Hu Feng (, November 2, 1902 – June 8, 1985) was a Chinese Marxist writer, poet and literary theorist. He was a prominent member of the League of Left-Wing Writers. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Hu Feng became a member of the First National People's Congress of China, but was then heavily persecuted as the chief of the Hu Feng Counter-revolutionary Clique (). The persecution became a massive political purge. He was first rehabilitated in 1980 and fully rehabilitated, posthumously, in 1988. Life Early life Hu Feng was born in Qichun, Hubei on November 2, 1902, as a son of a toufu artisan. He started school in his village in 1913 and entered middle school in Wuchang in 1920. He transferred to the High School Affiliated to the National Southeastern University (, now High School Affiliated to Nanjing Normal University), which was also the school of Ba Jin. He joined Socialist Youth League of China there. Education In 1925, Hu Feng participated in the May Thirtieth Movement, and entered Peking University later in the year. In 1926, he transferred to study western literature at Tsinghua University. Soon he quit school and returned to his hometown. He later served in the Kuomintang. In 1929, he entered Keio University in Japan to study English. Then, in 1933, he was evicted from Japan for organizing anti-Japanese groups among fellow Chinese students. Literary activism Hu Feng returned to Shanghai in 1933 and became both the head of publicity and the executive secretary of the League of Left-Wing Writers. He became closely acquainted with Lu Xun. In 1934, he married Mei Zhi. In 1935, he secretly edited the journal Mu Xie Wen Cong (, literally "The Sawdust Journal"), which was published with the help of Kanzō Uchiyama. In 1936, he co-founded and co-edited the journal The Petrel () with others, which published the works of Lu Xun and other authors including Nie Gannu, Xiao Jun, and Wu Xiru (). After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, Hu Feng became the chief-editor of the magazine July (). According to Ruth Y.Y. Hung, "Hu and his associate writers, the July poets, made paradigmatic distinctions between new and old, free verse and national forms, and, by extension, poetry-driven revolution... and poetry for the Revolution." Due to the war, Hu Feng moved the publication of July to Wuhan in October 1937, and to