The Heresy of Wu Han: His play 'Hai Jui's Dismissal' and its role in China's Cultural Revolution

At the centre of China's Cultural Revolution in its first stages stands the ambiguous figure of Wu Han. Occupying until the mid-sixties a favoured position among the intellectual elite of the People's Republic, he was the eighth-ranking figure in the Chinese Communist Party, and his Peking Opera Hai Jui's Dismissal was performed all over China. Gradually it became apparent that Wu Han was using Hai Jui to lampoon Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the core policies of the CPP. Other dissidents began...