A tribute to the remarkable He Fengming, a survivor of China’s 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign, whose memoir serves as an enduring testament to historical truth and the fragility of humanity under authoritarian rule.

By Ma Qinuo | China Unofficial Archives

Ms. He Fengming, a survivor of the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China, passed away on the evening of June 4, 2025, at the age of 93.

As a member of a younger generation who has long followed this chapter of Chinese history, I was deeply shaken by the news. Under lamplight, I reread her book Experience: My 1957, unable to put it down.

At the age of 25, He Fengming and her husband were both labeled Rightists. For the next 20 years, she became a political pariah, enduring persecution and narrowly escaping death time and again. When she was finally and fully rehabilitated at the end of 1978, she was nearly 50 years old. Yet, it was in the three decades following her retirement in 1989 that her life shone with extraordinary brilliance, driven by conscience and extraordinary courage.

Over ten years, she completed her memoir, Experience: My 1957, which was published in 2001. She also actively supported documentary filmmakers Wang Bing and Ai Xiaoming in their efforts to capture the history of Jiabiangou [labor camp] on film. The three-hour documentary Fengming: A Chinese Memoir, directed by Wang Bing, was the result of three visits he made to her home.

At the time of filming, she was already 75 years old, yet she sat for hours in front of the camera recounting the agonizing events of her past, showing tremendous courage to confront such painful memories. The first 20 years of her adult life were spent as a humiliated and persecuted political outcast; the following 30 years were devoted to defending historical memory. The concerns of her family and threats from those in power did not silence her voice for truth.

Experience: My 1957 has had two editions. The first was published in 2001. A second edition appeared in 2006, accompanied by a lengthy preface by Qian Liqun, which significantly broadened the book’s influence.

Although writing and research on the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign have always been considered sensitive in China, over the four decades of Reform and Opening, the ideological climate has fluctuated, and despite the restrictions, both scholarly and narrative works on the campaign have steadily emerged. Around the year 2000, there was even a modest publishing boom on the topic. In several bookstores in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, one could find a small, prominent area near the entrance dedicated to Anti-Rightist books published over those years—titles like Chronicles of Jiabiangou, Experience: My 1957, Worlds Away: A Look Back at Jiabiangou, Searching for Home, and others. Together they almost constituted a “Jiabiangou section” on the shelves. In addition to officially published works, many unofficial writings also circulated in various forms among the public.

Among this sizable body of works—particularly when compared to the memoirs of many well-known Anti-Rightist figures—what makes Experience: My 1957 stand out?

The group of victims from the 1957 campaign was extremely complex. Figures such as Zhang Bojun and Luo Longji did hold political views that were unacceptable to the Chinese Communist Party. Others, like Chu Anping and Liu Binyan, had ideas and writings that the Party disliked. But He Fengming was different. Even in her old age, when she completed this book, it is evident from her writing that she was a politically innocent. And it is people like her who made up the vast majority of the Anti-Rightist Campaign’s victims.

Reading Experience: My 1957, one sees that if He Fengming’s husband, Wang Jingchao, was labeled a Rightist because of three essays he had written—persecuted, in a sense, for his words—then He and several of her colleagues were branded Rightists entirely because of minor workplace grievances. At Gansu Peasants’ Daily, where she worked, a rift had developed between two deputy editors-in-chief. He and her fellow editors were caught in the middle, their work became difficult, and they inevitably expressed some complaints. These trivial grievances—nothing that would normally be taken seriously—became fatally toxic when combined with the political climate, and ultimately became the reason she was labeled a Rightist.

According to my knowledge, at another local newspaper, a senior proofreader who did not oppose the Party, did not oppose socialism, and in fact tried to flatter his superiors, was also labeled a Rightist. He had a habit of correcting typos as part of his job. But the paper’s leadership—mostly from working-class backgrounds—often mispronounced words when reading documents aloud in meetings. The proofreader, sitting in the front row and dutifully taking notes, would quietly correct them. The leaders were displeased, though he had no idea. Eventually, they instructed others to denounce him and frame him—thus he too became a Rightist.

Experience: My 1957 is an indictment of totalitarian politics. It is a piece of social history from an extraordinary time. It exposes the cruelty of political persecution, but also reveals the darkness of human nature in everyday life.

Nearly 70 years have passed since the Anti-Rightist Campaign, but for today’s youth, reading this book as a textbook on human nature might be even more meaningful. We may love humanity, but we cannot fully trust human nature. A good political system is one that places restraints on our darker instincts, while a despotic totalitarian regime deliberately cultivates them. For the evil in human nature is the sustenance of all authoritarian rule. It can turn many into monsters and condemn even more to the status of political outcasts. Every authoritarian ruler promises to turn the world into a paradise, but without exception, they make it a living hell.

Let us therefore mourn the passing of He Fengming with gratitude in our hearts, and remember the words she wrote in blood and tears—witness to suffering, left behind for us.

Read the original version of this post, as well as the Chinese-language translation, at the publisher’s website here.

China Unofficial Archives was created as a project to combat China’s shrinking internet—evident in a 70% drop in Chinese-language websites since 2013 to 1.3% globally. By preserving censored content amid Xi-era political pressures and technical archiving hurdles, China Unofficial Archives aims to save and safeguard blogs, films and documents beyond the reach of censorship and the issues that drive widespread online erasure.

Recommended archives:

He Fengming’s memoir: Experience: My 1957

Documentary on He Fengming’s life: Fengming: A Chinese Memoir

Related archives:

Chronicles of Jiabiangou

Worlds Away: A Look Back at Jiabiangou

Searching for Home