ABSTRACT
https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315288291/a1eedcaa-57fc-4fca-9a39-2ae5e50fda7a/content/fig11_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Lao Gui (Old Ghost) is the pen name of Ma Bo (b. 1949), a Beijing writer who became known after the publication of his autobiographical novel Blood-Red Sunset (Xuese huanghun) (completed in 1978, published in 1987). Despite its obvious stylistic defects, it is a work of stark realism, frankly revealing the dark side of the military farm system. Lao Gui's ordeal typifies what could happen to an innocent citizen during the Cultural Revolution: because of his remark "Chairman Mao also makes mistakes," he was labeled an "active counterrevolutionary," humiliated in numerous struggle sessions on the military farm, and condemned to undergo labor reform. After months of cutting rocks alone on a mountain, he almost lost his ability to speak. In the novel Lao Gui also discloses his sexual deprivation and his frustrated secret love for a fellow zhiqing who remained indifferent to him. After eight years of persecution and alienation, he was able to return to Beijing in 1975 only after his mother, Yang Mo (b. 1914, a famous writer), pleaded with Zhou Enlai. As he said, his eight-year ordeal in the military farm was not that of a human being, but that of a ghost; hence his pen name, Old Ghost.
