Chapter 7 The pinnacle of the Red Guard drama: "Hope Is Pinned on You"

The drama "Hope Is Pinned on You" was the most influential old Red Guard drama in 1967-1968. "Hope" is mainly composed of three people: Xu Yaya (Beijing Drama Academy, Drama Department), Shen Xiaoke (Beijing Foreign Languages ​​School Attached Middle School), and Hu Bin (Beijing Foreign Languages ​​School Attached Middle School). Xu Yaya is the core of the creation of this play.Before the "Cultural Revolution", she had already started to learn to write plays while she was in school. The programs she created "Learning from Jiao Yulu" have been performed in rural areas and factories. During the "Cultural Revolution", she edited many Red Guard art programs and enjoyed a good reputation among the old Red Guards.

Xu Yaya belongs to a generation that was nurtured by the ideals of communism.Zhang Chunqiao once compared the old Red Guards to "Decembrists."Xu Yaya said: "If I had been in Petersburg in 1825, I would have participated in the Decembrist uprising. It is a pity that I did not shed this drop of blood." During the "Cultural Revolution", Mao Zedong met the Red Guards eight times, and Xu Yaya was present seven times.She is a witness to history. On September 15, 1969, on the Tiananmen Gate, she was designated as the host of the venue.She was only a few feet away from Mao Zedong, but she did not come forward to shake hands with Mao Zedong ("August 18" Mao Zedong met the Red Guards with his hand swollen, and since then it has been stipulated that he is not allowed to shake hands with Mao Zedong).

Usually, there were two people from the People's Liberation Army, a man and a woman, who shouted slogans at Tiananmen Square. This time, Xu Yaya presided over the venue, shouting from dawn to dusk.Her voice was not hoarse at all, it was loud.Xu Yaya said: "I am not proud of being able to shout slogans, I am proud of my golden voice, which reflects all my admiration for Mao Zedong." Tiananmen Square is a sea of ​​red with millions of people, red flags, red quotations, and red armbands.Facing the Red Ocean, whenever Xu Yaya's shout fell, the Red Ocean echoed like a tsunami, shaking in the sky.Xu Yaya is a mezzo-soprano, her voice is not very high, but it is very crisp. She raised her voice to the top, and then slowly slid down, with a long, long tail; "Mao—Long live Chairman—!"

The younger brothers and sisters who were being inspected in the square immediately recognized their older sister's voice, and excitedly said to other Red Guards: "This is my older sister! This is my older sister!" On the National Day of 1966, the Red Guards organization of Xu Yaya's Drama Academy and the Academy of Chinese Opera jointly prepared "Red Lantern".A classmate in the second grade of the theater school presided over the revision of the script, and he added a line to the play.When Li Tiemei took the red light from Grandma Li, she said: "Red light, red light, I understand now, this is called Lao Tzu's revolutionary succession!" Whenever the performance reaches here, the audience applauds enthusiastically.

A cross-time and space technique is also used in the performance.After Li Yuhe died, Tiemei took over the red light, and the Red Guards appeared on the stage, and the "rebellion song" rang: pick up a pen, make a knife and gun, and concentrate firepower to fight the gangsters... Accompanied by a burst of drums and percussion, a red guard The guards carried a red flag to the stage to make a "dragon wagging its tail" in a "quick wind". They played the banner like a whirlwind on the stage, only to hear the gongs and drums come to a sudden stop, the red guards flicked the banner and walked to the high platform.At the place where Li Yuhe died, Tiemei handed over the red light to the Red Guards.Out of hatred for Hatoyama, under the guidance of the knife grinder, Tiemei was used as bait to lure Hatoyama.Finally, the Red Guards slashed Hatoyama.

The first performance of this play was in the small auditorium on the third floor of the Great Hall of the People.Please ask representatives of the Red Guards in the capital and the head of the central government to review.In addition to Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng and others, Marshal Chen Yi was also present.Before the performance, Xu Yaya also made an impromptu speech. December 26, 1966 was the day when the Capital Red Guard Joint Action Committee met.At the beginning, the group of children who Jiang Qing praised as "our little sun, China's hope" began to rebel against the Central Cultural Revolution.This is the day when the old Red Guards called their curtain call. On Mao Zedong's 73rd birthday, they presented their last gifts.

On this day, Xu Yaya and the other three got rid of the surveillance and came to the Beijing Exhibition Hall.When she saw so many old Red Guards at once, it was as if Wu Qinghua saw Hong Changqing in the Liberated Area, and she felt like she had knocked over a five-flavored bottle, unable to tell what it was like.The old Red Guards announced a joint action in the theater and shouted: "Oppose to arresting the seniors of the revolution! Some people in the 'Central Cultural Revolution' should not be too crazy!" The ceiling of the entire exhibition hall was about to collapse.This is the declaration of the old Red Guards to fight to the death.

Not long after, Minister of Public Security Xie Fuzhi, in accordance with the Central Cultural Revolution's will, arrested a group of Red Guards who were dissatisfied with the Central Cultural Revolution in the name of maintaining social order, and detained them in the Ministry of Public Security.This led to the "linkage" attacking the Ministry of Public Security six times, and more students were arrested and imprisoned.At the same time, under the command of the Central Cultural Revolution, the old Red Guard organizations in various schools were copied, smashed, and banned.People were beaten to the point of bleeding, detained and humiliated arbitrarily.Some former perpetrators have become victims; some past victims have doubled their revenge and become perpetrators again.

In 1968, an editorial on New Year's Day declared "linkage" a counter-revolutionary organization.That night, Xu Yaya and a son of a martyr wrote a letter to Mao Zedong: "Chairman Mao, although we drank a few sips of water, we are not afraid, we must persist in the revolution!" The letter was signed at the end: "Son of the Party." After Jiang Qing's "April 3 Speech", the old Red Guards began planning to commemorate the "May 29th Performance".Xu Yaya was entrusted by several school Red Guards to cycle around Beijing city to organize this performance.At this time, Shen Xiaoke from the High School Attached to the Foreign Language School came here admiringly and asked her to write a play praising the deeds of the Red Guards for the High School Attached to the Foreign Language School.

After Xu Yaya and Shen Xiaoke conceived, arranged and discussed, the first draft was written by Xu Yaya.Shen Xiaoke withdrew from the creation because she was busy organizing the performance team.At this time, Hu Bin (a Red Guard who loves drama and literature) from the organization joined in the script creation.This script was rehearsed and revised during the rehearsal, and finally formed a fixed performance script. The director of this play is Xu Yaya, who also plays the role of the deputy secretary of the school's party branch in the play.In fact, Xu Yaya is an editor, director, and actor. Peng Yinyin (a female first middle school student, a second-year high school student) made an important contribution to this play. She is fully responsible for the clothing, food, housing, and transportation of the crew, and engraved the script. Liaise with performances and other administrative work.

There are 25 actors who mainly play the characters in the play "Hope", of which 13 are the main characters. Yang Xiangping, Rao Xiaogang, (High School Affiliated to Gangyuan) as: Peng Lusheng (Student in Class 2, Senior Three) AB corner Liu Mingzhe (Middle 5) as: Zhao Sandai (Students in Class 2, Senior 3) Jin Bohong (No. 34): He Qi (Student in Class 2, Senior Three) Wang Guozheng (High School Affiliated to Foreign Language School): Yang Guodong (Student in Class 2, Grade 3) Xiao Pengpeng (a middle school in Chongwen District): Ding Saiying (female, student in Class 1, Grade 2) Wu Jinlu (a middle school in Chongwen District) as: Xiaodouzi (students from Class 1 and Class 3 of junior high school) Xu Yaya (Drama Academy): Hong Song (Deputy Secretary of the Party Branch of the school) Song Di (High School Attached to Foreign Language School): Wein (Principal) Zhang Zhige (High School Attached to Foreign Language School): Liu Jiajun (Working Team Leader) Qin Ruibo (High School Attached to Foreign Language School): Deng Xiuwen (Deputy Leader of the Working Group) In addition, there are many literary and art lovers from the old Red Guard faction system who come and go to this crew, playing the roles of the masses and assisting the stage work. Participating crew performances include: High School Attached to Beijing Foreign Language School (main performance), Middle School Attached to Central Academy of Fine Arts (design and production), Girls Attached to Normal University, Middle School Attached to Tsinghua University, Middle School Attached to Renmin University, No. 25 Middle School, No. 34 Middle School, No. 5 Middle School, No. 101 Middle School Red Guards. Regarding the creative intention of the play "Hope", the writers said in the postscript of the script: "express the lessons of history in the form of art." Educate those Red Guards who lost confidence and hope because of mistakes, and were intoxicated.Remind them, "What a fighting life and what a tearful look back! Look at your life today. Aren't you ashamed?" The author's creative intention is to reproduce the movement process of the first anniversary of the Red Guards, to reflect and summarize, to educate the Xiaoyao faction, and to praise the friendship formed by the Red Guards in battle. "Hope Is Pinned on You" is divided into eight scenes.From 1966, a few students in the third and second classes of senior high school stopped taking the exam, and established the Red Guards in the Yuanmingyuan, a wild suburb outside the school.In fact, it concentrated on the experience of organizing the Red Guards in the early stages of the middle school movement of Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Beihang University. Under the influence of model operas, the No. 1 character Peng Lusheng (children of cadres), Li Sandai (children of workers), and Ding Saiying (a sophomore in high school) were set up as the central characters; surrounded by revolutionary students Zhang Xiaohong, Xiaodouzi, Shao Hua, and the centrists: He Qi, Yang Guodong.The opposite is the principal and the working group. The plot begins with Peng Lusheng and others leading the strike and tearing up the test papers, and the principal and the working group organize students from the middle to expose and besiege the Red Guards, and the program is put on the line, pushing the play to a climax.In the end, Hong Song, the deputy secretary of the school's general party branch, resolutely stood up to support the Red Guards, and exposed that Liu Jiajun, the leader of the working group, was actually a traitor who had betrayed Peng Lusheng's mother. The majority of students were awakened.Red Guards from various middle schools came to support them one after another, and brought good news that Chairman Mao was going to meet them. "Hope" records some life fragments during the birth of the Red Guards at the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution".For example: In the first scene, Peng Lusheng and others went out of school in the middle of the night for a secret meeting, and at night they drilled back through the sewer, unexpectedly, the hole was covered with barbed wire.Xiaodouzi asked Peng Lusheng if he had stabbed his head, and read a quotation from Chairman Mao: If there is struggle, there will be sacrifice. Ding Saying, a girl from Class 2 of Senior Three, is the number one in English recitation in the school, with a pungent personality; the students nicknamed her Nail.On the occasion of the senior high school graduation exam, she stood up and shouted: "Students, put aside your own future and think about the destiny of the country!" and tore up the exam paper. There is a scene in "The Wilderness" in the script, with angry clouds covering the sky and towering ancient cypresses. More than 20 people lined up to take an oath: "Defend the Party Central Committee and Chairman Mao!" , from 1927 to 1966, from the Xiangjiang Spark to the Cultural Revolution.This scene sublimated the founding of the Red Guards to a historical height. In the seventh scene, the stage was used as the scene of "criticizing" the students, and the stage was mixed together, and the theater responded enthusiastically during the performance.There was a burst of slogans and applause throughout the venue, as if a big debate was really going on in time. "Hope" premiered at Ganjiakou Jiangong Auditorium on August 18. Props and costumes can be pulled away with a flat three-wheeler.A screen and a small tree were borrowed by Xu Yaya from the Drama Academy.Later, the play was staged three times in the Chang'an Theater, and the tickets were sold openly. The seats were full for a while, and some parents of the actors also came to see the play, and the atmosphere in the theater was very lively.The performance at Chang'an Theater marks the maturity of the play, and the revenue from the box office becomes the cost of the crew's activities. "Hope" has also been performed in a series of places such as the "Railway Workers Club" in Ningyuan, Tianjin, the North China Pharmaceutical Factory in Shijiazhuang, and the largest theater in Shijiazhuang (known as the "Little Great Hall of the People").The performance lasted until the winter of 1968, when some actors began to enlist in the army and go to the countryside to jump in the queue, and the crew was disbanded. From the creation to the performance of the play "Hope", it has always been full of passion.Actors sometimes cry while acting on stage. The postscript of the mimeographed script of "Hope" reads: "This immature script is a few Red Guards who have not lost hope and are still groping forward. of." The whole play runs through one prop from beginning to end: an oil painting "The Red Army Will Never Fall".In the painting, a Red Army soldier is covered with wounds and bruises, holding high the red flag. The red flag is not fluttering in the wind, but is rolled into a curl by the strong wind. The sincere creation and performance won enthusiastic response from the audience.Actors such as Xiao Pengpeng who played Ding Saying, Song Di who played the principal, and Xu Yaya who played Hong Song left a deep impression on the audience.This is a drama full of youth, friendship, passion, and flames.