When you hear the phrase 10 disturbing stories, you might picture ghostly legends or horror movies. Yet the reality of China’s Cultural Revolution offers a far more chilling catalogue. From 1966 to 1976, Mao Zedong’s radical campaign unleashed a wave of terror that left millions dead, imprisoned or broken. Below, we count down ten of the most unsettling episodes, each a stark reminder of how ideology can turn deadly.
10 Disturbing Stories Overview
10 The Execution Of Fang Zhongmou
Fang Zhongmou, a veteran of the People’s Liberation Army and a Party member, initially wore her revolutionary badge with pride. Her two older children eagerly joined the Red Guard ranks, and she felt a surge of motherly triumph. The tide turned, however, when her daughter fell ill and died after a trip to a Mao‑Tse‑tung rally in Beijing, leaving Fang heart‑broken.
Not long after, her husband was branded a “capitalist‑roader,” a vague Maoist slur accusing him of betraying socialist ideals and nudging China toward capitalism. Because Fang’s father had once been labeled a Nationalist spy, the Party’s suspicion quickly shifted to her. She endured multiple detentions and relentless struggle sessions, the public humiliation designed to break her spirit.
In 1970, a domestic dispute erupted when Fang criticized Mao at home, angering both her husband and son, Zhang Hongbing. The family reported her “crime” to the authorities, and, in a desperate act of defiance, Fang set fire to the family portrait of Chairman Mao. Soldiers seized her, but not before Hongbing beat her on his father’s orders. Charged with “attacking Chairman Mao,” Fang was executed by firing squad on April 11, 1970. Neither her son nor husband attended the execution. Years later, her son, haunted by guilt, petitioned the provincial legal system with help from his uncle Feng Meikai, finally clearing Fang’s name in 1980. He now works as a lawyer, championing the memory of Cultural Revolution victims and campaigning to transform his mother’s gravesite into a public memorial.
9 The Paralysis Of Deng Pufang
Even the highest echelons of the Party were not immune to Mao’s purges. Deng Xiaoping, later famed for steering China toward market reforms, found himself denounced as a “capitalist‑roader” in 1967, stripped of his posts and placed under strict house arrest in Beijing. His children were forced into the countryside, but his eldest son, Deng Pufang, endured a far more brutal fate.
In 1968, a group of Red Guards ambushed Pufang on the campus of Beijing University, beating him mercilessly simply because he bore Deng’s surname. After the assault, they locked the dazed youth in a fourth‑floor room. The exact circumstances of his subsequent fall remain murky: some survivors claim he was pushed out an open window, others suggest he leapt in a desperate attempt to escape.
Pufang survived the plunge, but the impact shattered his spine, leaving him permanently paralyzed. Deprived of proper medical care due to his family’s political disgrace, he languished for years before specialists finally examined him in 1974, confirming his irreversible injury. Undeterred, Pufang devoted his life to advocating for China’s disabled community, earning the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights in 2003 for his tireless humanitarian work.
8 The Murder Of Bian Zhongyun
One of the earliest and most tragic casualties of the Cultural Revolution was Bian Zhongyun, a 50‑year‑old vice‑principal at Beijing Normal University Girls High School. In June 1966, a wave of student activism began to challenge school authorities, organizing “revolutionary meetings” that quickly turned hostile.
Bian’s solid academic credentials and bourgeois family background made her an obvious target for the Red Guard mob, many of whom hailed from privileged families themselves. Over two months, she endured escalating harassment, culminating in a brutal beating during a meeting.
On August 4, 1966, after being warned not to return, Bian chose to go to school anyway. That decision cost her her life. Teenage students assaulted her with kicks, fists, and nailed‑filled table legs, so violently that she soiled herself, lost consciousness, and died from her injuries. No one was ever held accountable, and the perpetrators remain anonymous. In 2014, former student Song Binbin issued a public apology, claiming she did not directly partake in the beating but felt remorse for not intervening. Critics, however, doubt the sincerity of her apology, arguing that she played a larger role than she admits. Bian’s husband, Wang Jingyao, dismissed the apology as insufficient, blaming both the individual students and the broader Communist Party leadership for the tragedy.
7 The Down To The Countryside Movement
The Down‑to‑the‑Countryside Movement was Mao’s massive social engineering project that relocated more than 17 million urban youths to remote rural areas between 1968 and 1980. While a handful of “sent‑down youth” volunteered, the overwhelming majority were coerced, forced to abandon city life against their will.
Mao justified the program by claiming it was essential for educated youth to undergo “re‑education” by poor peasants, hoping to cement ideological loyalty and boost underdeveloped regions. In practice, these teenagers—fresh from high school, university, or even elementary school—found themselves thrust into back‑breaking labor, living in severe poverty, and enduring harsh living conditions.
Many participants viewed the relocation as an adventure or patriotic duty, yet a great many resented the drudgery and longed to return home. Although most eventually made it back, the years spent in the countryside represented a lost generation, denied education and personal development. A Beijing history professor summed it up: “From the perspective of a historian, this period must be negated for the nation’s overall development.”
6 The Ping‑Pong Spies
Rong Guotuan, Fu Qifang, and Jiang Yongning were the shining stars of Chinese table‑tennis in the 1950s and 60s. Rong, celebrated for clinching the World Table‑Tennis Championships in 1959, was a national hero. All three, however, originally hailed from British‑controlled Hong Kong, a fact that sowed suspicion during the Cultural Revolution.
Accused of espionage in 1968, the three athletes faced relentless persecution. Fu endured struggle sessions and beatings by teammates, ultimately taking his own life on April 16, 1968. Jiang, whose hobby of reading newspapers and a childhood photograph of himself under a Japanese flag raised eyebrows, was accused of being a Japanese spy and hanged himself a month later.
Rong, overwhelmed by the accusations, chose a similar fate. Early on June 20, 1968, he fashioned a rope around an elm branch and hanged himself, leaving a pocket note pleading his innocence: “I am not a spy… I treasure my reputation more than my own life.” The National Sports Commission dismissed his pleas, insisting the trio operated a Hong Kong spy network.
5 The Death Of Lao She
Lao She, born Shu Qingchun, stands among the giants of modern Chinese literature. His 1937 novel Rickshaw Boy remains a staple of Chinese culture, even inspiring a statue of its protagonist on Beijing’s Wangfujing Street. The “people’s artist,” as he was called, was personally invited back to China by Premier Zhou En‑lai in 1949 after a stint in New York.
On August 23, 1966, as the Cultural Revolution gathered momentum, Lao She and twenty other writers were herded to Beijing’s Temple of Confucius. There, a mob of roughly 150 teenage girls battered them with bamboo sticks and theater props in a savage struggle session. Later that night, the writers were taken to the Culture Bureau, where Lao She endured hours of beating after refusing to display a placard labeling him a counter‑revolutionary. The assault finally ceased around midnight, and he was allowed to return home.
The following morning, after leaving his house, Lao She’s body was discovered floating in a lake. While many believe the humiliation from the struggle session drove him to suicide, his wife Hu Jieqing suspected foul play. The exact circumstances surrounding his death remain shrouded in mystery, with speculation about who organized the session and whether Lao She attended voluntarily or under duress.
4 The Dao County Massacre
In the summer of 1967, a rumor rippled through Hunan’s Dao County: Taiwan’s Kuomintang, allegedly in collusion with local antirevolutionaries, planned an invasion of the mainland. The rumor, though baseless, was officially confirmed by county officials, igniting a frenzy of violence.
The ensuing massacre claimed over 4,500 lives in just two months. Victims were primarily members of the “Five Black Categories”—landlords, rich farmers, counter‑revolutionaries, “bad influences,” and rightists. Some were slain by armed militias in their homes; others faced mock trials before being executed by mobs.
Methods of murder were grotesquely varied: shooting, decapitation, burial alive, and even explosive detonations. The bloodshed spilled into neighboring counties, adding another 4,000 deaths. In total, more than 14,000 participants were implicated. By the 1980s, only 52 were arrested and sentenced, leaving the majority unpunished.
3 The Cleansing The Class Ranks Campaign
From 1968 to 1971, the Communist Party launched the “Cleansing the Class Ranks” campaign, a sweeping purge aimed at eradicating counter‑revolutionaries and capitalist elements. Revolutionary committees across the nation became the engine of terror, targeting anyone deemed a threat.
Inner Mongolia suffered especially, where authorities alleged a secret separatist party, leading to the arrest, maiming, or torture of hundreds of thousands—primarily ethnic Mongolians. An estimated 22,900 people were executed. In Hebei, a crackdown on an alleged Kuomintang spy ring resulted in 84,000 arrests, with roughly 2,900 dying from torture‑related injuries. Yunnan’s records show nearly 7,000 people forced into suicide under the campaign’s pressure.
By 1969, the campaign’s intensity waned, though isolated purges persisted until 1971. The scale of arrests and executions eventually alarmed Mao, who feared the purges threatened his public image and the Party’s stability.
2 Project 571
General Lin Biao, once Mao’s trusted vice‑chairman and designated successor, fell from grace in the early 1970s. By 1971, Lin’s relationship with Mao soured, and he became isolated from Party leadership.
On September 13, 1971, Lin, his wife, and son Lin Liguo boarded a plane bound for the Soviet Union, hoping to escape imminent persecution. The aircraft, low on fuel and lacking a co‑pilot or navigator, flew over Mongolia before crashing. All nine aboard perished, and Soviet autopsies later identified the remains.
Prior to the crash, Chinese officials uncovered a plot—codenamed Project 571—allegedly orchestrated by Lin to overthrow Mao and assassinate him. While the Party’s narrative claims the Lins fled after the failed coup, many historians argue that Lin’s son, Liguo, may have been the mastermind, casting doubt on Lin’s innocence. The crash’s cause remains contested; theories range from technical failure to sabotage. Curiously, the pilot, Pan Jingyin, was posthumously honored as a “Revolutionary Martyr.”
1 Cannibalism In Guangxi Province
Research by dissident writer Zheng Yi reveals that hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were cannibalized in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. As a Red Guard, Zheng heard rumors of these gruesome acts but never witnessed them firsthand. In the mid‑1980s, he returned to Guangxi to investigate, interviewing many participants who displayed little remorse.
These perpetrators didn’t consume flesh out of starvation; they believed that fully destroying an enemy required eating them. Victims’ brains, livers, hearts, feet, and even genitals were devoured at makeshift barbecues, turning murder into a grotesque communal feast. In Wuxuan County, the epicenter of these atrocities, crowds would stalk victims, sometimes skinning them alive. One notorious case involved a man who was beaten, castrated, and then skinned while still conscious. Children and the elderly also took part; an elderly woman became infamous for extracting and eating eyeballs. In another shocking incident, a female teacher was killed by her students and then roasted at school.
The horror remained hidden from the outside world until Zheng published his findings in the 1993 book Scarlet Memorial. The Chinese government banned the book, and the topic remains taboo, with officials still reluctant to discuss the events.
Tristan Shaw, an American blogger fascinated by crime, literature, and history, has chronicled these and other macabre mysteries in his books, now available on Amazon Kindle.