Gu Shengying, a prominent Chinese classical concert pianist, died on the last day of January 1967, a week before the Chinese New Year.
She was a musical prodigy and a genius who had won countless accolades, and rightfully, she was supposed to be the glory and pride of a nation. However, during the Cultural Revolution, she suffered unwarranted and unbearable humiliation, which finally led her to commit suicide.
Young people’s talent
Gu Shengying was born in 1937. Her family was well-to-do with cultural interests in Shanghai. Her father, Gu Gaodi, was the secretary of General Cai Tingkai, the commander of the 19th Route Army of the Republic of China’s National Revolutionary Army. Her mother, Qin Shenyi, was a high-achieving student in the foreign language department at Shanghai Datong University. An elegant bungalow sits at No. 103, Lane 1088, Yuyuan Road; this was once the family’s residential home.
At the age of 3, Gu Shengying began to learn to play the piano and showed great musical talent throughout her childhood. She eventually succeeded in studying music theory and the history of music. Her natural talent emerged at a young age. With tireless hard practice, she won the top prize in the Shanghai Junior Piano Competition in the third grade of elementary school.
In 1953, aged 16, she worked with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra for the first time and successfully succeeded. The following year, she became a piano soloist in the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.
After 1956, Gu Shengying studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Moscow. The famous Soviet pianist Kravchenko was her teacher.
Kravchenko once commented: “Gu surprised me with her grades in every class. She plays 10 to 12 hours a day; the number of scores she practiced in a year was at least twice as much as those of top students of the Soviet Conservatory of Music.”
A shining star engulfed under a political cloud
Despite Gu Shengying’s love and freedom to engage, to her heart’s content, in her field of music, a shadow of politics hung over the family.
Her father, Gu Gaodi, devoted himself to the revolution in his early years and held high positions. Gu Gaodi once had close contact with Pan Hannian, the head of the Shanghai secret service of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He covered the activities of the CCP’s underground radio. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he resigned from the military and went into seclusion in Shanghai.
On August 29, 1955, just four days before Gu Shengying’s first solo concert, the police suddenly barged into the family home to arrest her father, stating that he was involved in the “Pan Hannian Case” related to treason and counterrevolutionary crimes.
Before being taken away, Gu Gaodi told his daughter: “You have to practice the piano well… Love the country, love the people.” At that moment, Gu Shengying stood up, looked at her father, and said: “I love my country, and I love my father.”
This period was when people feared being reported even when they spoke in their dreams.
Gu Shengying buried her thoughts of her father in her heart and worked hard in her career.
In 1957, she won a gold medal at the 6th World Festival for Youth and Students held in Moscow and became the first Chinese person to win a gold medal at the International Piano Competition. More than 40 judges agreed that her performance was miraculous.
In 1958, Gu Shengying participated in the 14th Geneva International Music Competition and won the top prize in the Women’s Piano Award. After this win, she was invited by the Polish government to tour Poland. She received a precious gift in Warsaw: a plaster cast of Chopin’s hand.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Gu Shengying, Fu Cong, Liu Shikun, Li Mingqiang, and Yin Chengzong were known as the “Five Piano Masters of China.” However, Gu Shengying was considered the most outstanding of them all.
However, artistic achievements did not help her escape political shaming and humiliation. In 1958, her father, Gu Gaodi, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and sent to the Qinghai labor camp. From then on, Gu Shengying was reduced to a “sinner” and an “outcast” status. Why was it so? If any family member is implicated at that time, it would involve the rest of the family.
Shengying’s popularity was highly renowned, which would be hard for her to bear. Therefore, to eliminate this stigma, Gu Shengying was required to actively approach the revolutionary group and strive to become a “revolutionary” to wash away the so-called “sins.”
In a letter to music theory translator Diao Beihua, she began to sincerely agree that changing thoughts and feelings is a long-term and arduous task and that it is necessary to play for the revolution.
While participating in the Belgian International Piano Competition in 1964, she wrote in her diary: “It should be remembered that to play well is that I use my weapon, that is, to serve the revolution, to serve politics.” Under such mental pressure, she recorded her various discomforts, dizziness, cramps, and nightmares.
The Cultural Revolution causes the fall of Gu Shengying
However, Gu Shengying did not expect the Party she was forced to get close to would set off another catastrophe a few years later, engulfing her mercilessly. In 1966, as the Cultural Revolution swept through, Gu Shengying was forced to wear a series of hats, such as a “traitor to foreign countries” and a child of a “historical counterrevolutionary.”
Shengying once praised for her piano talent and winning glory for the motherland and the people, suddenly became a sinner who was forced to kneel and confess her mistakes.
On January 31, 1967, in the rehearsal hall of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, CCP agents dragged Gu Shengying onto the stage, slapped her several times in front of all the staff of the orchestra, grabbed her hair, pressed her to kneel in front of the statue of Mao Zedong to plead guilty, and informed her that she had to attend her special criticism meeting the next day.
There are also accounts of how she was forcibly shaved with a yin and yang hairstyle (shaving half the hair off and leaving the other half on) and subjected to excessive personal insults.
That night, Gu Shengying, her mother, and her brother turned on the gas at their home.
On February 1, 1967, at 3:00 am, an ambulance roared in at the central district hospital at Lane 749 of Yuyuan Road and brought down three stretchers. The dirty canvas stretchers were placed on the floor of the emergency room. Lying on the stretches were the bodies of Gu Shengying, her mother, Qin Shenyi, and her younger brother Gu Woqi.
The doctor quickly wrote out the death certificates and instantly cremated the three bodies, leaving no ashes as evidence. Sadly that year, the talented Gu Shengying had not yet reached her 30th birthday.
In 1975, the 67-year-old Gu Gaodi was released from prison after serving his sentence. He returned to Shanghai from the Qinghai labor camp, receiving news that his wife and children had committed suicide seven years earlier. He, who had suffered so much and had never been transformed while in prison, was devastated by this news and, overnight, turned grey.
Gu Gaodi collected his daughter’s possessions: pianos, music scores, metronomes, awards, diaries, photographs, and Chopin’s hand models. Then, he constructed a simple memorial room in honor of his daughter and stayed with it day and night with a broken heart.
In 2000, a musician named Li Delun sadly recalled his memories of Gu Shengying. Lamenting, he said: “At the 6th World Festival for Youth and Students in Moscow, Milena Mollova from Bulgaria also won an award alongside Gu Shengying. One of Bulgaria’s most prominent pianists, Moldova, is still active in the world’s music scene, but our Chinese Gu Shengying has been buried underground for over thirty years. Thinking of this, my heart is full of deep sorrow and regret.”
