Wu Xun
Wu Xun (Chinese: 武训; pinyin: Wǔ Xùn; 1838–1896) was a Chinese educational reformer who pioneered free popular education in the country and became a hero of Chinese liberalism. In the 1950s and 1960s, prior to Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, his reputation came under attack and his body was exhumed and burned.[1]
Biography
Wu was born Wu Qi (武七) as the seventh child among his siblings, at Wuzhuang, Tangyi county (堂邑县, a part of Guan county nowadays).[2] His father died when he was a child, leaving him to fend for himself. Too poor to attend the local academy, Wu determined to promote universal free education,[3] supposedly because he was swindled for his illiteracy.[4] A wandering beggar, Wu educated himself and used his little money to develop business ventures. Eventually he achieved success as a businessman, but he continued to beg, using the money he got to fund the foundation of local academies in Shandong. In the last decade of his life, Wu was a successful money lender and landlord, and he used his earnings to found three charity traditional academies.[3] He got the bestowed name Xun from the court later.[2]
Wu never married, and he fostered the second grandson of his eldest brother.[2]
Reputation
Wu's life and work was promoted as exemplary by many leading figures in the imperial court of the
Reaction
In 1950 a film about his work, The Life of Wu Xun, was made. It was quickly criticised by radicals within the Chinese Communist Party for promoting Wu, whose life was attacked as counter-revolutionary.[3] The campaign was the "first major politico-ideological campaign in the Chinese Communist regime".[5] It was initiated by Mao's wife Jiang Qing, who loathed the "bourgeois reformism" epitomised by Wu. She persuaded Mao himself to write an article denouncing Wu as a promoter of "feudal" culture.[6]
The backlash against the film led to an attempt to destroy the cult of Wu.
References
- ^ Priestley, K.E. (July 1962). China's Men of Letters. Hong Kong: Dragonfly Books. pp. 73–100.
- ^ a b c "聊城"千古奇丐"武训 三个世纪的回响". 聊城晚报 [Liaocheng Evening News] (in Chinese).
- ^ a b c d Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and education reform in 20th-century China: the search for an ideal development model, Cambridge University Press, pp.167-169.
- ISBN 978-7-500-07958-3.
- ^ a b Henry Yuhuai He, Dictionary of the political thought of the People's Republic of China, M.E. Sharpe, 2001, p. 297.
- ^ Ross Terrill, Madame Mao: the white boned demon, Stanford University Press, 1999, p.174.
- ^ MacFarquhar, Roderick. "Red Terror." Mao's Last Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University. 2006. p. 120.