GREGORY B

guard’ of the May 4th generation now in their seventies and theformer Red Guards now in their twenties. A member of theCommunist Party from 1946, he entered the PLA in 1947 andwas assigned to its propaganda unit. He started writing in 1951while remaining in the army. In 1957 he was a victim of theanti-rightist campaign and denounced as a “bourgeois rightist”,excluded from the Party, discharged from the army, andcondemned to ‘reform through labour’. He started writing filmscripts on his release in 1961 and was reintegrated by the PLAinto its Arts and Literature Department. At the start of theCultural Revolution in 1966, he was labelled a member of thecounter-revolutionary “black gang” 反 革 命 黑 帮 and wasseparated from his wife until 1973, and denied the right to writeuntil 1976; being denied the privilege of writing was meantliterally, it did not simply signify being barred from publishing.In 1977, he once again turned to writing plays, and in 1979published his script Bitter Love ( 苦 戀 ) in the official literarymagazine ‘October’ “ 十 月 ” (N°3, 1979). In 1980 Bai Huaproduced the film script version of ‘Bitter Love’ which went bythe title “ 太 陽 與 人 ” (sometimes found as 太 陽 和 人 ) and theChangchun film studio produced the film. It would howevernever be publicly screened.BITTER LOVE: THE FILMThe scenario of Bitter Love recounts the story of a painter, aWestern-style painter, Ling Chenguang 凌 晨 光 who leavesChina and achieves a degree of success abroad. He returns, as5