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{{Short description|Chinese novelist, playwright, and poet (1930–2019)}}
{{other uses|Baihua (disambiguation)}}
{{family name hatnote|[[Chen (surname)|Chen]]|lang=Chinese}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- see Template:Infobox writer -->
| image      = Bai Hua poet.png
| image_size = 
| caption    = 
| name        = Chen Youhua
| native_name = 陈佑华
| native_name_lang = zh-hans
| pseudonym   = Bai Hua
| birth_name  = 
| birth_date  = {{birth date|1930|11|20}}
| birth_place = [[Xinyang]], [[Henan]], [[Republic of China (1912-1949)|China]]
| death_date  = {{death date and age|2019|01|15|1930|11|20}}
| death_place = [[Shanghai]], China
| resting_place= 
| occupation = Novelist, playwright and poet
| nationality= Chinese
| language   = [[Chinese language|Chinese]]
| education  = Henan Huangchuan High School
| alma_mater = 
| period     = 1946-2019
| genre      = Novel, play, poem
| subject    = 
| movement   = 
| notableworks= ''Portrait of a Fanatic''
| spouse     = <!-- {{marriage||}} -->
| children   = 
| relatives  = 
| awards     = <!--  {{Awards|award= |year= |title= }} -->
| website    = <!--  {{URL|website}} -->
| partner    =  
| signature   =  
| module  = {{Infobox Chinese|child=yes
|s = {{linktext|陈|佑|华}}
|t = {{linktext|陳|佑|華}}
|p =  Chén Yòuhuá
|w = 
|altname = Bai Hua
|s2 = {{linktext|白|桦}}
|t2 = {{linktext|白|樺}}
|l2 = <!--N/A-->
|p2 = Bái Huà
}}
}}

'''Bai Hua''' ({{lang-zh|s=白桦|t=白樺|p=Bái Huà}}; 20 November 1930 – 15 January 2019) was a Chinese novelist, playwright and poet. He gained national fame for his plays based on uncompromising historical criticism.<ref name="Leung">{{cite encyclopedia|last=Leung|first=Laifong|title=Bai Hua|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture|year=2011|publisher=EdwART|url=https://contemporary_chinese_culture.academic.ru/37/Bai_Hua}}</ref>

==Early life==
Bai was born '''Chen Youhua''' ({{lang|zh-Hans|陈佑华}}) in [[Xinyang]], [[Henan]] in 1930. His mother was illiterate but able to sing folk songs, which became a lifelong interest for her son.<ref name="Fiction">{{cite encyclopedia|last=Leung|first=Laifong|title=Bai Hua|encyclopedia=Contemporary Chinese Fiction Writers: Biography, Bibliography, and Critical Assessment|year=2016|publisher=Routledge|pages=17–21}}</ref> His father, an anti-Japanese activist, was executed by the Japanese by burying him alive in 1938.<ref name="Dillon">{{cite encyclopedia|last=Dillon|first=Michael|title=Bai Hua|encyclopedia=China, a Historical and Cultural Dictionary|year=2011|publisher=Curzon Press|page=18}}</ref> Bai had a twin brother, Ye Nan (1930–2003), who became a successful movie scriptwriter in the 1980s.<ref name="Fiction" />

== Career ==
Bai started publishing poems at the age of fifteen. In 1946, he adopted the name Bai Hua ("White Birch"), taking it from a Russian poem.<ref name="Fiction" /> Many of his poems appeared in the ''Southern Henan Daily''. Subsequently, he joined the [[People's Liberation Army]] in 1947 and the [[Chinese Communist Party]] in 1949. He worked for the Party as a writer specialized in Chinese ethnic minorities, and visited the areas where they lived. From 1952, he was employed by the [[People's Liberation Army]] as head of a creative writing group based in [[Kunming]],<ref name="Dillon" /> and worked as secretary of Marshal [[He Long]].<ref name="Fiction" />

In the mid-1950s, his support of disgraced art critic [[Hu Feng]] led him to be investigated and detained for eight months, during which he attempted to commit suicide. Charges against him were dropped in 1956.<ref name="Fiction" />

He was labeled a "rightist" in 1957, and expelled from the Army and the Party in 1958. He had to work in a factory before being hired as a scriptwriter by Haiyian Film Studios in [[Shanghai]] and came back to the army in 1964. He was further marginalized during the [[Cultural Revolution]]. After 1976, he was able to publish dramas and novels that were mildly critical of the Cultural Revolution.<ref name="Dillon" />

He produced several influential dramas and films in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From 1985 to the mid-1990s he was a member of the Shanghai Writers' Association. He was the first intellectual to be denounced again as "rightist" after the Cultural Revolution. His most recent poetry, following a long silence, was published in 2009.

== ''Unrequited Love'' ==
Some of his plays were banned because they dealt with the political purges and murders in the Red Army that took place in the 1930s and offered a critical view of traditional patriotic values. Among these the most famous was  the film script ''Unrequited Love'' (1979), which became a movie by director Peng Ning, ''The Sun and the People'' ({{lang|zh-Hans|苦戀}}, 1980) that was never shown to the public. In 1982, the script was used for the Taiwanese movie ''[[Portrait of a Fanatic]]''. In his script, Bai depicted an overseas Chinese painter who returned to China in order to devote his life to his motherland but ended up suffering political persecution and death. The painter's daughter asked her father a highly sensitive question in the film: "You love your motherland, but does the motherland love you?"<ref name="Leung" />

The paramount leader [[Deng Xiaoping]] was annoyed by Peng Ning's film and personally organized the old guards to launch a political campaign against Bai in the national media for his violation of Deng's political dogma (specifically the leadership of the party). The criticism threatened to become another wave of political prosecution until the General Secretary of the party [[Hu Yaobang]] interfered on his behalf. The significance of this episode is that it effectively split the party into two camps. Bai was later allowed to visit Japan and Southeast Asia and delivered public speeches, but his works were generally suppressed. His late epic poem "From [[Qiu Jin]] to [[Lin Zhao]]" was never published.<ref>{{cite book|author=Richard Baum|title=Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping - Updated Edition|year=1994|publisher=Princeton University Press|ISBN=0-691-03639-X|pages=[https://archive.org/details/buryingmao00rich/page/127 127–129]|url=https://archive.org/details/buryingmao00rich/page/127}}</ref>

== Personal life ==
Bai married [[Wang Bei]], a Chinese actress,<ref>{{cite web |date=2 March 2022 |title=91岁演员王蓓去世！患老年痴呆14年，因出演《马兰花》中女主走红 |url=https://www.sohu.com/a/526605047_603537 |access-date=2 March 2022 |publisher=Sohu |language=zh}}</ref> and lived in retirement in Shanghai with his wife.<ref name="Fiction" />

Bai died on 15 January 2019.<ref>{{cite web |date=15 January 2019 |title=曝《苦恋》《曙光》剧作家白桦去世 享寿89岁 |url=http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2019-01-15/doc-ihqfskcn7215252.shtml |accessdate=15 January 2019 |publisher=[[sina.com.cn]] |language=zh}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
<!-- https://web.archive.org/web/20110724141912/http://www.ztwx.net/wxpp/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=616 Link in Chinese. Can't be copied for translation. -->
* [http://history.news.163.com/08/0407/08/48TP90DP00011247.html Review of his movie "Breakfast"] (In Chinese)
<!-- http://news.xinhuanet.com/book/2008-12/12/content_10493495.htm Xinhua News, article about Xi, relevance unclear -->

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bai, Hua}}
[[Category:1930 births]]
[[Category:2019 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century Chinese poets]]
[[Category:20th-century Chinese dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:Writers from Xinyang]]
[[Category:Poets from Henan]]
[[Category:People's Liberation Army personnel]]
[[Category:International Writing Program alumni]]