12, 1967, a "ten thousand person meeting" was held at the Beijing Workers Stadium under the auspices of the literature and arts group of the CRSG. Chen Boda, Qi Benyu, revolutionary groups from art units, and one of the Rent Collection Courtyard artists delivered speeches. Lu Dingyi, Zhou Yang, Xia Yan, and others were presented for "struggle" by the masses.^[60] On July 1, seven or eight hundred people met in the CAFA auditorium to "struggle" (attack) Cai Ruohong. Hua Junwu received similar treatment on July 10 and 11; Zhou Yang and Lin Mohan appeared on July 23 and 24.^[61] It was announced on July 21, 1967, that a new cultural administration, probably intended to assume the functions of the old Ministry of Culture, would be formed under the CRSG literature and arts group. None of the leaders of this new administration's art section were artists we have mentioned before. On August 2, Zhou Yang was "struggled" once again in the CAFA auditorium by this new organization.^[62] Most old artists lived under guard and were prohibited from painting during these years.

A new school directorate, called the Preparatory Group for the CAFA Revolutionary Committee, was announced by the literature and arts group of the CRSG on August 3, with Chen Bo, a leftist former administrator, put in charge.^[63] The new group, however, failed to restore order; instead the Red Guard factions fought to gain control of the school Revolutionary Committee.^[64]

At the same time that power was being successfully wrested from former arts leaders, Red Guard art groups began struggling internally. In 1967, despite efforts by Zhou Enlai and others to prevent such divisions, Red Guard throughout Beijing split into several antipathetic groups.^[65] A primary reason for the rifts was power struggles over control of the Red Guard Congress and the new Beijing Revolutionary Committee.^[66] Such tensions appeared in the art world, as elsewhere, as early as the Red Guard seizure of the CAA in January.^[67] The most decisive splits in Beijing were between the Sky faction, named for the Red Flag group of the Beijing Aeronautical Institute, and the Earth faction, named for the East Is Red group of the Geology Institute. By June 1967, the Earth faction had won control of the Red Guard Congress.

Most schools in Beijing divided internally along similar lines. According to CAFA historians, the CAFA Red Guard decisively split in May 1967.^[68] Each side aligned itself with one of the two predominant factions in Beijing, and both groups engaged in even more extreme behavior than had already been displayed. Hong Yung Lee has found the Earth faction students in Beijing to be, in general, children of less prestigious class backgrounds, more politically radical, and more closely linked to Jiang Qing and the Cultural Revolution Small Group. The Sky faction students were from better—that is, more revolutionary—class backgrounds, were more moderate politically, and tended to be sympathetic to Zhou Enlai's administrative methods.^[69] Ideological differences between the two groups in the art world, if they existed, are difficult to assess. No trace of them is evident, at least to the foreign reader, in Art Storm , which was aligned with the Earth faction. Participants in a May 18 symposium to commemorate Mao's Yan'an Talks included Red Guard from twelve units, including factory workers, clerks, the Great United Congress of CAFA Classes and Departments, the Red Guard Congress CAFA Prairie Fire, and the East Is Red group of the Geology Institute. It was, thus, likewise an activity of the Earth faction. Former Red Guard artists tend to agree that the factions in each art institution had their own dynamics and were based in part on personal friendships and animosities.

As in other institutions, "class background" played some role in factional alignments within CAFA. Some of the Revolutionary Alliance/Red Flag Red Guard, which was aligned with the Sky faction, were sons and daughters of revolutionary martyrs, cadres, or soldiers or were of peasant or worker stock. Some Prairie Fire Red Guard, aligned with the Earth faction, were children of intellectuals or of bourgeois stock. Revolutionary Alliance/Red Flag members were more likely than Prairie Fire Red Guard to be prominent party members.

On the whole, however, the factional divisions within the art academy seem to have corresponded less with family background than with social factors, such as studio assignments and friendships. The Revolutionary Alliance/ Red Flag faction at CAFA, for example, was dominated by young faculty

trained in the Soviet Union, assigned to the Soviet-style oil painting studio (Studio Two), or trained in Luo Gongliu's oil painting class between 1960 and 1963. Most were party members with considerable experience in previous movements and born of good revolutionary stock. One Revolutionary Alliance/Red Flag organizer had been instrumental in the Maoist criticisms at CAFA in the fall of 1964 and was a focus of factional animosity. Former Red Guard have described this group, in late 1950s parlance, as the group that was both red and professional. Many CAFA middle school students, especially children of revolutionary cadres, allied themselves with this group.

The opposing faction at CAFA, the Prairie Fire group, was dominated by young oil painting instructors from Studio Three, the national-style studio. The group seems to have been less well unified than the Revolutionary Alliance/Red Flag group, and to have evolved in opposition to the other faction rather than as a result of any compelling affinity among group members. It reportedly included some graduates of Maksimov's class and many of the school's undergraduate students. A former Prairie Fire Red Guard describes his group as consisting of technically skilled artists with few personal political ambitions. Although it was difficult to remain unaligned, lest one be victimized by both factions, one former student has estimated that, as the conflicts grew more dangerous, as many as a third of the art students dropped out of the movement altogether.

Whether the differences were ideological, class-based, or personal, the factional split was important, in some cases leading to bloodshed.^[70] Activists of both stripes believed that they were on the correct side of the power struggle. Each faction sought to attract attention by doing a better job implementing the decrees of Chairman Mao, and intense competition developed as to which Red Guard faction would be assigned to handle a particular "case." For example, it was reported in the press that the Red Flag unit from the Peking Foreign Languages Institute, a group aligned with the Earth faction, broke into the Foreign Ministry on about May 16, 1967, after having been passed over by Zhou Enlai in their bid to conduct the official criticism of former head of state Liu Shaoqi.^[71]

As factional loyalties solidified by 1967, non-CAFA representatives from the Sky or Earth factions sought to participate in criticizing victims. In some instances a work of art or even a person to be criticized would be seized and hidden from the opposing faction. Opposing Red Guard groups at CAFA occupied the two largest buildings on campus as forts. Rocks were catapulted back and forth across the athletic field. The Prairie Fire group held the threestory art gallery, which was strategically located at the edge of campus. The Revolutionary Alliance/Red Flag group set up their headquarters in the twostory library in the center of campus. Battles and hostage taking of Red Guard from opposing factions became serious. One notorious incident in the conflict

was the capture by Prairie Fire partisans of the oil painting instructor Wen Lipeng, a graduate of Luo Gongliu's class and the son of the poetmartyr Wen Yiduo. He was eventually freed by Revolutionary Alliance/Red Flag partisans, who believe they saved his life from the Earth faction Red Guard.^[72]

Older faculty continued to be physically and mentally abused throughout the first year and a half of the Cultural Revolution. As we have seen, CAFA party committee member and oil painting instructor Hou Yimin, initially sympathetic to the Prairie Fire group, eventually became a Red Guard target himself. Not only did he paint the disgraced Liu Shaoqi and the Anyuan Coal Miners for the Museum of Revolutionary History, but he also had a "landlord" family background and he liked to collect antiques. He was reportedly hung by his arms and beaten; his Soviet-trained wife, Deng Shu, suffered a heart attack when she was assaulted. Wang Shikuo endured torture at the hands of Red Guard hoping to force a confession of espionage; his wife was dragged down two flights of stairs by her hair.^[73] The desire to forget the "ten lost years" by most of those involved is completely understandable.