Chapter 47 The rain is about to come and the wind is all over the building

In 1974, the Jiang Qing Group launched a nationwide campaign against underground literature. After the "criticism of forestry and rectification" in 1971, some ultra-left policies and guidelines that had been suppressed were "rectified" and re-implemented in the "criticism of forestry and Confucius" in 1974, and the catastrophe of underground literature came. In the later period of the "Cultural Revolution", Mao Zedong fell into a deep ideological contradiction.On the one hand, he realized that the negative consequences caused by the movement should be eliminated. On the other hand, he did not allow the "Cultural Revolution" to be denied, and he was wary of someone who tried to "overturn the verdict by the right." In 1974, Mao Zedong approved the launch of the "Criticism of Lin Piao and Confucius" campaign, the purpose of which was to "consolidate and develop the great achievements of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution".This announced the beginning of a new phase of the "Cultural Revolution".

The Jiang Qing Group used Mao Zedong's instructions to launch a political movement.During the Spring Festival in 1974, they held a "Black Painting Exhibition" in the Beijing Hotel, and organized tens of thousands of people to visit and criticize.At the same time, "Bei Hu Nan Ying" organized and criticized a "Chinese Painting" published by the foreign trade department in Shanghai, and published an article "Countering the Restoration Trend" in Shanghai's "Wen Wei Po" and "Liberation Daily". On January 25, 1974, under the banner of "criticizing Lin Biao and Confucianism", the Jiangqing Group held a mobilization meeting of 10,000 people in the Beijing Workers' Stadium and launched a surprise attack on Zhou Enlai.Since then, a campaign to criticize Lin, Confucius and Duke Zhou has been launched across the country.The spearhead was directed at Zhou Enlai and a group of veteran cadres - the so-called "rightist" group at that time.

From January 23rd to February 18th, the cultural performance in North China organized by the Cultural Group of the State Council was held in Beijing.During the performance, Jiang Qing Group and its cultural group's confidant Yu Huiyong and others created the "Three on the Peach Peak" incident.He identified the play as a poisonous weed that touted the "Taoyuan experience" and overturned Liu Shaoqi's case, and ordered the play troupe to be critically watched in Beijing.Actresses of Shanxi Jin Opera Troupe were forced to go on stage with humiliation, causing an actress to faint on stage suddenly.In this incident, Zhao Yunlong, a cadre of the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Bureau, was forced to die because he disagreed with the "fundamental task" theory. On February 29, Chu Lan published "Comment on Shanxi Opera "San Shang Tao Feng"" in "People's Daily", clamoring to "repel" "the resurgence of the counter-revolutionary revisionist literary black line".With the help of "Three on the Peach Peak", the Jiang Qing Group began to loot the country's literature and art.All of a sudden, word-breaking riddles, cumbersome textual research, big catches and insinuations prevailed, and literary prisons spread all over the country.

On January 30, the "People's Daily" published the article "Bad Intentions, Despicable Techniques—Criticism of the Anti-China Film Titled "China" Filmed by Antonioni" organized by the Jiang Qing Group, organizing criticism across the country. At the beginning of March, Jiang Qing summoned Yu Huiyong, Hao Liang and others to issue a call to "set fire to the wilderness" in an attempt to overthrow a large number of veteran military cadres. At the end of March, Yu Huiyong criticized "Songtao Song" (Harbin Drama Theatre), "The Restless Seaside" (Shandong Drama Troupe), and "Reed Flute" (short story , published in Henan Province's internal publications "Selected Literature and Art Works" Issue 1, 1973), "Spring of Friendship", and "There Is Such a Bridge" (Chinese Repertory Theatre), branding them as "poisonous weeds" for "reversal and restoration".

In June of that year, Jiang Qing and others engaged in allusions to historiography on the one hand, and a large number of Confucius "restrained himself and restored the rites", "prospered and destroyed the country, inherited the peerless world, and promoted the Yimin", and a large number of "Prime Minister Confucianism" pointed their finger at Zhou Enlai; Organized a royal writing team to concoct "Ten Years of Peking Opera Revolution", saying that the ten years from 1964 to 1974 were "the pioneering period of proletarian literature and art".Published articles in major newspapers and magazines "Red Flag" summarizing experience in creating model plays.This is the so-called creation principle of "three prominences", "three foils", "far foreshadowing", "near foreshadowing", "multiple sides" and "three-dimensional".Zhang Chunqiao openly said: "From "The Internationale" to the revolutionary model opera, there has been a blank space for more than a hundred years."

On May 1, Shanghai organized a special session of singing the Cultural Revolution, and mobilized all propaganda machines such as news, publishing, and TV stations to promote it.At the end of the year, a special session of singing "Fengqing" was organized. Jiang Qing and others premeditatedly and organizedly made a fuss about ideology. This intensive activity is to use culture and art to clear the way for them to usurp the party and seize power, and sweep away all hostile forces in the cultural and art circles. "Yi Min" is of course also included in the sweep.The Jiangqing Group will never be lenient when dealing with the "poisonous weeds" that have grown out of revolutionary model operas.

In the rapidly changing political and cultural climate, the cultural salons that had sprung up during the period of "criticizing Lin and rectifying the wind"—that is, the trough of the "Cultural Revolution"—disintegrated one after another.The literary educated youth began to disperse into single soldiers or groups of three or two, hiding themselves, as if they were chilling cicadas at the end of autumn, gradually disappearing.The hibernation period of underground literature has begun. But underground literature was doomed to suffer a catastrophe before it entered hibernation.