49 Facts About Lin Zhao

Lin Zhao, born Peng Lingzhao, was a prominent Chinese dissident who was imprisoned and later executed by gunshot by the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution for her criticism of Mao Zedong's policies.

Lin Zhao is widely considered to be a martyr and exemplar for Chinese and other Christians, like the Chinese church leader and teacher Watchman Nee.

Lin Zhao was the only rightist who refused to criticize and insisted she had done no wrong.

Lin Zhao was instead sent to Talimu Fourth Farm, Xinjiang, to a reform through labor camp for the next 20 years, to break the couple up.

In late 1959, while on medical parole in Shanghai, Lin Zhao met Zhang Chunyuan, a history student and People's Liberation Army veteran.

Zhang Chunyan was a leader of the so-called "Lanzhou University Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Clique", who had traveled from his exile in Tianshui, Gansu to invite Lin Zhao to join his group after one of the group's members obtained her work from his sister, another "Rightist" at Peking University.

Lin Zhao was imprisoned in Shanghai No 2 Detention house.

Lin Zhao returned to Suzhou and was told about the suicide of her father.

Lin Zhao publicly argued with him, and satirized him, and overwhelmed him with the fury and bite of her words.

Lin Zhao met Huang Zheng, and convinced him to help her draft a political platform for the "Battle League of Free Youths of China".

Lin Zhao attempted to smuggle some of her writings out of China, via a stateless alien named Arnold Newman, asking him to share them with the world.

Lin Zhao was promptly arrested, as Lin was being followed by the authorities.

Lin Zhao sent a letter to Lu Ping, the president of Peking University to try to get him to have the 800 students who had been sent to labor camps, freed.

Lin Zhao Zhou did not seem to know, that over 300 of the rightists from Peking University had starved to death in Qinghe Laogai in 1960 alone.

Lin Zhao was in Tilanqiao for eight and a half months.

Lin Zhao recruited a cellmate to the Battle League of Free Youths of China.

On 8 August 1963, Lin Zhao was transferred to Shanghai No 1 Detention house for intensive interrogations.

Lin Zhao had admired him, from the few statements that Chinese state media had printed.

Lin Zhao wrote a Self Eulogy in blood, this was her first work written in blood, and likely was written just before attempting suicide.

Lin Zhao's writing at the time identified her with the traditional Confucian scholar, who had through history, given up their lives to preserve their dignity.

On 12 April 1964, Lin Zhao wrote a poem "Family Sacrifice" in memory of Xu Jinyuan, her uncle, The Party Secretary of the Communist Youth League in Suzhou who had been executed by the Nationalists in the Shanghai massacre.

On 4 November 1964 Lin Zhao was indicted as the principle criminal of the Battle League of Free Youth of China Counterrevolutionary Clique, as well as plotting to publicize A Spark of Fire with the Lanzhou University Rightists, participation in other counterrevolutionary activities both on parole and in prison, and attempting to overthrow "the people's democratic dictatorship" amongst other crimes.

Lin Zhao again attempted suicide by cutting her left wrist.

Lin Zhao saw a connection where one was not; she assumed that Ke had taken up her case with Mao and been killed as a result.

Lin Zhao conducted a spirit marriage between herself and Ke.

Lin Zhao did still consider Ke an enemy as a party official she considered it an act of protest against Mao personally, as she wrongly believed he had Ke Qingshe killed.

In May 1965, Zhang Yuanxun, who had been in a labor camp since his arrest in 1958, was given a week pass he travel to Shanghai and visited Lin Zhao claiming to be her fiance, his goal was to try to make Lin Zhao accept reform.

The guards alleged she was crazy, and Lin Zhao denied that she was, and pointed out that crazy people were not jailed for their words as she was.

Lin Zhao presented him with a small sailboat made from candy wrappers, she asked Zhang to look after her family, and to "tell people in the future about this suffering".

Lin Zhao refuses to be educated, and chooses to resist to the end.

On 31 May 1965, Lin Zhao was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment as a political prisoner.

Lin Zhao's family was not made aware of her death until a CCP official approached her mother on 1 May 1968 to collect a five-cent bullet fee for the bullet used to kill her.

Lin Zhao asserted that his suicide was not an act of futility but one of resistance, refusing to bend to the communist state.

Lin Zhao contracted these suicides with the Buddhist monks whose temples were forced to draw up 'patriotic covenants' refusing to chant sutras to expiate the sins of counterrevolutionaries who had died.

Lin Zhao seems to have known and exploited the tools of the authoritarianism as a means of preserving her message, in 1962 for example, she insisted on handing in her writings before being released on medical parole.

Lin Zhao knew that they would be filed as evidence against her, but that if she kept them on hand, her friends and family had already destroyed as much of her writings as they could to protect themselves.

Lin Zhao attempted to inverted the state media from a bastion of lies to the preserver of truth by giving letters to be mailed to them to the prison authorities, these were then preserved as evidence against her, ironically protecting her message.

Lin Zhao seems to have anticipated this, she stamped her pages in with her signature in blood as a mark of authenticity.

Jie Li makes the argument that Lin Zhao was writing in anticipation of the future that Lin Zhao was writing not just to "Party Newspapers and its readers, Mao Zedong and the CCP, prison wardens and court judges, family and friends, God and Heaven, the dead and those yet to be born".

Lin Zhao was a convert to Christianity, having attended a Christian missionary school.

Lin Zhao had decided to take on the role of a martyr, a public witness to her faith, her witness would be preserved not despite the confines of prison which removed her from public view and society, but because of it.

Lin Zhao is in her title and words, asking the state's prosecutor to inject her blood into the blood stream of the nation, but it seems that her blood the blood of a true martyr can not be cleaned easily, figuratively her martyrdom can not be dismissed, it has some greater meaning that the blood guilt can not be removed without correction.

In 1981, under the government of Deng Xiaoping, Lin Zhao was officially exonerated of her crimes and rehabilitated.

When her son was killed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre both Ding and Lin Zhao had attended Laura Haygood Memorial Schools for Girls in Suzhou.

The story of Lin Zhao's life was obscure and little-known until it was brought to light by documentary filmmaker Hu Jie, whose 2005 documentary In Search Of Lin Zhao's Soul won numerous awards.

Lin Zhao is briefly featured in several chapters of Philip Pan's 2008 book, Out of Mao's Shadow.

In 2018, Xi Lian, a professor of world Christianity at Duke University, published a biography of Lin Zhao based upon interviews with friends and family, surviving testimonials and letters from Lin.

Five-Cent Life, an English-language biopic based on Lin Zhao's life, was released in 2020.

Lin Zhao has enjoyed popular acclaim in the Chinese Dissident community.