Writing-Crime Case

     Generally, a criminal is always unacceptable. But this time, I would like to talk about a legendary criminal named Xu Hongci. There were estimated 550,000 people who were accused of being rightists in Mao Zedong’s purge. Xu is the only guy who escaped and made a free life in another country. 

     Xu was born in 1933 and he joined the communist party when he was 14. He was a student at Shanghai No. 1 Medical College and had a girlfriend there. In 1956, Mao invited all of the scholar to express themselves freely. But it became a entrapment soon. Xu was arrested and charged because he wrote a big character poster raising numerous criticisms of China. He escaped from the prison for several times but was caught by the police while his 14 years prison life. In 1969, the Culture Revolution happened and he knows that he would be killed even though he was innocent. He decided to break the jail and finally, he succeeded and escaped to Mongolia. From Yunnan, he run to Sichuan, then he went to Shanghai, he met his mother there. His mother understood him. She known he was innocent. She gave him 100 yuan and Xu depart to Mongolia. It was lucky that the raider did find him when he went through the frontier. After a year in the prison in Mongolia, he finally can have a free life. He married and had children there. The life in Mongolia is ordinary. 

     After Mao dead, his mother wrote a letter to him to tell him that his case was redressed. Although the government of Mongolia did not want him to come back to China, he still depart because he miss his mother and his motherland even though this country hurt him a lot. Xu was able to go back to China in 1984, 12 years after his jail break. He wrote a book named No Wall Too High and published in Hong Kong in 2008, just before his death. 

     His life is a tragedy, but is’s also a kind of legend.