Tragic Curse — A Red Song Star Violated by the CCP’s Top Leadership

Tragic Curse — A Red Song Star Violated by the CCP’s Top Leadership (vidoe screenshot)

[People News] The Red Detachment of Women is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s most influential brainwashing works. It was not only made into a film, but also adapted into Peking opera and a ballet. As one of the Eight Model Operas, it was used by the CCP during the Cultural Revolution to indoctrinate the Chinese people.

This fictional story seems to carry an ominous curse, bringing misfortune to many who participated in it. Today’s protagonist is the singer of the theme song Song of the Women’s Detachment from the film version of The Red Detachment of Women. Not only did she sing beautifully, she was also very beautiful. Because of this song, she reached the pinnacle of her artistic career, but because of it as well, she endured countless sufferings.

Her name was Zhang Qixiu. Today, let us look at her story.

A Star Begins to Shine

In 1954, a film titled The Caravan Comes with the Sound of Bells from the Mountains swept across the country. Its theme song was melodious and deeply moved countless viewers. The singer of this song was Zhang Qixiu, then only in her early twenties. Her voice was as clear as mountain spring water, full of strength, as if it could pierce the clouds and go straight to the heart.

Zhang Qixiu was a performing arts soldier in the Kunming Military Region National Defense Song and Dance Troupe. Her voice was not only a natural gift; she herself was also strikingly beautiful, with a gentle temperament and a kind manner. During performances at border outposts, soldiers would enthusiastically call for her to return to the stage again and again, with applause that went on without end.

A few years later, in 1960, the film The Red Detachment of Women was released, and the theme song Song of the Women’s Detachment sung by Zhang Qixiu brought her career to its peak.

Her singing spread into tens of thousands of households through radio. In an era when television was not yet widespread, her name was known by almost everyone. Radios often played songs she sang, for half an hour, even an hour at a time.

Yet who could have imagined that this radiant female singer would soon fall into endless darkness?

The Shadow of Power

Zhang Qixiu’s talent and beauty not only won the love of audiences, but also attracted the attention of the CCP’s top leadership. In a society under CCP rule with no freedom and no rule of law, her beauty became a curse she could not escape.

As a performing arts soldier, she had no right to refuse. Every time CCP senior officials Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi visited Yunnan, they would personally name Zhang Qixiu to host events, sing, or dance. On the surface, this seemed like recognition of her talent, but in reality, it was the beginning of her nightmare.

During these repeated activities, Zhang Qixiu was forced to accompany them in dancing, swimming, and even suffered more unbearable humiliations. Ding Rongchang, deputy commander of the Yunnan Military Region and a founding major general, raped her by abusing his power.

Another CCP senior leader, founding general Xiao Hua, went even further and occupied her for a long time.

From 1956 onward, Xiao Hua had served as deputy secretary of the CCP Central Supervisory Commission and secretary of the CCP Military Commission Inspection Committee, responsible for supervising party and military discipline. Yet he committed the act of occupying another man’s wife. He was also the lyricist of The Long March Suite, and while loudly singing the CCP’s revolutionary ideals, he long violated female soldier subordinates—not only Zhang Qixiu.

During the Cultural Revolution, after Xiao Hua was overthrown, his crimes of violating female soldiers were exposed. It is said that when he was first brought down, Nie Rongzhen wanted to protect him and arranged for him to live in the Western Hills. At that time, other military chiefs also lived there, each with a villa. Once, Xiao Hua went to Nie Rongzhen’s villa when Nie’s family was not home, and only a female domestic servant was present.

Xiao Hua actually raped the servant. She wrote a blood letter and risked her life to report directly to Mao Zedong. Only then did Xiao Hua completely fall from power.

Xiao Hua forced Zhang Qixiu to accompany him swimming until three o’clock in the morning. She dared not resist and could not resist. Zhang Qixiu’s husband was furious but powerless, and ultimately chose divorce. Her marriage collapsed, her spirit broke down—but even greater suffering still awaited her.

The Purgatory of the Cultural Revolution

In 1966, the Cultural Revolution swept the country. Those military chiefs who had once abused Zhang Qixiu were overthrown, but she herself, as a well-known figure in the arts world, could not escape this catastrophe.

At struggle sessions, Zhang Qixiu mustered the courage to expose the sexual assaults committed against her by high officials such as Ding Rongchang and Xiao Hua. However, in that mad era, her accusations not only failed to win sympathy, but instead led to her being labeled as “morally corrupt” and a “bad woman,” resulting in even more severe persecution.

She was stripped of her military status and, under armed escort, sent to a remote Yi ethnic village in Yunnan for forced labor and “reform.” Conditions there were harsh. In order to survive, she remarried. Her husband was a fellow “counterrevolutionary,” suffering the same fate as she.

Conditions were so poor that the couple at one point had to beg to survive. Most heartbreaking of all, when Zhang Qixiu became pregnant, her husband was sent far away to build a reservoir. Alone, without relatives or friends, she had to carry water, boil water, and deliver the baby herself. She gave birth to a pair of twins.

However, the harsh environment caused both babies to die shortly after birth. Even more cruelly, the body of one of the children was dragged away and eaten by the landlord’s dog. Zhang Qixiu witnessed this and collapsed unconscious on the spot.

Retaliation After the Cultural Revolution

After enduring the Cultural Revolution at last, Zhang Qixiu’s nightmare was far from over. Many of the military chiefs who had been overthrown during the Cultural Revolution were rehabilitated. Holding grudges over her past accusations, they used their power to prevent her from returning to her original song and dance troupe.

Having just returned to the city, Zhang Qixiu had no job and could only rent a dilapidated room to barely survive. She became pregnant again. To live, she borrowed money from old friends, and her life was extremely difficult.

Eventually, she was assigned to work in a toxic leather factory, completely sinking to the bottom of society.

The once-talented, radiant female singer became a bloated, frail, white-haired old woman. Her body was destroyed, her spirit tormented, and at times she even had to survive by begging.

After her youngest son was born, she and her husband were busy making a living and could only leave the child in a sheep pen, keeping company with lambs. Fortunately, this son survived.

The Documentary The Singer

Many years later, Zhang Qixiu’s tragic experiences were made into a documentary titled The Singer by Wang Yunlong, her former colleague in the Kunming Military Region Border Defense Song and Dance Troupe and a film director.

Wang Yunlong had once regarded Zhang Qixiu as his idol and deeply empathized with her suffering. Seeing what she had become after the Cultural Revolution, he wept and hoped to record her story so that future generations would know the tragic life of this female singer under CCP rule.

He recalled: “What a dazzling star she once was, so admired by people, overflowing with talent. But after six years of being sent down to labor, when she came back, she had already become a white-haired old woman, with not the slightest trace of her former elegance—bloated, weak, and forced to survive by begging. She was completely crushed by the Cultural Revolution.”

However, making this documentary was not easy. As early as the 1980s, Wang Yunlong wanted to film it. He contacted Zhang Qixiu and her husband, as well as her former husband. All of them refused, saying that it was all in the past, the wounds had already scarred over, and it was better not to touch them again.

Wang Yunlong said he knew that the real reason Zhang Qixiu, her husband, and her former husband refused was fear—they were unwilling to appear on camera.

He said this was completely understandable. They had just been rehabilitated and still felt lingering fear after more than ten years of persecution, especially when they heard they would have to face the camera under their real identities. Even after the CCP military chiefs who persecuted them had died, they still dared not do so—the fear followed them like a shadow.

Not only them—many other people Wang Yunlong later contacted also refused when they learned that real names and real locations would be used in documentary literature.

By the time Wang Yunlong began filming The Singer, Zhang Qixiu had already passed away. During interviews and filming, some people fled far away, some claimed they knew nothing, and others simply said over the phone, “Don’t come ask me; it has nothing to do with me.”

The Tragic Fate of Female Arts Soldiers

Wang Yunlong also filmed another documentary reflecting the tragic fate of female performing soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army, titled Returning Beauty to Bu Qinfather. Bu Qinfather’s suffering was even worse than Zhang Qixiu’s.

Like Zhang Qixiu, Bu Qinfather was also a performing arts soldier in the CCP Yunnan National Defense Song and Dance Troupe. During the Cultural Revolution, dissatisfied with Mao Zedong’s persecution of Liu Shaoqi and Peng Dehuai, she spoke up for them. She was first slandered as insane and locked in a military psychiatric hospital, then labeled a counterrevolutionary, enduring endless torment and humiliation in prison.

In 1970, she was sentenced to death by the Kunming Military Region Military Court. The method of execution was extremely brutal.

Wang Yunlong personally witnessed Bu Qinfather’s execution vehicle passing right in front of him. He later recalled that seeing such an extremely cruel and inhuman scene, his feeling at the time was: “This world is too terrifying, too dark!”

Wang Yunlong recalled that at the very beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the Kunming Military Region Song and Dance Troupe he belonged to labeled 57 people as counterrevolutionaries in a very short time—announcing one every five minutes. One female troupe member was labeled an active counterrevolutionary simply for saying a single sympathetic sentence about Peng Dehuai: “Peng Dehuai still had merits.” She was escorted to a high-altitude region of Yunnan for seven years of forced labor.

Another female acrobat had done nothing politically offensive, but when she resisted being raped by a worker from the Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team stationed at the troupe, she was framed and imprisoned, serving a full ten years. At one point, she was locked in the same cell as Bu Qinfather.

Conclusion

“March forward, march forward, the soldiers’ responsibility is heavy, the women’s grievances are deep. … Slaves must rise up.” These are lyrics from the theme song of The Red Detachment of Women, sung countless times by Zhang Qixiu. Yet she herself never truly managed to rise up.

Friends, this is not a distant story. This is real history that happened on Chinese soil.

One wonders, when Zhang Qixiu repeatedly fell into desperate situations, whether she ever thought about this question: after the Communist Party came to power, did it become easier for Chinese women to safeguard their dignity—or more difficult?

— The “Truth of a Hundred Years” Production Team
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