Wang Rongfen was 19 years old when she wrote a letter directly to Mao Zedong condemning the Cultural Revolution and renouncing the Communist Youth League. After mailing the letter, she swallowed four bottles of pesticide in an attempt to protest through death.
She did not die that day. When she regained consciousness, she found herself in a hospital run by China’s public security authorities, surrounded by police officers.
She remained there for two days before being formally arrested and transferred to Gongdelin Prison in Beijing. From there, she was moved repeatedly — from a juvenile correctional facility outside Deshengmen, where detainees were subjected to political “study sessions” and public denunciations, to the Beijing Municipal Detention Center at Banbuqiao.
In 1969, as tensions with the Soviet Union escalated and China prepared for the possibility of war, Wang was sent to a detention center in Linfen, in southern Shanxi Province. Later, she was transferred again, this time to Jincheng, in southeastern Shanxi.
A life sentence
On January 10, 1976 — nearly 10 years after her arrest — Wang was formally sentenced to life imprisonment. The charge was “current counter-revolutionary activity.” Her crime, according to the verdict, was using “the most vicious language” to attack Chairman Mao, described in official rhetoric as “the reddest sun in our hearts.”
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