Lin Biao (right) is included in the Ten Marshals at the Military Museum exhibition in Beijing in 2007. Photo: CFP

by Yin Hang

Let General Lin Biao be under no illusion: It was a direct order. In seven days, Lin must move his Northeast Field Army down to the Shanhai Pass, nearly 300 kilometers east of Beijing, according to Mao Zedong's strict instructions.

It was 1948 and the closing act of the War of Liberation. Lin had just defeated the Kuomintang in his decisive 52-day Liaoxi-Shenyang Campaign.

Lin found an army most unwilling to move. His entire general staff and cadres to a man all argued that the November 22 deadline was too tight. This brilliantly successful, battle-weary army needed a few days to muster. Some columns badly needed a rest. More time was needed, General Luo Ronghuan told Lin.

Lin turned, struck a match, blew it out, sniffed the smoke and said, "Wire this back: Received order dispatched on 18th at 18:00. Will set out on 22nd as instructed. Details to follow, signed Lin, Luo and Liu."

On November 23, 1948 - one day late – the Northeast Field Army moved south inside the Shanhai Pass. The epic Beiping-Tianjin Campaign awaited them.

In these scenes from the 30 million yuan ($4.4 million) all-star The Founding of a Republic, You Yiping portrays Lin as a battle wise general during his character's less than two minutes of screen time.

The Founding of a Republic tells the story of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the coalition of parties, artists, scientists and intellectuals that eventually founded New China.

"Historical figures such as Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and Chiang Kai-shek are comparatively realistic in the movie," claimed Li Donglang, a professor at the Party School of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China.

"It is a good sign. Possibly we will be able to see more works like this in future," he said.

"An objective and materialistic way of depicting historical figures will allow people to get to know historical figures' personalities better and clearer. I believe the movie successfully did it, although artistic license was employed."

One of the famous Ten Marshals of the People's Liberation Army of China, Lin Biao was an instrumental military leader in the Liberation War and the general who led the People's Liberation Army into Beijing in 1949.

He abstained from becoming a major player in politics until he rose to prominence during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, climbing as high as no.2 only to the Great Helmsman himself, becoming Mao's designated successor. Lin died in a plane crash on September 13, 1971 in Underkhaan, Mongolia, fleeing the country after an alleged plot to assassinate Mao.

Condemn Confucius

Over the next 10 years, Lin was officially condemned as a traitor and recognized as head of one of the "two major counterrevolutionary cliques" alongside Mao's infamous wife Jiang Qing.The Condemn Lin and Condemn Confucius campaign officially kicked off in 1974. Newspapers, comic books and novels were churned out during the rest of the 1970s portraying Lin as a traitor and disciple of Confucius.

TheBeiping-Tianjin Campaign drama, staged in the 1980s, managed to delete almost the entire Battle of Tianjin in which Lin Biao's troops conquered almost 130,000 Kuomintang soldiers in 29 hours. Lin himself was not even mentioned.

In the military volume of the Encyclopedia of China compiled in the middle of the 1980s, Lin Biao is listed as a brave Communist military leader and traitor. In a meeting held on March 13, 1985, Yang Shangkun, who was vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission at the time and later China's president between 1988 and 1993 declared Lin should be given a more objective evaluation despite his later betrayal. After all, Lin had contributed to the liberation of northeast China.

"After that meeting, we began to see Lin Biao's contribution as a military leader. He was more frequently mentioned in different kinds of artistic works," Li Donglang said.

"In the movie Decisive Engagement, the positive side of Lin Biao as a brave general was portrayed." In the Liaoxi-Shenyang and Beiping-Tianjin campaigns of the 1991 movie Decisive Engagement Lin's character was, for the first time in a blockbuster, a firm, brave and determined man-of-action, although always receiving rebukes from Mao.

Lin's character evolves

TV series including the Long March, Jinggangshan and the Eighth Route Army produced in later years also tried to be more objective in treating Lin's military contribution.

Published in August 1989, the book White Snow, Red Blood by Zhang Zhenglong, an officer in the People's Liberation Army, offered a more multi-dimensional idea of Lin, but the book was severely criticized and rumored to be suppressed in the spring of 1990 after about 100,000 copies had been sold.

A positive official evaluation of Lin finally appeared in July 2007 at an exhibition held in the Military Museum of China celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.

Listed as one of the Ten Marshals of New China, a portrait of Lin was displayed alongside former Marshal Zhu De and Peng Dehuai. The official Xinhua News Agency stated in a later report that Lin was listed for his remarkable military abilities.

"In its way of treating historical figures, we can clearly feel that the sprit of seeking truth from facts is gaining increasing attention in the Chinese artistic field, which is a good and positive sign and echoes the requirement raised by leaders of the Party among different periods of time," said Li.

"The changing attitude towards historical figures relates to the principal social contradictions in various period of times.

"During the 1950s to 1960s, the old-time way of thinking formed in the blockade environment still influenced China, in which we see large doses of propaganda-oriented attitude, which was used to drum up more support and was prevalent throughout all of society.

"But from the late 1970s, the social environment of China fundamentally changed. So the Communist Party focused on looking retrospectively at history and summing up experiences. China is increasingly adopting a materialistic and objective attitude to reviewing its history."

Jiang Qing (1914-91) appears during the trial of the Gang of Four at a special court under the jurisdiction of the Supreme People's Court on January 25, 1981. Photo: AFP

Madame Mao

Also appearing in the big 60th anniversary movie bash are such complicated historical figures as Jiang Qing and Chiang Kai-shek. The Founding of a Republic movie director Han Sanping, who is also the head of the country's biggest movie producer and distributor the China Film Group Corporation, said he had created a new style of mainstream film in which Mao and Chiang are more realistic, humane characters.

The 50-episode drama Liberation broadcast on primetime China Central Television until September 30 this year. It reportedly portrayed Chiang Kai-shek as a vivid historical figure with a complex personality, although ultimately a failure of his own poor decision-making.

The character of Jiang Qing also proved mold-breaking by mainland standards: she was represented for the first time as a kind and loving wife to Mao Zedong in the Liberation. A lively hostess for Mao's many guests and friends, Jiang was even depicted taking care of a sick Zhou Enlai.

Yang Tianshi, a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, went to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in the US to research Chiang's personal diary and later authored Seeking for Truthful Chiang Kai-shek: Interpreting The Diary of Chiang Kai-shek.

Yang reportedly said the change from depicting Chiang as a stereotypical villain with no individuality toward a more personal historical figure proved that research on the mainland was now headed toward more dialectical materialism, according to the International Herald Leader, a newspaper organized by Xinhua News Agency.

"Arduous work is needed to restore the truth and original character of Chiang Kaishek and get rid of the conceptualization and stereotypical way of treating historical figures," Yang reportedly said.

Cultural Revolution enters stage left

Song-and-dance epic Road to Revival became the first grand official stage show to make mention of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when it debuted at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on September 20.

With a cast of 3,200, the 2.5 hourlong production traced the history of China over the last 169 years from the Opium War in 1840 through the 1911 revolution and anti-Japanese war to the founding of New China in 1949 and the 2008 Olympics.

It was the third grand songand- dance epic in the history of the People's Republic of China, after The East is Red in 1964 and Song of the Chinese Revolution in 1984.

In the third chapter of the epic, the four-minute poem Meditation and Choices depicted 10 years of social and political turbulence.

"The ground says in that 10 years, she was tired and exhausted, because there was a heavy cluster of cloud weighing on her head," read the poem.

"The sky says in that 10 years she suffered pain and was miserable because there was an incessant disaster right under her nose…"

Dark clouds and thunder roared in the background as 65-year-old Qu Xianhe read out onstage:

"If we were not looking for where history turns, if we were not to find a new start for the revival of the nation, who is willing to rip the healing wound, who is willing to look back at the tortures that we cannot bear to see again?" Then the dark clouds lifted and the stage lit up.

Qu came from Indonesia with his family in 1950, one of the many ethnic Chinese who returned to build the country after the founding of New China.

He told the China News Service he would remember forever his experience of the Cultural Revolution. The performance came easy to him, he said. "With personal emotions and a cherishing for change."

Beijing-based poet Liu Xing wrote the words. He told the China News Service he rewrote the poem for more than 20 times before hitting on the final version.

"I often had to think very hard about one word," he said.

Mentioning the Cultural Revolution was unavoidable, Cai Wu, minister of culture, told Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV. "We maintain one principle: Do not sidestep the problem nor play it up."