in 1586, but died in office a year later. Legacy In 1959, writer and scholar Wu Han became interested in the life of Hai Rui, and wrote several articles on his life and his fearless criticism of the emperor. He then wrote a play for Peking Opera titled "Hai Rui Dismissed from Office", which he revised several times before the final version of 1961. Wu's play was interpreted by the Gang of Four member Yao Wenyuan as an allegorical work, in which the honest moral official Hai Rui representing the disgraced communist marshal Peng Dehuai, who was purged by Mao after criticizing the Great Leap Forward. According to Yao, the corrupt emperor in Wu's play represented Mao Zedong. The November 10, 1965, an article in a prominent Shanghai newspaper, "A Criticism of the Historical Drama 'Hai Rui Dismissed From Office'" (), written by Yao, began a propaganda campaign that eventually led to the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution, the tomb of Hai Rui was destroyed, Hai Rui's body dug up and incinerated by Red Guards (the tomb has since been rebuilt). Yao's campaign led to the persecution and death of Wu Han, as well as others involved in related works, such as Zhou Xinfang for his opera Hai Rui Submits His Memorial (). While Wu Han considers Hai Rui to be a moral socialist, this was not necessarily the case. As historian Ray Huang puts it, "Though one might expect the moral interpretation of history to be generally discredited by now, this is not the case. Some modern historians tend to view the Confucian morality in of certain individuals in terms of the own sense of social justice. Wu Han, for instance, praises his hero Hai Jui for ‘standing on the side of peasantry’ in their conflict with the landlords. He also asserts that Hai, ‘despite a hundred setbacks, still continued the struggle to build a socialist society." Haikou, the largest city on Hai Rui's home island of Hainan, celebrates Hai Rui's deeds. A memorial has been constructed and his tomb is open for worship. References External links A Preliminary Study of Hai Rui: His Biography in the Ming-Shih Coordinates of tomb linking to maps: 1514 births 1587 deaths 16th-century Chinese people Chinese scholars Hui people Ming dynasty politicians People from Haikou Politicians from Hainan Chinese people of Indian descent