Nie Gannu

Nie Gannu was born into "a declining landowner family"[5] in 1903. He then joined the Nationalist party in 1922. In 1924, he began studying at Huangpu Military School. He was trained as "one of the earliest cadets".[5] After he graduated from Huangpu Military School, he studied at the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University.[1] He met a lot of classmates and friends who were also very politically involved, and had made a huge impact on history. He met Zhou Enlai(1891-1976) at Huangpu Military School. Dang Xiaoping, who later became the leader for China, and Jiang Jingguo at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. As well as other Chinese communists and Nationalists.[1] In 1940s, he started working as a journal editor.[1] In the early People's Republic China days, "We-as-one" was the main idea of the government.[4] In 1955, Nie Gannu, Hu Feng, who also shares a similar belief Nie does, as well as other writers who were 'associated' with Hu Feng were involved in a campaign launched by Chinese Communist party.[1] It was called the "Hu Feng event". The campaign was about "[those who mobiliize the public and assert] government control"(188 Xiao).[4] And they were considered as the "impurities" of the community.[4] The government believed "the impurities" were harmful to maintain the main idea of "we-as-one", therefore wanted to "get rid of them".[4] In the Anti-rightist campaign in 1957, Nie Gannu was "labelled as a Rightist".[4] As a result, he was excluded from the party, and forced to retire in Beijing.[5] But In order to collect writing materials, he was sent voluntarily to the concentration camp to experience the life of Rightists.[5] And he was sent to a concentration camp in the Great Northern Wilderness.[5]

The Chinese Communist Party decided to break the Rightists into six categories. And the punishments were as following:

Rightists were sent to factories, mines, countrysides, and borderlands.

In 1957, the Nie Gannu was banished to the Great Northern Wilderness for reeducation through labour as he was labelled as a "Rightist",[4] alongside of thousands other "rightists",[5] "were accused of 'launching a ferocious offensive' on the Communist Party"(192 Yang).[5] The Great Northern Wilderness was located in Heilongjiang, it was "the coldest and most deserted region in China"(192 Yang).[5] Nie Gannu was sent to a concentration camp there, and he was on the "fifth team of the 850 farm".[5] They were forced to work "from sunrise until dark, not allowing breaks even in severe weather conditions"(192 Yang).[5] At night, they slept in a room with two long beds, where dozens of people fit in one bed.[5] Nie Gannu, who was 55 years old at the time, was the oldest in the group, that makes it extremely hard for him to keep up with the physically-challenging tasks, as well as farming tasks due to his lack of farming experiences.[5] During his time in the Great North Wilderness, Nie Gannu wrote a lot of classical style poems about his experiences, as well as on "critiquing the Anti-Rightist and the Socialist reality"(Wang 2017). [2]