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
[edit ]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
[edit ]Wu's life and work was promoted as exemplary by many leading figures in the imperial court of the Qing dynasty. After his death in 1896 a memorial temple, the Wu Xun Temple in Guan County, Shandong, was created to honor his work. He was portrayed as a Confucian hero and his body was preserved. He continued to be regarded as a hero in Shandong, and the phrase "the spirit of Wu Xun" was used to refer to the social ideal of progress through education and traditional Confucian ideals of service.[3]
Reaction
[edit ]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. Red Guards exhumed his corpse and carried it to a public square where it was subsequently given a trial and ordered burned. The Red Guards broke the body into pieces before setting light to it with gas.[7] After Mao's death, Wu's reputation was restored. In 1985 the People's Daily stated that the criticisms of Wu "cannot be said to be even basically correct".[5]
References
[edit ]- ^ 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.
- ^ 中国大百科全书(第二版) [Encyclopedia of China (2nd Edition)] (in Chinese). Vol. 23. Encyclopedia of China Publishing House. 2009. p. 569. 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.