He Qifang [real name He Yongfang] 1912-1979

He was born in Wanxian, Sichuan province in unruly times. At fourteen, he attended a modern middle school in the county town, and later studied in Tsinghua University and Peking University, where he read philosophy. On graduating in 1935 he became a schoolteacher. In 1938 he went from Sichuan to the Red Army base in Yenan, where he joined the Chinese Communist Party. After the establishment of the PRC, he was given important posts such as the headship of the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, and the editorship of the leading organs of literary criticism. Like most established writers, he was persecuted in the Cultural Revolution. He died of stomach cancer soon after the fall of the Gang of Four (1976).

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