Hai Rui Dismissed from Office

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hai Rui Dismissed from Office (Chinese: 海瑞罢官; pinyin: hǎi ruì bà guān) is a theatre play famous for its involvement in Chinese politics during the Cultural Revolution.

Wu Han, who wrote the play, was a historian who focused on the Ming Dynasty. Wu Han wrote an article portraying Hai Rui, a Ming minister who was imprisoned for criticizing the emperor, as the hero. The article was later adapted into a Beijing opera play, having its first performance in 1961. The play was initially praised by Mao Zedong.

However, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Yao Wenyuan published an article criticising the play as an allegory of Mao's dismissal of Peng Dehuai at the Lushan Conference in 1959 (Peng had expressed reservations about Mao's Great Leap Forward policy). Hai Rui was identified as a representation of Peng, with the emperor being Chairman Mao. The theatre play became an instrument for radical Maoists to attack the "rightist" pragmaticians in the politburo in 1965. Wu Han became one of the first victims of the Cultural Revolution and died in prison in 1969, only to be posthumously rehabilitated in 1979.